Investigation 1: Design Sensitivity

Due
Monday, September 7, in class
Preparation
Before starting this assignment, you should have read chapter 1 of Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things (2013).
Submitting your work
You will present your work during an in-class poster session and leave your poster with me to grade.
Collaboration
You should complete this assignment individually, although you may discuss it with anyone you like. You should acknowledge any important insights you gain from discussions with others.
Grading
This assignment will be graded out of 25 points (see Assessment below).

Assignment

From your direct observation of someone else having difficulty using a machine, a computer application, or any designed artifact, prepare a short description (including both text and diagrams as needed), sketching the situation and explaining the difficulty. Additionally, think about and note the various perspectives of those who may have created the situation: Why would someone choose to design it this way?

Look for something that others might not think of: The more diverse the examples we share in class, the better. I'd definitely like to see some non-computer examples!

Goals

Human-centered: Start by thinking about problems that you've had (easy). Challenge yourself by trying to notice the problems that others have (harder). How do you watch? How do you uncover their intentions?

Critical search: Having read some of Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, try to pick up some of his spirit in the search for problems in design. Poorly designed everyday things may be the hardest to notice. Look for examples that are different from Norman's.

Critical analysis: Apply concepts from the book to analyze why things are difficult to use.

Multiple perspectives: Any design is the result of compromises. There is seldom one right answer. Think about the historical, economic, aesthetic, political, physical, and personal factors that played (or may have played) a part in influencing your target design.

Multiple descriptions:A very important design skill is the ability to be fluent in the language(s) of design: various representations for describing, analyzing, and synthesizing experience and interaction. Your poster should include at least one diagram illustrating how people interact with your chosen artifact. Try out a variety of representations (sketch, annotated photo, flowchart, cartoon, outline, story, table, etc.). If time and space allow, consider using multiple representations to illustrate different points.

Presentation

We'll have a poster session during class on Monday, September 7, to discuss your findings.  So, please prepare your work in a form suitable for posting on the wall. You may use two 8.5" x 11" pages, or you may use one sheet up to 11" x 17". Any acknowledgements should appear as footnotes at the bottom of the poster ("the fine print"). You will leave your poster with me at the end of class—be sure your name is on it!

A polished essay is not expected or required. I want you to quickly capture and communicate design problems and possible solutions. Your poster should be a thoughtful sketch, not a work of art.

You can find some responses to similar assignments here and here.  However, note that some of these are more polished than I am expecting.

Assessment

I will assess your work with respect to the five goals above. I will look at clarity and insight, not polish. I will use the following rubric to assign a score out of 25 points:


 Excellent (5)
 Comptetent (4)
 Developing (3)
 Beginning (2)
Human-centered
 You reflect on how you recognized that others were having a problem with technology and how you inferred their intentions.
 You report on a problem you have noticed when observing others using a technology.
 You report on a problem you have had yourself when using a technology. You report on a technology, not  observations of people using the technology.
Critical search
 Your example is novel, unexpected, and thought-provoking.
Your example is non-obvious and clearly different from Norman's examples.
Your example is obvious or very similar to one of Norman's examples.
 Your example is identical to one of Norman's examples.
Critical analysis
 Your analysis draws carefully and insightfully on Norman's fundamental principles of interaction.
 Your analysis accurately applies Norman's principles to your chosen example.
 Your analysis refers to Norman's principles but does not apply them accurately.
 Your analysis does not refer to Norman's principles.
Multiple perspectives
 You identify concrete choices the designer made and possible reasons for their choices. You suggest other forces, beyond usability, that may have shaped the artifact's design. You suggest another possible design, but do not consider reasons for the existing deisgn.
 You consider only the user's perspective on the artifact as it exists.
Multiple representations
 Your poster artfully uses multiple representations to explain different aspects of the artifact and your analysis.
 Your poster reflects a thoughtful choice of visual representation(s) to clearly explain how people interact with the artifact.
 Your poster includes some visual representation of the artifact, as well as text.
 Your poster uses only text.

Janet Davis (davisj@whitman.edu)

Created September 1, 2015
Last revised September 1, 2015

Acknowledgments: This assignment has been adapted over several years from an assignment developed by Alan Borning (http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/510/05sp/lab1/).

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.