Assignment for the Final Project
Due May 20
Concept and Goals
In the final unit project I'm asking you to apply the techniques and concepts we've developed from Tufte, Kahn and Lenk, Johnson, and from our previous practical assignments. In the interest of accommodating various tastes, I will let you work either on the closely applied end (usability project), or at a more experimental extreme (animation, 3D). There are also options toward the middle of this range.
Options
You may approach this assignment in one of five ways, all equally valid in terms of the course requirements.
USABILITY STORYBOARD: Choose a Web site with a sufficient but manageable number of options for internal navigation (i.e., links that do not lead offsite). Explore the site sufficiently to propose a series of tasks that may be assigned to users (i.e., can you find the page containing the picture of Rudy Giuliani in the pink chiffon dress?). Recruit at least two users, give them the task list, and observe what they do on the site--where they choose to look, what links they follow. Keep careful records. Develop a storyboard or set of storyboards in which you display your results in a clear and usefully comparative format. You may include verbal content.
PLAYER'S JOURNAL: Choose a popular game or simulation such as The Sims, Sim City, Civilization, or any other program in which player actions have significant consequences and you have enough control over run time to pause for notes and screenshots. State an objective for one or more sessions of game play (e.g., in Sim City, getting your town to 10,000 inhabitants). Observe your progress, keeping track of your major decisions and their consequences. Save screenshots indicating important changes of state. Use your notes and screenshots to create a storyboard that reports on your experience with the game.
ANIMATED VISUALIZATION: Using PowerPoint, Flash, HTML client pull, or some other generally accessible animation tool, create a sequential visualization that explains or analyzes some fairly complex, multiple-body (or multi-agent) phenomenon. You may wish to go back to the problem you worked on for Assignment 3, or you may choose a new problem. You may use words (including speech) as well as images.
OUT OF FLATLAND: Create an information graphic or sequential visualization that simulates a third dimension in order to organize a complex display of data. This project could be a Web map of a site or collection larger than the one you used for Assignment 3 (think of MAPA and Z-diagrams); or it could be a map of an Information Space not necessarily associated with the Web (e.g., a visualization of a search of scientific literature).
MEMORY PALACE: Ancient orators visualized familiar structures such as houses and temples as they gave their speeches, associating parts of the speech with parts of the building (e.g., steps leading to the portico). Adapt this technique to modern times by using a contemporary office (e.g., a cubicle farm) to organize a tour of a company or department's organization, activities, and/or workflow. Your project should have an overall map (perhaps a top-view floor plan) as well as a series of links constituting a tour. To make this assignment interesting, consider the possibility of multiple links, and hence emergent structures.
Medium and Technical Considerations
I will accept work in print (please mount on foamcore or stiff cardboard) or Web-deliverable electronic files. Please store all electronic files in your student-iat accounts in a folder called finalProject.
