Introduction
The end product of this assignment is the redesign one of the documents posted at the bottom of this page. If you’ve ever tried to read a badly designed document, you have some idea how difficult and frustrating that can be. You will redesign your chosen document so that it is easier to read, understand, and process. Your redesigned document must contain the same amount of information as the original one, but present the content in an attractive format that even beginning users can understand. Your audience for the redesign is a novice user.
To accomplish this redesign, you must consider the elements of design posted in our reading folders on our course site. Using the design principles of proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast, you will be able to improve the readability and usability of the document drastically. You will consider the organization of the information presented, paying special attention to order of presentation, items that should be highlighted (in color, bold, or another way), and any other pertinent organizational elements.
Instructions
This assignment will be accomplished by teams of two people.
This assignment will be completed in three stages;
- You will work with your partner to re-design the document, working collaboratively on Google docs.
- The re-designed documents will be peer reviewed. Each individual will complete peer reviews of THREE other groups’ documents, commenting upon the usability of the document.
- You will then work with your partner to finalize the design and to write a usability report in which you will detail and explain the design choices your group made.
Document Options
Please select ONE of the documents in the file below to re-design.
Usability Report
Generally speaking, usability testing is defined as the ease with which a specific audience can learn and use a product.
Because our timeframe for completion is rather short, our peer review will act as a venue for the usability testing. To that end, students conducting peer review will be asked to respond to these specific questions:
- What is the purpose of the document? How do you know?
- Who is the intended audience for the document? How do you know?
- What design elements make this document appealing to you? Please explain.
- What design elements improve the usability of this document? Please explain.
- What design elements would you suggest changing? Please explain.
After the peer reviews have been completed. The group members to will review the comments made by our cohort, and use them to finalize their document’s design.
They will then write up a usability report of 700-1500 words in which they do the following:
- Explain the usability problems with the original document.
- Describe the design choices they made in their initial draft, and explain how those choices helped to improve the usability of the document.
- Describe the design choices they made in response to the peer review (usability testing) process, and explain how those choices helped to improve the usability of the document.
This usability report should be written in the form of a memo addressed to me, Dr. Stice.
Submission
You will submit this assignment in two parts:
Draft— A draft will be submitted to our class Google Drive folder. Please be sure you have submitted your document in the correct folder.You will then receive feedback from members of our cohort.
Final— When you submit your final for this assignment, each group member should create a blog post containing the following:
- The original document (you may download the pdf from this page and upload it to your own site).
- The final, revised document.
- The usability report.
Notes- Please make sure that you create a new written post rather than just creating a link to the Google Drive folder.
Grading Criteria
This assignment will be graded according to the following criteria:
- How well the requirements for each document are followed
- How effective each document is in accomplishing the task involved
- How well the audience is considered
- Correct document format
- The mechanical and grammatical correctness of each letter
- Originality and creativity applied in completing the assignment
- Successful group collaboration
Rubric