ASSIGNMENT 1: UNDERSTANDING USERS

Assignment Description

This is a group assignment. All the team members must contribute to complete this assignment.

Everyone wants to be happy, but not everyone is happy. To help you understand better about
happiness, you are encouraged to watch the following videos on youtube:

Bhutan: The pursuit of happiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1GyJt-dxZM

Bhutan: Himalayan Happiness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oki0kftEm-Y

Finland is the happiest country: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Pm0Mn0-jYU

Explore issues and challenges people may have when they want to be happy. Choose ONE user
group for your study. From all the problems you have identified, choose one problem that your
group wants to solve. However, you need to provide a justification for your decision. One way to
help you with your decision is by conducting a preliminary study.

There are some methods that you can use for your preliminary study such as interview, survey, and
observation. The method you choose should help you understand why they have the problem, how
they overcome the problem, how successful they are at overcoming their problem and how they
want their situation to be improved.

Assignment Deliverables

1. A report with the following content:

a. Describe ONE main problem faced by your user group.
i. Describe your target user: their personal background and their technology
use experience
ii. Describe your user emotion: fear, pain, and gain
iii. Describe your user problem (i.e., the frequency of the problem, the impact,
the affected parties apart from the users themselves)
iv. Propose ONE possible IT solution for your user based on your understanding
of (i), (ii) and (iii)
b. summarize your user using USER EMPATHY MAP
c. Identify user requirements for your proposed IT solution
i. Identify user functional and non-functional requirements
2. A report should be submitted on Friday, 7/5/2021 before 12 midnight.
PROJECT: PAPER PROTOTYPING (30%)

Assignment Description

Following the user requirements that you have identified in Assignment 1, produce a medium fidelity
prototype. The general idea of a prototype is to simulate how your IT solution would behave if it
becomes a reality. It will not be a fully working product but sufficiently realized so you can do a
usability study with your target users.

You are to use the medium fidelity prototype as part of user testing. It is important to note that the
findings will only be valid if testing is conducted by user representatives (i.e. a sample of your users).

You can use any application to develop your medium fidelity prototype (e.g. Balsamiq, Justinmind,
Azure etc)

Examples of medium fidelity prototyping can be seen in these links:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfNsXMfhhNs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKO4FtswOTI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ2DI-15AMs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFgLxmdFkjk

Assignment Deliverables

1. A report with the following contents

a. Introduction (from Assignment 1)
i. Overview of the problem
ii. Objectives, scope, significance
iii. What user problem are you trying to solve? Who are the users? What are
their tasks?  
b. Design
i. Produce a storyboard to illustrate overview of user interaction with your IT
solution
ii. Design user interfaces by using wireframes or hand-drawn sketches
c. Prototype development
i. Development of medium fidelity prototype
 Screenshots of UI (i.e. wireframes or hand-drawn sketches)
  Usability test of medium fidelity prototype
- To evaluate ease of use by user representative
 Was it easy to use your prototype?
 Was it easy to learn using your prototype?
 Did your users achieve their objectives when using
your prototype?
- To understand how your users feel towards your prototype
- How did your users feel about the product?
- To suggest improvements on the prototype
- What did you learn from your users?

d. Conclusion
i. Give an overview of the whole project
ii. Future work possibilities (what needs to be done to make it better).
Suggestions for further improvements.
e. References
2. A video demonstration of the paper prototype (how you imagine users would use it without
errors).
3. A softcopy of a report and the video demonstration should be submitted before 12
midnight, Friday, 23/7/2021.