Responsive Re-design Challenges
Requirements: Each student individually completes 1 responsive redesign challenge on their own out-of-class time. (This is 10% of your overall grade.)
Submission Mechanism: Submit Redesign challenges using this redesign challenge form.
Rubric: You will be graded on demonstrated understanding of heuristics and guidelines.
Redesign Challenge Option A
do the worksheet below with all the existing prompts
Redesign Challenge Option B - With Accessibility Focus
do the worksheet below with attention to a subgroup of the users with accessibility limitations - such as visual, physical, or hearing impairments. Replace the heuristics with accessibility guidelines and base your redesign on making sure that the site or app can adhere to guidelines it may be violating.
Worksheet / Activity Description Below:
Pick a system, draft a design brief that you believe captures the designer’s intentions for the system. Then you will explore the existing implementation and ultimately redesign of a system that meets the goal stated in the design brief better than the current implementation.
Worksheet Part 1: The Design Brief.
Simply state what you believe to be the goal of the system's original designers. For example, if you choose Kayak.com, you might make a brief around "the site's design should enable users to purchase travel on airlines, book hotels, rent cars with a clear understanding of several options and an easy way to complete bookings."
Worksheet Part 2: Users and Values.
Before considering the working system, you should think about prospective users. In each of the next three boxes, describe a potential user of this system. Although your answers are presumably not informed by background research, you should treat these as mini-persona-scenario combinations. There are many potential users and scenarios; choose three that are interestingly different and would be informative for your design. You may wish to avoid situations that have strong personal emotional resonance for you; and bear in mind that it is easier to design objectively for others than for oneself.
In each of the following boxes, describe a potential user and usage scenario. In each case, your description should include information about the person using the system, about the thing they are doing. Each response should be about three sentences long.
a. A user/scenario:
b. A user/scenario:
c. A user/scenario:
Given what you understand from the design brief above and what you have described about the prospective users and context of use for this system, list key values that you believe any implementation must embody or communicate. In other words, “A system that effectively addresses user needs must be...” or “…must make the reporting party feel...
d. Key values are:
Worksheet Part 3: Heuristic Evaluation.
Conduct a heuristic evaluation of the site or app, focusing on the most significant issues. While you should avail yourself of the Nielsen heuristics as appropriate, you may also take into account the user needs/values that you listed above or other criteria you believe would be important to a successful design. Select the three most egregious (or serious) issues to describe below.
For each issue, list the heuristic or principle violated or the need that is unmet. Make it clear why the site does not satisfy the specified heuristic, principle, or need. Also list the severity of this violation using the same scale as for the in-class heuristic evaluation:
0. Don't think this is a usability problem.
1. Cosmetic problem
2. Minor usability problem
3. Major usability problem; important to fix
4. Usability catastrophe; imperative to fix
Worksheet Part 4: Redesign
Finally, pick two of the problems that you have identified with the site or app as implemented and provide redesigns that address them. You may find a sketch helpful in explaining. Attach files as you see necessary.