August 17, 2009

Functional Design Assignment

See website for examples of complete functional designs http://www.bu.edu/goglobal under courses tm648

Your project is to be two to three pages not including drawings of web sites. Digital file is to be turned in on flash drive. If you put the flash drive in an envelope with your name we can return the drive to you.

Assignment:

A company has hired you to undertake the design of their site; you will prepare a functional design document for the proposed web site. You determine the company that has hired you and its function. It can be a commercial ecommerce site or an informational site (normally would be for a not-for-profit organization). I would like you to choose a company or a not-for-profit organization that reflects your interests in order to make this a personally meaningful assignment. In past courses, I have had individuals plan a site for a new business they are considering, create a new site for an existing company that had a site which did not reflect the company’s mission, or undertake a site for a not-for-profit organization, such as an animal shelter or support group.

You will provide a Functional Specifications (FS) document that covers the needs of the project to create the site. Your FS should include designs for four pages of the site, while the written material should discuss your whole site. You should provide drafts and/or drawings of the home page and three additional pages. These three pages need not be the first pages if the site is to contain more than four pages; instead the three pages should be selected to demonstrate your overall understanding of FS documents and provide an mix of page types (home page, information pages, shopping cart pages, etc.). The assignment should reflect the readings of the week about functional design, and should demonstrate that you have a clear grasp of site construction issues and ultimate design characteristics.

Your FS document should describe the company, its needs and the purpose of the site. It should then provide written documentation and drafts or drawings with detail for each of the four pages you have chosen to show. We will want to see that the document provides the detail needed by a software designer in order to design the site and the detail needed for the ultimate site user to understand the purpose and actions to undertake on each page. After reading the document a reader should understand what the company is attempting to accomplish and how the consumer/viewer will interact with the site in order to accomplish that. In addition, the document should include issues relating to the "back office" applications, such as security issues, database/matrix design, cookie management and shopping cart needs.

A. Project Overview

This will introduce your site proposal to the team and set up the objectives. Among the items that should be included in the overview would be:

1. Company information2. Goal of the site3. Team members (bios, roles)4. Description of the organization's information culture (attitudes towards information, information

sharing, information load, information politics, information norms)5. Examination of how the physical setting affects information access and use6. Definition of the primary audience and whether there are potential secondary users7. Understandable demographics of the audience (age, sex, location if regional)

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August 17, 20098. Psychographics (metrics, like behaviors or psychological aspects of consumers)9. Discussion of the platform on which the site may be viewed (PC, netbook, phone, etc.)10. Primary use of the product or service11. Explanation of the role of the company’s current resources (e.g., librarians, records managers,

information systems staff) in providing information for the site12. Database needs of the site13. Security needs of both the firm and consumer, including:

A brief review of what types of content, pictures, links, etc., are planned, to provide an overview image of the site.

A discussion of whether to use cookies. Why would you or wouldn't you? The specific purpose for the cookies needs to be defined, as well as what data will be collected about the viewer. You should also cover how you intend to deal with personal security issues relating to this data.

B. Visual & Functional Details

Design the Site map Written material and drawings of screens Pictures of any pop-ups that accompany pages Provide locations and rationale for links which demonstrate how screens are connected The site map should depict each of the site paths and how they are linked Identify sets of major users and their information preferences Review the work-related tasks and problems, including problem dimensions and information

needs

Wireframe Each screen element needs needs to have a technology overview which describes the software

product needed for design. You should also describe what platforms the viewers will need to open (audio, video, text, links, scrollbars, or static or interactive graphics).

Show each of the user actions and, in cases where user can enter wrong information, what the consequence of this would be.

Give parameters. This is the artistic aspect of the site, and would include the color scheme, dimensions, layout information, and time to open, if music, videos, pictures, or flash, etc., are used.

Drafts of screens You should provide drawings of screens which provide a visual depiction of what each page will

look like. This is important as it will quickly become clear when you draft screens if their "look and feel" is appropriate, and whether their ease of use, navigation features and usefulness to the consumer will accomplish the intended task.

Helpful drawing suggestions: You can create design drawings for this assignment using the drawing capabilities of any software program that you have access to, including Microsoft Word. Other options include drawing programs such as Inspiration (free 30 day trial at http://www.inspiration.com/) or Visio (more complicated), etc. Please note that the idea of this assignment is not to make you learn a new software program, so there is no need to do so. You just need to include the drawings as part of your functional design document.

Another option for including your drawings is to hand-draw and then scan them (if you have access to a scanner), creating a JPEG image, and then inserting the image(s) into your Word document.

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August 17, 2009

Scanning tips and ideas can be found in a special Discussion area of Vista, "Scanning Ideas" (one discussion thread for PC users and one for Mac users.) You can share your own tips or ask questions in those discussion threads.

Evaluation Criteria

The web site design will be evaluated according to the extent that it achieves the elements necessary for a successful functional specifications document. In addition to the items discussed above, reviewers will be considering:

1. How well does the FS document describe the company, its goals, and the purpose of the site? How well could the FS be used to provide a web site designer with a road map for site construction?

2. Site structure is logical, clear, and well aligned with the information environment of the organization.3. Page designs facilitate information access and navigation.

Functional features or applications effectively support major sets of users, their information tasks and behaviors.

You have broken your project down into modules (e.g., multiple choice game engine, video, etc.) You have included a diagram of the technical structure of your project. The steps that are needed to develop your software are well laid out (e.g., get video, develop quiz

template, implement navigation system, etc.)4. Functional features or applications effectively support the purpose of the site and are logical in their

flow, design and application.5. You have thought about any special considerations that will have to be made to have a successful

project.6. You have included the plans for implementation and anticipated any challenges that should be expected.

According to Tim Ryan in "The Anatomy of a Design Document, Part 2" (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/19991019/ryan_01.htm) there are several commons mistakes to look out for when creating a design document:

Note: Though the thoughts below were originally written for a team project in a game-building environment, they are equally applicable to your project.

1. Insufficient details : The descriptions need to be specific enough to convey intent and function. Avoid using vague terms unless you follow up with specifics.

2. Patronizing material : You wouldn't give a chef a recipe that told him how to make a marinara sauce, so you don’t tell artists how to manage their 256 color palette or programmers how to define a particular data structure. Just list the facts important to the vision. Not only does it waste their time (and annoy them), but it wastes the writers' time. Such details are more appropriate for the technical specification anyway, which is written by the programmers.

3. Ambiguous or contradictory material : Watch for this. It clouds the vision, creates misunderstandings, and invalidates the functional specification.

4. The Design Document from Hell : Nothing stupid, nothing ambiguous, nothing lacking – it just is too damn much. Try to keep a mental total of how long the design is going to take to implement when

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August 17, 2009fleshing out the specification. Cut extraneous, non-essential features and save them for the sequel; or be prepared to argue the merits of keeping the features and extending the ship date.

5. Getting too personal with the design : You are not your work. Your personal boundaries should not include the design. As I have stressed throughout this document, game design is a collaborative process. While you want people to take ownership and responsibility for their work, the functional specification should have joint ownership. This keeps people from feeling isolated and more a part of the process, and it makes the documents feel less like marching orders and more like a plan. The team members are also much more likely to read something that they helped put together. Criticism is then aimed at the design not the documenters who put is all together; thus making the team more comfortable and productive in offering their criticism.

6. Wandering vision : This may happen as you write the functional spec. Even with a good concept document and proposal championing the vision, there's still some room for interpretation. Creative folks have a wandering imagination and may be influenced strongly by whatever game they may be playing at the moment.

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