Initial Design Document

State the purpose of the system including describing the functions the system must perform.

Include rough sketches of the interface at various stages and describe the functionality of the interface.

A brief (and rough at this point) narrative walk-though of how the system works (referring to the pictures mentioned above).

Justification for design decisions that were made based on design principles and guidelines.

During the design phase questions will arise which do not have definitive answers. Keep a list of these issues since they will be important during testing.

The usability specifications should state:

Who are the intended users?

What kind of training should be necessary?

What objective goals are you setting for this interface?

What subjective goals are you setting for this interface?

A description of how you intend to do your usability testing

Peer evaluation

Each group will exchange their project descriptions with another group. You should bring one copy of your design document to turn in to me and a second copy to give to another group for peer evaluation. These sets should include sketches of your screens, written descriptions of how the screens work, a summary of the user/task analysis, and anything else that might be useful when evaluating the system. Remember that the people who evaluate your system may not have ever heard of it before they get your documents. You want the other group to do a thorough evaluation since their comments should help you improve your design. The more complete your design at this point, the more feedback you can get. The designs may be early ideas that will be refined extensively or nearly complete designs.

Each group should turn in a peer evaluation report one week after receiving the initial design document. This evaluation should include a list of potential problems and a list of suggested improvements. You should begin by looking for what you would consider as major problems. If there don't appear to be any major problems, or you think you have found them all, then start looking at the details. If you come across ideas that you could use in your own design, make proper reference to it in your documents.

Reminders about reports

I ask you to submit both and online copy and a printed copy of your reports. If you draw figures by hand, you do not need to include them in the online copy.

Each report should be professional grade---neatly typed and styled. Some points to remember are:

• Each report should include the project title (assigning a name to the project would be nice), and all the group members (name and e-mail address).
• The figures and tables should be numbered and referred to in the text.
• Previous documents should be mentioned (you do not need to include them).