Project 1


More on the Project 1

One place that non-computer users frequently encounter computers is as kiosks in museums providing additional information on an exhibit. In the first project you will design and create one such kiosk. My expectation here is not that you will produce something that looks as good as a professional graphic designer, but that you will apply the basic rules of visual design to design an effective interface to communicate with the museum patron.
 

This project has two phases: the sketch phase and the implementation phase.
 

Sketch phase - in this phase you will choose an exhibit (or part of one) at one of the major local museums (Art Institute, Museum of Contemporary Art, Natural History Museum, Shedd Aquarium, Museum of Science and Industry) and tell me which exhibit you want to do as soon as possible. At most one group will be able to work with the same exhibit. Pick something that interests you. This exhibit should have 8-10 objects (a painting, a type of fish, etc) in it. If there are more than 10 then you can choose 8-10 for your project. The key idea here is that you need to go to the museum and not only find an exhibit you like but experience it to get a feel for the environment that your interface should fit into, the kind of information you need to give, and the audience you expect. That is, your interface should feel right at home sitting in this exhibit.
 

While there you should take notes, maybe some photographs, make some drawings, and gather some literature on the museum and the exhibit. You will probably need to supplement this info with some other information (i.e. from books or from the web) since the idea here is to be able to provide more information (and relationships between information) than the current exhibit provides. A flatbed scanner may also come in handy for this project. You may also want to look around at some of the existing kiosk systems currently in use to get an idea of how they do things, but keep in mind that they may or may not be well designed.
 

The final interface you create should have at least 30 HTML pages, allowing the user to browse through, or search for items in the exhibit, and get information about them and how they relate to each other. Some of the pages will be about how the exhibit fits into the museum (including where the exhibit is), information about the exhibit in general, and information about the particular objects in the exhibit. The key idea here is to effectively communicate information to a naive computer user who is interested in the subject matter. Be sure to look at the details of the implementation below to help guide your design.

  

In this phase you should turn in the following:

Implementation phase - in this phase you will implement the system using HTML and a standard web browser. It would probably be a good idea to test your intermediate versions out on your friends, parents, or other novice computer users to see if it actually 'works.'

 

For the display hardware assume:

HTML based

In this phase you should turn in the following:

Any code, images, or other elements borrowed from others must be cited clearly in the work.
 

This project has two due dates: one for the sketches, and one for the final version. Both are due at the beginning of class on the due date.
 

This project will have a critique phase. An important part of user interface design is getting feedback. Each project team will give a short presentation of their project in class for 10 minutes. Each person in the group will speak for part of that time. Each group will also get together and write a 1 page criticism of each of 3 other projects and 1 page on improvements they believe should be made to their own interface.
 

You will be working in groups. Due to the class size, the group size will be 3 people. If there are significant numbers of people dropping quickly, then it may be possible to have smaller groups, but the goal is to have at most 24 groups. Teams must be chosen by the team-choosing deadline or I will randomly assign teams. The requirements remain the same no matter how many people are in the group.

 

Deadlines:

The following exhibits were used in the previous session of this course, so they are NOT AVAILBLE as exhibits for this course:


Teams


Here is a list of the current teams and their choice for project 1:
 
 

Team # Members Exhibit
1 A. Khumdee
P. Capello
A. Bunnag
Take Flight @ Science & Industry
2 R. Gosiewski
C. Borcean
A. Radu
Tibet @ Field Museum
3 D. O'Brien
T. Nguyen
C. Fernandes
Seahorse Symphony @ Shedd Aquarium
4 K. Katz
K. Kozhemyakov
J. Tran
At the End of the Century: 100 Years of Architecture @ MCA
5 H. Choi
D. Harms
K. Luruo
U-505 submarine@ Science & Industry
6 J. Cao
J. Choo
T. Sun
AIDS The War Within @ Science & Industry
7 M. Ahmed
M. Kamil
A. Spale
Life Over Time @ Field Museum
8 M. Lewis
J. Irons
At the Dusable Museum @ DuSable Museum
9 G. Li,
X. Ai
M. Fang
Tour of the Heart @ Science & Industry
10 M. Sheng
P. Liu
X. Zhu
Louis Smith Bross Gallery @ Art Institute
11 J. Kim
X. Diokno
Z. Khawaja
Material Evidence: Chicago Architecture at 2000 @ MCA.
12 D. Derakhshan
J. Huang
F. Salonga
Gems @ Field Museum
13 L. Nagarajan
R.Balachandran
A.Vasudevan
Inside Ancient Egypt @ Field Museum
14 X. Chen
E. Ma
Underground Adventure @ Field Museum
15 Y. Mihailova
J. Ganeva
Y. Belorusskiy
PhotoMosaic @ Science & Industry
16 R. Kulseth
R. Fernandez
Ancient Imperial Chinese Art @ Art Institute
17* D. Koziol
T. Fenton
Vipers @ Field Musuem
18* M. Gierach
J. Dixon
R. Wadhwani
Yoruba Masquerade @ the Art Insitute
19 Nakamura
Theis
Automobile Evolution@ Science and Industry