The ability to effectively communicate future interactions helps designers narrow the space of potential ideas to the most promising ones.
In this project, students will create storyboards to illustrate their best ideas from the previous project.
Keeping with the theme of the course, students will then post their storyboards and a set of questions online to gather "speed dating" feedback from
potential beneficiaries on
MindSwarms, a new online service that helps companies learn from consumers through video responses.
Storyboards. Student teams should create
six hand-sketched storyboards that visually and textually describe how people will interact with your
proposed solution in a specific context.
Each storyboard should describe a different design solution within a short narrative, 3 to 4 panels in length.
Storyboards should "stand on their own," without having to verbally describe the idea — illustrations and text only.
Each team member should sketch at least two of the six storyboards. Turn in digital scans of the six final storyboards and any rough sketches created in the process.
Feedback from speed dating.
Post your final six storyboards online and
send these URLs to Prof. Dow before class on March 1st. Include a question for people to answer for each storyboard.
The default questions will be: "What's your reaction to this storyboard? How clear and realistic is the problem scenario? How well does the illustrated technology solve the problem?"
Prof. Dow will manage video data collection from
MindSwarms respondants.
Each student team will get access to video responses from their MindSwarms video respondants starting on March 2nd.
During the final crit on March 6th, be prepared to share fun video clips and summarize the key insights.
Conduct a face-to-face speed dating session with
at least one potential stakeholder. Use the same storyboards and questions as above.
Your feedback provider can be someone from the P2 interviews or someone else who can provide a stakeholder perspective. Integrate these findings with those from MindSwarms respondants.
Strategic analysis for MindSwarms.
Each team member should create a
MindSwarms profile to also understand the perspective of being a video respondant.
Each team should produce a short 1-2 page report that examines how MindSwarms can market their service and build their database of respondants.
Write 1-2 paragraphs on how MindSwarms should market their service online, including internet search engines (what keywords resonate? how should they position themselves?).
Write another 1-2 paragraphs on how they can build their network of high-quality video respondents. More details on this part of the assignment will be provided in class on March 1st.
The final presentation should include process material (rough stories and sketches), the final six storyboards, and feedback on each storyboard.
Students should post their slide deck and their MindSwarms strategic analysis to the wiki by the end of day on
March 6th.