Project Concepts

Announcements

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review your design notebooks.

Knight Challenge Entries

Organize into your groups and continue working on your Knight Challenge entries.

Assignment

Knight Challenge Entries

  • Review all three other teams’ Challenge Entries and comment on each of them
  • Scan the other entries in the Challenge, paying particular attention to how they present their projects
  • Pick three entries you believe present their case the best

Design Notebook

Challenge Feedback

  • Review the comments on your team’s Challenge Entry
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Challenge Entry Feedback”
  • Write a paragraph or two summarizing the feedback your project has received and how you can improve your project accordingly

Best Submission Examples

  • Create another slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Best Entry Examples”
  • List the three Challenge entries you picked in the above exercise
  • Write a paragraph describing the one best Challenge entry and why you think their presentation is superior
  • Focus on the quality of their presentation, ignoring whether or not you agree with their specific project concept

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post a comment on this page (Project Concepts), including a link to your Design Notebook.

Who’s Your Audience

Announcements

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review some of your Design Notebooks from last week.

Target Audiences

What is a “target audience”?

Depending on what you’re creating, you probably have several groups of people who you must consider when designing your projects, let’s consider an example from our session downtown last week:

Trenton Storefront Locater – An app that allows local entrepreneurs to find available commercial storefront space in Trenton.

What different kinds of people need to be a part of this system? These different groups are your target audiences.

User Personas

User personas are profiles you create to describe representative user groups of the system you are designing. You create user personas in order to discover the motivation a person may have for using your system.

Personas

User Stories

User stories differ from user personas in that they describe specific features user group requires from your system.

A user story follows the following formula:

“As a member of user group X, I want to be able to Y, so I can Z”

For a concrete example,  if you wanted to build a storefront availability app, a couple of user stories might be:

“As a Trenton entrepreneur, I want to be able to find an affordable storefront, so I can keep my costs manageable while servicing the community”

“As a Trenton entrepreneur, I want to be able to find a storefront with the best location for my services, so I will be conveniently accessible to my best customers”

How to write meaningful User Stories

Challenge Entries

Let’s go over the Knight News Challenge entry form to start getting a feel for what we’ll need for next week.

Knight News Challenge Entry Form

Assignment

User Personas & User Stories

  • With your group, create a Google Document and create at least 3 user personas representing the types of people who will be involved in your system
  • Include end users, system administrators and Trenton partners for whom you’re developing the system as they all have needs of and should receive benefits from your system
  • Create a Google Spreadsheet and title it  User Stories
  • For each User Persona user type, create at least  two user stories to identify features that group will need from your system
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebooks and title it “User Personas & User Stories”
  • Add links to your group’s User Personas and User Stories documents

Project Concept Presentations

  • Meet with your group and work through the Knight News Challenge entry form.
  • Use this worksheet to prepare your answers before submitting them online next week
  • Fill it out as completely as possible, using the other existing entries for guidance on how to answer each question
  • I’ll be providing you with additional team member information for the second-to-last question; you’ll need to include the Trenton partner as a team member. You can also use their previous efforts to help answer the question “What progress have you made so far?”
  • Come to class with any questions that come up while working through your entry
  • Come prepared next week to present your draft entry

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post a comment on this page (Who’s Your Audience), including a link to your Design Notebook.

The Elevator Pitch

Announcements

Design Notebooks

Let’s take a few minutes to review your Design Notebooks from last week.

The Elevator Pitch

What’s an “elevator pitch”?

According to Wikipedia, an elevator pitch is:

A short summary used…

to quickly… (approximately 30 seconds to 2 minutes)

and simply… (as succinctly, as possible)

define a process, product, service, organization, or event and it’s value proposition.

The value proposition is how your project will solve your users’ problem and what the value of that solution is.

For example, if your project is to create an app that gamifies saving energy in homes in underserved communities, your value proposition might be:

“to save X% on your energy bills – money which can go toward savings, food, clothing, healthcare, or rent – all while reducing the community’s carbon footprint.”

You might also do the math and show exactly how much food or clothing could be purchased with the savings – sort of like a verbal infographic.

Here’s the formula:

State the problem, state the solution, state the reward.

Problem

Start by stating the problem your project will be solving. Try to create a hook that will link the problem to something your pitch audience is already familiar with like “You know how some neighborhoods just don’t have any grocery stores with fresh produce? Some call them food deserts.”

Solution

After stating the problem your project will address, state your solution, and how it’s different from other solutions that might be out there. For example; “Well, our app helps combat food deserts by identifying profitable drop points for local farmers in underserved communities”.

Reward

Finally, state the specific reward users will receive for using your solution. It could be monetary, social, time, etc, for example; “That way, farmers are finding new profitable markets and people who didn’t have access to fresh produce now do – they can even use their SNAP cards so they don’t have to pay out-of-pocket.”

Assignment

Trenton Challenges

  • With your team, review your notes on the issues and concerns presented by the Trenton Community representatives in class today
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebooks, title it “Community Issue” and identify the issue your team finds most compelling
  • Create a second slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Elevator Pitch”
  • Together, write out your team’s elevator pitch for a solution concept based on the community issue your team chose
  • Your team should work together on this, but each of you should create your own copies of the slides and put them in your individual Design Notebooks

Knight News Challenge Entries

  • Review how the Knight News Challenge Platform works
  • Review the projects entered so far in the Knight News Challenge
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Challenge Entries”
  • Pick one or two entries that appeal to you most.
  • Write a brief description of each, with a link to each entry url
  • Come to class ready to discuss the entries already in the Challenge

Personal Data for Good

  • Read Exploring Personal Data for Public Good Research
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebooks
  • Who are the three key stakeholder groups for personal health data applications discussed in the article?
  • What are the stakeholder interests that must line up for personal health data research to be successful?

Submitting Your Work

This week’s homework assignment is due next week before class. When you’ve completed them, post a comment on this page (The Elevator Pitch), including a link to your Design Notebook.

Challenges in Trenton

Announcements

  • Trenton Stakeholders Meeting next Monday, September 14th
  • Need cell phone numbers from everyone

Design Notebooks

Let’s review some of your Design Notebook entries from last week.

Teams

Let’s organize into teams.

We’ll start by creating a quick survey in TCNJ’s Qualtrics Survey tool, which you should get free access to as students at TCNJ.

  • In Qualtrics, we’ll create a couple of questions, beginning with a “Text Entry” question for your name
  • Next we’ll create a “Matrix” Question for each of you to self assess your skills along a number of multimedia disciplines including graphic design, web design, games programming, writing and animation/film
  • Finally we’ll publish our survey

Now, point your browser to the survey web url and take the survey.

Break

Let’s take a short break so I can assess the survey results When we come back, we’ll group up into teams.

Challenges in Trenton

Trenton Demographics

Trenton 250

Potential Partners

Exercise

  • If we haven’t already done so, break up into your teams teams
  • Review the sites of our partner organizations
  • Review the SWOC Analysis and Demographics from the Trenton 250 website linked to above.
  • Brainstorm a few interactive multimedia concepts that might assist in addressing some of the opportunities outlined in the analysis.

Assignment

Trenton Challenges

  • Read the Trenton 250 Vision Element
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and label it “Guiding Principles”
  • List the 8 guiding principles outlined in the Trenton 250 Vision Element
  • Write a paragraph discussing one of these principles in more detail
  • What kinds of data could you use to help address your chosen principle?

Working In Teams

  • Read Chapter 10, “Working with Others” in Design is a Job
  • Create a new slide in your Design Notebook and title it “Working in a Team”
  • Based on the reading, summarize the author’s advice about working in a team environment.