Fall 02 Project 2

More on Project 2

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 user.

This project has three phases:

  1. the sketch phase
  2. the first implementation phase
  3. the second implementation phase

You will be designing an interface to run on a PDA given to a restaurant patron when they walk into the establishment which will be used to handle with all those things that a waiter would deal with, so that the waitor should only appear to answer questions, or deliver the food and drinks.

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 20 groups. You will need to choose your team and email me the members by September 11th, or I will randomly assign people teams. The requirements remain the same no matter how many people are in the group.

This project has three major due dates: one for the sketches, one for the first version and one for the final version. All three are due at the beginning of class on the due date.


Sketch phase - in this phase your team will choose a local Chicago area restaurant and tell me which restaurant you want to pick as soon as possible through email, at the latest by September 16th. I need to approve your choice. At most one group will be able to work with the same restaurant and if two groups ask for the same restaurant, then the arrival time of the email in my mailbox determines the winner. Pick a place that interests you. No fast-food establishments, please. Ethnic cuisine is encouraged. This restaurant should have at least 5 appetizers, 10 entrees, 5 deserts, and 10 beverages. If there are more than this number then you can choose your favourites to include. The key idea here is that you need to go to the restaurant and not only grab a menu and run out, but to experience it to get a feel for the environment that your interface should fit into, and the audience you expect. That is, your interface should feel right at home in this restaurant.

(note that we are making a big assumption that the patrons would be able to deal with a PDA, but this is the 21st century so we are going to make that assumption) ... though you need to include enough help and guidance for first time users.

While at the restaurant you should grab a menu (if allowed), take notes, maybe take some photographs (if allowed), make some drawings, look at the colour schemes and the decor. Look at the patrons and come up with profiles of the typical ones. Listen to the waitor - what does he or she offer? What are the specialities? You will probably need to supplement this info with some other information (e.g. pictures with appropriate references) since the idea here is to be able to provide more information to the patron than the restaurant typically provides.

The final interface you create should allow the user to browse through a menu with pictures and text, find out more information about the dishes or the restaurant, place your order, add additional items during the meal, deal with errors in the orders, review and pay the bill, and anything else you think would be a good idea to have. The key idea here is to effectively communicate with the patron.  

There will be several different ways to accomplish this, so one major feature of the sketch phase is to create and evaluate multiple designs. I think the easiest way to do this is to have each of the three members of the group design a version of the interface on their own independently and then bring these three designs together in a meeting and create your final proposed design. All three designs should be significantly different. Each design should be composed of sketches showing each of the screens that the user will be confronted with and text explaining what this screen shows, and what the user can do at this screen. I would expect there to be at least 15 pages per design. I would prefer that the designs are done on a computer, but if you draw _neatly_ then that is also acceptable.

Use your experience from Project 1 to guide you in terms of what is posible.

In this phase you should turn in the following:

Important note: I will not be commenting on your sketches. I am not going to tell you what is good or bad about your design - that is where the value of having many voices on a team comes into play. Your grade will be based on the completeness of your information and the quality and variety of your designs.

First implementation phase - in this phase you will implement the PDA interface you designed using fltk and the PDA 'shell' you created back in project 1. 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.'

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 will have a critique phase. An important part of user interface design is getting feedback. Part of this feedback comes in the design phase where your group critiques each others design and comes up with a synthesis. Part comes from presenting your work to other groups. Each project team will give a short 10 minute presentation of their project in class, and then answer questions from the class for another 5 minutes. Each person in the group must speak for part of that time. Groups get points for the quality of the presentation.

Members of the audience get points for asking good questions or making good comments about the interface presented. Each group can ask at most one question or comment per presentation. When asking a question or making a comment the groupmember should identify their group - this is like in a press conference when the reporter says what paper he/she works for.

Four groups will present each day for five days. Each group will also get together and type a 1 page critique of each of the 2 other projects on their day. Each group will also type 1 page on improvements they believe should be made to their own interface based on the comments received.


Second implementation phase - after presenting your first implementation and getting feedback on it, in this phase you will implement a second PDA interface in fltk. This time you have a free hand to design the PDA. You can make it larger or smaller, add buttons, remove buttons, etc. It should remain easy to carry so the entire unit shouldnt be larger than 6" by 8", but otherwise you are quite free to design things the way you think they should be.

In this phase you should turn in the following:

This project will also have a critique phase, similar to the one for the first implementation.


Points

Choices, Sketches and Designs  50
Project 2a application        120
Project 2a presentation 40
Critiques on Project 2a 15
Project 2b application        120
Project 2b presentation 40
Critiques on Project 2b 15
---------------------------------
400


Teams


Here is a list of the current teams and their restaurant choice for project 2:

Team # Members Restaurant
1 Brian Chang
Chris Turek
Sam John
Tuscany, Taylor St.
2 Yunqing Pan
Didi Guang
Anna Goldberg
Jia's Chinese Cuisine and Sushi Bar, 2545 N Halsted St
3 Brad Wollangk
FeiHong Hsu
Kaitlyn Hwang
Japanese - Matsuya, 3469 N. Clark St
4 JiaYin
XanhTrinh
Jung-Min Lee
Thai Bowl - 1049 W Taylor St.
5 David Anaglate
Nana Gilbert-Baffoe
Sanket Baraley
Vivere (Italian Village) 71 W. Monroe St.
6 Michael Burk
Maksim Longin
German - Bohemian Garden, 75th St. in Downers Grove
7 Sandeep Chauhan
Ke Wang
Chinese - Lao Sze Chuan, 1520 W. Taylor Street


last updated 11/18/07