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Purpose
This project has 3 goals:
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to sharpen your critical thinking about the relationship between the technical infrastructure that underpins and shapes the platforms we use everyday online, making you a more critical consumer and producer of online platform content and cultivating a "systems thinking" approach to identifying & solving real-world problems
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to introduce you to the (design) proposal genre, a major way individuals can work with organiziations to effect change online and in other venues -- although we'll be writing design proposals, many aspects of this genre transfer to other proposal types
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to provide opportunities for you to practice and hone the website building skills you've begun to work on in the Digital Community Project
Components
Propose a redesign of the platform your digital community uses to communicate, drawing on ideas about the impact of design from course readings (Selfe & Selfe, Christen, Arola). Informed by your analysis 1) the purpose and interaction of your community and 2) how the technical features of the platform affect your community's interaction Digital Community project, develop a design that addresses any limitations or problems that arise from the design of the platform, and write a design proposal (using genre conventions described in design proposal reading) to pitch it to your digital community. For this assignment, areas of the platform you'll likely focus on are the design of the "feed" or interaction page and profile page (if your platform has profiles), although there could be others.
Design proposals often respond to RFPs (Requests for Proposals) issued by organizations to invite ideas for a project the organization wants done. In other cases, however, designers propose projects to organizations without invitation, using their knowledge of the organization to tailor a proposal that identifies needs and offers solutions to them. You'll be writing this second type of "unsolicited" design proposal, placing responsibiblity on you to identify a problem(s) that will resonate with the organization and propose a compelling solution to it.
Design Proposal should include:
- introduction describing the community's purpose, size, membership, characteristics (drawing on work done in Digital Community project)
- problem statement explaining what issue(s) currently exist with community's platform in terms of community's, purpose, membership, functionality, etc
- use concepts and terminology from Selfe & Selfe, Christen, Arola, etc to explain critique
- include a marked-up mockup of current interface, illustrating what features cause problems or complicate the functioning of the group according to its purpose, membership, etc (using GIMP, Photoshop, or another image editing application)
- recommendation/proposed solutions explaining how your redesign addresses these issues and any additional benefits it offers
- use concepts and terminology from Selfe & Selfe, Christen, Arola, etc to explain the value added by your proposed redesign
- include visual design mockup for proposed platform redesign, illustrating your solution(s) to your critique of the original platform; may or may not include markup (using GIMP, Photoshop, or another image editing application)
Design & Style
This project will be produced as its own page on your website, using carefully-crafted and organized text agumented with images. Modify the code of your CSS/HTML template to create a digital text that
- is reachable using website navigation
- satisfies screen-reading expectations for a text that is navigable, using headings, short-ish paragraphs, consistent alignment
- takes advantage of the multimedia affordances of digital texts to use mockups to underscore your critique of the existing platform and illustrate the benefits of the new platform design you propose
Stylistically, your proposal mirroring the community's terminology, style, etc to illustrate your research/knowledge of the community, its culture, and its practices (see Design Proposal reading)
Sample Design Critiques, & Redesigns, Proposals
Design Critique & Redesign Examples:
Proposal Genre/Format
Criteria
Content
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introduction describing the community's purpose, size, membership, characteristics to create context for proposal
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problem statement analyzing what issue(s) currently exist with community's platform in terms of community's, purpose, membership, functionality, etc, using terminology/concepts from course readings like Selfe & Selfe, Christen, Arola, etc
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marked-up mockup of current platform, illustrating problem areas problem statement details
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recommendation describing new design that addresses issues problem statement highlights, using terminology/concepts from course readings like Selfe & Selfe, Christen, Arola, etc
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mockup of revised platform proposal, retaining essential characteristics/branding/etc of community and showing how new design solves problems identified in problem statement would be solved (marked up or not)
Design & Style
- Alters CSS/HTML templates to create a page/linked set of pages for project
- Presents project content in a navigable way for screen reading, using headings, short-ish paragraphs, consistent alignment
- Includes visuals (your mockup of current and proposed platform designs) integrated at appropriate places and explicitly references these in recommendations section
- uses embedded hyperlinks for any references to external sites or sources
Timeline
- April 29: project introduced
- May 1: "politics of design" (Selfe & Selfe reading), begin critique of community platform
- May 3: using GIMP to create critique mockup (in-class tech workshop)
- May 6: sample platform design critique (Christen reading) & redesign brainstorming
- May 8: building visual design proposal in GIMP (in-class tech workshop)
- May 10: proposing a new design (design proposal reading) & drafting of proposal
- May 15 & 16: conferences
- May 17: drop-in workshop with Brian Larkin in Guadalupe 204, 1:00-2:05 pm
- May 19: Community Platform Redesign Proposal due by noon to Camino dropbox, submitted as URL