Chapter 12: Interaction Design in Practice
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This assignment gives you another chance to apply the techniques and approaches introduced in this chapter. As it is a practical assignment we don't provide solutions here, but instead provide prompting observations to help surface issues on which you can reflect.
(a) You may find it beneficial to look at parts (i) and (ii) together, because understanding the user research required will be informed by the prioritized requirements
- Developing a product in an agile way involves undertaking ‘just enough’ prior work to allow implementation to start that will generate business value. In deciding how much user research is needed, you may have to consider part (a) (ii) as well.
- Prioritisation of requirements is not always an easy task. When customers first encounter agile software development, this is a common difficulty – it can be hard to see the core of a system when you have specified a range of features. Consider the aspects of the system that will generate the most business value, for example can the site provide business value if it does not support online payments?
(b) The landing page is extremely influential in whether or not you manage to convert visitors to customers, particularly on a website such as this one. Assuming that the sketch for your landing page was generated before you came across the mockup tools, consider whether everything you sketched can be represented by the tool. How easily can all the different elements be represented? Would you have produced a better design if you went straight to the mockup tool without doing a hand sketch first? Are you sure?
(c) Using the pattern libraries may allow you to overcome some of the difficulties in translating all of your hand-drawn sketch elements into the mockup, for example icons. This part of the assignment pulls together the tools and techniques that this chapter introduces, so do take the time to explore what is appropriate and relevant for your design and your user group(s).