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Informatics 121Software Design I

Lecture 12

Duplication of course material for any commercial purpose without the explicit written permission of the professor is prohibited.

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Difficulty #1: problem, solution, change

• The understanding of a design problem goes hand-in-hand with the understanding of its design solution

• This understanding may well change, sometimes dramatically so, during the design project

• The challenge is to anticipate this volatility and identify and focus on the essence of the design problem at hand

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Difficulty #2: success, failure, tradeoffs

• A design’s success is not absolute, but judged relative to other possible designs that could have been made

• A designer must deal with tradeoffs all the time, and cannot make all stakeholders equally satisfied with the change in the world

• The challenge is to identify and address key tradeoffs early

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Difficulty #3: quality, cost, time

• There is no optimal solution to a design problem, designers must find a solution that is good enough

• The challenge is to find key quality and cost considerations early

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Difficulty #4: longevity

• A change in the world may last for a very long time…

• …and may well need to accommodate future changes in the world

• The challenge is to identify and balance present needs with future possibilities

Department of Informatics, UC IrvineSDCL Collaboration LaboratorySoftware Design and

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Focus on essence and tradeoffs

• Thou shall focus on the difficult parts first

• Thou shall focus on the difficult parts second

• Thou shall focus on the difficult parts third

• …

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Focus on essence and tradeoffs

• Thou shall focus on the difficult parts first

• Thou shall focus on the difficult parts second

• Thou shall focus on the difficult parts third

• …

• What are the most important decision points, what are your options, and how do the options relate?

Department of Informatics, UC IrvineSDCL Collaboration LaboratorySoftware Design and

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Design techniques

• Brainstorm

• Divide and conquer

• Divergence – transformation – convergence

• Envisioning cards

• Research

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Design techniques

• Study the user

• Weighted objectives

• Storyboarding

• Personas

• …

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Weighted sums

Factor Weight Solution 1 Solution 2

Portability 0.1 5 3

Feasibility 0.1 8 4

Target age group 0.3 3 5

Evolving content 0.2 3 6

Long-term use 0.2 4 6

Fun 0.1 3 3

Total 1 3.9 4.9

Department of Informatics, UC IrvineSDCL Collaboration LaboratorySoftware Design and

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Weighted sums

Factor Weight Solution 1 Solution 2

Portability 0.1 5 3

Feasibility 0.1 3 4

Target age group 0.3 8 5

Evolving content 0.2 3 3

Long-term use 0.2 4 3

Fun 0.1 3 3

Total 1 4.9 3.7

Department of Informatics, UC IrvineSDCL Collaboration LaboratorySoftware Design and

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Design studio 3

• Benefactor Z has come to UC Irvine with a check for $1M to support the development of a new app for 60 to 70 year olds

• Benefactor Z knows that, rather than her proposing the kind of app, she is better served by running this as a competition and getting a broad range of ideas from which she then can choose

• Benefactor Z is particularly interested in forward thinking apps; apps that will really make a difference 2-5 years from now

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Design studio 3

• Your team is tasked with designing a novel app that explicitly aims to address its intended audience: people 60 to 70 year old

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Design studio 3 – assignment

• Research existing apps for this age range, what they can and cannot do, what kinds of functionality they provide and not, and where the “holes” in this app landscape are

• Talk to at least 20 different people for whom an app might be beneficial, and learn from them what they might and might not want

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Today

• Pick one of your three application domains

• Identify the key desired factors– what are the desired decision points?– what are the options?

• Brainstorm alternative solutions

• Keep track of and compare the solutions using weighted sums