Purpose
Your goal is to create a design for a software interface. You will experience the scope of the design process from brainstorming ideas and gathering information about users' needs to storyboarding, prototyping, and finally, testing and refining your product.
As you work on the software interface, you will demonstrate your ability to apply fundamental Human-Computer Interaction principles to interface analysis, design, and implementation. You will be responsible for delivering project components to your professor at several points during the course.
Action Items
A lo-fi prototype shows all the elements of a user interface, drawn out on paper, notecards, or cardboard. Its purpose is to get quick feedback from users early in the design process when changes are still easy and relatively inexpensive to make. You can use a lo-fi prototype to identify usability issues such as confusing paths, bad terminology, layout problems, and missing feedback. Watch the Hanmail paper prototyping video to see an example. Please note that your paper prototype does not need to be as extensive as the one shown in the video.
Your prototype should allow people to navigate from screen to screen, recover from errors, and change their choices. Show sketches of all the important areas of your design. Don't try to show every possible action or detail. Focus on the main interactions. Remember, this is hand-drawn so that you can make changes quickly and easily if you get a better idea. Keep track of what you changed and why. Refer to the Lo-Fi Prototype Rubric to self-evaluate your work and edit as needed.