Clay Spinuzzi's Courses

Due: 4/2

In the last project, you investigated a participant's work. In this one, you will recommend a time and project management system for the participant, including appropriate software, tools, and texts.

Developing the Recommendation

To develop the recommendation, you will further examine the relationships among texts in the participant's work, including the following:

• Work fragmentation
• Specialized notations
• Time management
• Project management
• Text storage and retrieval

Doing so will help you to further identify and understand types of breakdowns in users' work, as well as possible ways to address those breakdowns. You will represent these relationships with

• a flow model
• a text ecology model

These representations will include breakdowns: points at which participants typically have problems in their work. The two models should map out the places where these breakdowns occur and give you a starting point for redesign.

You will also engage in a design process (based on Beyer and Holtzblatt's book Contextual Design) that includes the following:

1. Metaphors. For common breakdowns, you'll generate 3-5 metaphors: domains in which a similar problem has been successfully solved. For each metaphor, you'll list the pros and cons of applying that solution to your participant's work.
   

   Example: Your participant has difficulty scheduling meetings with others because she doesn't know what their schedules are. You look at how people have solved that awareness problem in contexts such as air traffic control, traffic flow, and football. For each, you list the pros of that solution as it applies to your problem.

2. Pros lists (high-level specifications). Consolidate the Pros columns from step 1. Reconcile any that are in direct contradiction. These are your high-level specs: the characteristics that you want the redesigned solution to have.
3. Storyboarding. For each solution, you'll create a storyboard: you'll imagine applying the solution to a scenario similar to one that you observed in Project 1, and you'll generate a cartoon or other pictoral representation of how the scenario would transpire with the new solution in place. The idea is to work the bugs out by envisioning how the solution would work with other components in the sequence.
4. Prototyping. Finally, you'll develop a paper prototype of the solution. The solution could be a computer interface, a document, a tool, or a process; your prototype will represent it in enough detail that you could walk through a common scenario with a participant and have her give you detailed feedback. The prototype should be constructed
   • according to the specifications in step 2
   • to work in the scenario described in step 3

Based on this work, you will recommend a system that brings these texts together in a coherent system.

Writing the Recommendation Report

To deliver the recommendation, you will write a recommendation report addressed to the participant. The recommendation report should include the following:

• Introduction, which tells us that you are writing a recommendation and forecasts the document.
• Background, which reminds us of the findings from P1.
• Methods, which briefly details the methods you used to generate your recommendation:
  1. Metaphors
  2. Pros list
  3. Storyboarding
  4. Prototyping
• Findings, which discusses what you discovered through these methods in terms of
  • Work fragmentation
  • Specialized notations
  • Time management
  • Project management
  • Text storage and retrieval

  and includes

  • before-and-after ecology diagram
  • before-and-after flow diagram
• Recommendations, which details the system you recommend, organized by problems that are addressed by the new system.
• Appendices, including prototypes