Assignment: Good Design / Bad Design
- DUE: September 8 @11:59pm.
- Before you start this assignment, make sure that you have already read Learning to See
In this assignment, your objective is to train yourself to think about the design of things around you. Think carefully about how people interact with the physical or digital world. Is it good? Is it bad?
Sometimes these things are obvious, but other times, it turns out that we’ve adapted our behavior to bad design. For us, clumsy becomes normal (for example, Williams Glow or other web services that shall remain nameless). So take the time to look at interactions with a new eye. Are they really good? Are they really easy to use?
- Find 1 example of good design and 1 example of bad design on Williams' campus or website. Take pictures.
- For each design (good and bad), create a new post (on your Github Course Website.
- For each design's page, explain why you chose this design. Include pictures to tell the story. Think about who uses this design, when they are using it, and why they are using it.
- Reflect on the design - what is it about this design that makes it good (or bad)? You might not necessarily be able to articulate this clearly at this point in the course… that’s okay! Try your best. Is it easy to use? Does it make people feel good?
- Clean up the irrelevant pages/content from the Jekyll template you're using (see the slides for some pointers).
- Course Website Notes:
- Create a Course Website for this class using the BeautifulJekyll Template (follow the README instructions)
- If you have a Github User Page already, you should follow the instructions for making a project page (gh-pages branch)
- If you do not have a Github User Page, you can either make your Github User page the Course Website for this class, or follow the instructions for a project page
- There are some notes at the end of the slides that may help
- Post the link of each Post along with your name on the appropriate Slack channel. DO NOT READ any other student’s links until after class on Monday.
- Bring 1-page color printouts of both your good design and bad design to class. The printout should NOT include your name, or any information that indicates whether it is a good or bad design. It should simply include a single picture, or sequence of pictures showing the design. In class, we will try to guess whether each design is good/bad.
This assignment will be graded on a scale of 9 points:
- Website for good and bad design
- Good Design Explanation & Reflection
- Bad Design Explanation & Reflection:
- Website Template Clean-up
This Assignment is an adapted version of Evan Peck's HCI Assignment at Bucknell University.