How to do Design Phase of Projects

Assistive Technology
Spring 2002
Prof. Jen Mankoff
GSI: Hesham Kamel

Each of the three major project types approaches design in different ways. They are listed below each under a separate heading, followed by a description of how to writeup your design phase.

1. Design/Prototype/Eval:

Contextual Inquiry/Ethnography/Survey/ . . .

Your goal here is to (1) understand your users and (2) develop breadth in the form of multiple potential solutions. You will focus on one design in the next stage.

show your problem really exists
find out what possible solutions there are
show that technology is a valid solution

2. Tools & Techniques

Literature Survey/Design Space Understanding

Your goal here is to develop an understanding of the space of problems that your tool/technique will address. An important component of this is finding a problem that occurs repeatedly.

show problem is being solved by hand repeatedly and could be automated
show that the solutions fall into easily defined classes or something that's approachable programmitically

3. Methods/Models

Pilot Study

Your goal here is to develop a reasonable hypothesis and a way of testing it. Your pilot study lets you know that it is approachable in the sense that you will be able to test it in the limited time available to you in the next phase of the project.

show how your method is normally applied to design
do a small study applying it to a disability setting, or interview practitioners about their experiences in using it for universal design. This should suggest a mismatch between the method and some aspect of disability.
you are designing an experiment, rather than a system. what is your hypothesis and how will you test it?

Writeup

Hand in 3 pages and references and figures documenting what you learned and describing what you plan to implement/test. At least one page should describe you inquiry, and at least one page should describe what you plan to implement and how (based on your inquiry). The description of your inquiry should name the method used (e.g. ethnography, liteature survey, etc.), the number of subjects/papers studied, and your results. Using the basic argument given above (in your category), this should be tied into your planned implementation. Your implementation (or study in case 3) should mention any technology/algorithms/models you plan to build off of, and suggest a feasible approach to solving your problem. Remember you don't have that long--keep your scope small enough to handle!