Each assignment in this course gives you a scenario, a task, and a specification. The assessment do not tell what you your design should be or exactly how to implement it. The gap between the a reasonably open assignment prompt and your specific design is where the work happens. Differently than some other computing courses, this work is more related to choosing what to do (and then doing it), than implementing a a specification. Uncertainty about how to make those design choices are leading to a lot of questions. For assignment 1, about a third of questions were of the form “is X allowed?” or “is my idea OK?”. This page is about how to answer that kind of question yourself. (For answers to specific questions about each assignment, see the Assessment FAQs.)
Some questions have a factual answer in the specification. Do the sketches need to be hand-drawn? How many designs? Is cardboard allowed? What reference format? Can I use an SUS questionnaire? If you cannot find the answer in the spec, ask on the forum and I will answer it (and usually fix the spec). These questions are very important and worth asking.
The other kind of question does not have a set answer. Is my task specific enough? Can I assume away a constraint from my user’s context? Does my design need to be buildable today? Should my survey include a small experiment? These are design decisions. If I answer them for you, I have made part of your design, and the rationale you write afterwards will be explaining my choice rather than yours. The rubrics in this course reward a defended choice, not a permitted one. So when I get one of these questions my answer is usually a version of “that is a decision for you to make and defend”, plus some thoughts on how to make it.
As a quick test: if the answer would be different for a different student with a different design, it is a design decision.
Before you stop asking questions: I am happy to discuss design decisions with you on the forum! I just want to be clear that much like Elves) I will not give a clear answer on what you should do, but I will help you understand the the consequences of design decisions and how to make them in a structure way.
Find what the scenario fixed, and what it left open. In each assignment there is a brief prompt with a scenario setting certain aspects of the world (e.g., animals are smart) with everything else in the world remaining the same as now. These are your constraints. Everything in your design (prototype, needs finding study, prototype and evaluation) is open and up to you to decide within those constraints.
Rule out the moves that rewrite the brief. If your user’s habitat rules out the obvious hardware, “assume the habitat is not a problem” changes the scenario, and “assume the technology I need exists” changes the world. So these choices rewrite the brief and aren’t valid. A speculative technology is fine if it is grounded in what is actually known, and you acknowledge the gap as a limitation. A “magical” solution that solves the task perfectly will produce a thin prototype and rationale, as the A1 spec warns.
Pick options you can argue for, not the safest one. Choose the one that produces the most interesting design and that you can support from the lectures, readings, and your own research about your users. A user whose body or context is very different from the designer’s is harder to design for, and a harder user usually gives you more to say. A narrow task gives you more to say than a broad one, because you can get concrete about the actual interactions that might occur.
Write the decision down, with the reasoning and the trade-off. The decision goes in your rationale or study plan, along with why you made it and what it costs. You are allowed to conclude that a human user loses something in your redesign, or that your survey has too few participants for a statistical test. What you are not supposed to do is leave the trade-off implicit or assumed to be known to the marker. Be clear about your decisions because you are being marked on them!
Check the result still answers the brief. After making your choices, go back to the specification and confirm that your design still does what was asked: e.g., both users can do the task, the study still answers the client’s research question, the prototype still shows the interaction. A creative choice that drifts away from the brief is not a good assignment solution.
Here is what that looks like for three questions that came up on the forum.
Many more questions, both factual and design decisions, with the shape of the answer, are collected on the Assessment FAQs page.
If you’re still unsure, I’m always open to questions and discussion! It’s especially important to ask questions when you cannot find a fact in the spec or the spec seems to be contradictory, or when you have made a decision and want to check that it still answers the brief. For that last kind of question, post your decision and your reasoning rather than the bare question. “I am doing X because Y; does this still meet the spec?” is much easier to answer than “can I do X?”. If your question includes details of your design, you can post privately, but if it is general I will usually ask if it can be made public so that others benefit.