Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
Text
Janet H. Murray, Inventing the Medium (Pre-publication draft MSS version available on line)
Readings are due on first Lecture/Recitation Day of week
Grading
In class preparation, design examples, participation in design discussions 20%
3 Lab Exercises 10%
2 Design Critiques 20%
2 Projects including design, technical work, slides 50%
Helpfulness to other students bonus (up to) 5%
Insightful participation bonus (up to) 5%
1
Schedule
Topic Tuesday Thursday Labs
ITM Recitation (Friday)
Readings
Week Jan 12,14,15 Goals of Design Ch 1, 2,3, Recitation
Design Post due
1 Designing the Artifact / Advancing
Jan 15
the Medium
Week Jan. Maximizing the Affordances of the Ch 4 First lab
2 19,21,22 Digital Medium Design Post due 1/22
Jan 22
2
Required Presentations and Projects
All required presentations and projects are to be submitted on T-Square by 9am on the
day they are due except for lab exercises and running code for projects which may be handed
in by 5pm on the due date. In addition, hand in a paper version to JHM on the due date. 10
slide presentations should be printed multiple slides per page, in color, with notes optional.
The four 10-slide presentations will each be given Pecha Kucha style, with automated timing
set at an average of 30 sec/slide, 5 minute maximum time.
For all weeks with textbook reading assignments due on a TUESDAY, create and
hand in the following to T-SQUARE by 5pm on FRIDAY of the same week: a useful
DESIGN EXAMPLE, similar to the examples offered in the textbook and in JHM’s
PowerPoint slides, illustrated with one or more images and no more than 200 words
that make clear what significant design choice or choices were made and why they
are good or bad.
3
Project I Encyclopedic Design: Dynamic Information Widget
Topic due Feb 9
Related Critique due Feb 16
Final projects and reports due March 2
4
Due Feb 9: 1 Slide Presentation of Topic for Project I
Should include:
• Your name
• Project Name indicating functionality (e.g. SuperRemote: Accessing Bubble-Gum
Related Information Across Media; SuperBubble: Location-Sensitive Bubble-Gum
Bargain locator),
• Media sources you will draw on indicating format (e.g. BubbleBlog (text); Bubble
PixStream (images); Bubble Video (YouTube video); Bubble data (MySQL database),
etc.
• URL of at least 1 similar artifacts (such as one you will critique)
• Wire frame of what you will be building
Due February 16: Design Critique Related to Project I
Assignment: Chose an artifact similar to the one you are proposing for Project I and analyze
what works well and what does not work well about it.
Pecha Kucha Presentation (automated slide changes) 10 slides/30 seconds each
1. Title slide: Name of [Object you are critiquing]: [Key design value you are focusing
on] in a [category of object] by [aspect of the object that is good or bad) (e.g.
Google: Creating Agency in a Search Engine by Leveraging Linkages; or iPod:
Blocking Agency in a Music Player by Excessive Minimalism )
2. What is the need/problem addressed by this digital artifact?
3. What design goals should such products satisfy?
4. What other artifacts exist in this category?
5. What pre-digital and standardized digital conventions do they employ?
6. What are strengths of this particular artifact?
7. What are its weaknesses?
8. How does it measure up against design goals (as stated in #2 and in the title of your
presentation)
9. How could it be improved?
10. What will your Project I do in the same way or differently from this example
(choose 1 important design element or present a single image of your design to make
your point)
Due March 2: Presentation of Project I
Pecha Kucha Presentation (automated slide changes) 10 slides/30 seconds each
1, Title: Snappy title of your artifact: explanatory subtitle
2. What is the need/problem addressed by this digital artifact?
3. What are your design goals?
4. What other artifacts exist in this category?
5. What distinguishes your artifact from the other ones in the category?
6. Walk through of specific use case scenario with specific content
7. Walk through
8. Walk through
9. Walk through
10. Future extensions of this work
5
Project II Microworld with Replay
Topic due April 1
Related Critique due April 6
Final projects and reports due April 20
Revised, testable project due April 30
A microworld can capture the knowledge we have about the world that is rules-based,
procedural rather than descriptive. It can show us how a system behaves under multiple
circumstances. For example, a microworld of a pond could display how it would change
with the addition of a new species animal or vegetation.
This exercise invites you to create a microworld that will be useful in understanding a rule-
based system. The microworld should clarify a real or fictionalized situation that has
distinguishable, intrinsically engaging success/failure outcomes such as a person living or
dying, a heavy object falling on a cartoon character, a couple falling in love, a set of people
developing a disease, a polar bear population thriving or declining, etc.
1. Choose a domain that you are familiar with and for which there are clearly known
causes and effects. It can be scientific, economic, political, psychological, etc. It can
be real or fictional.
For example:
• biological systems like a cell or a pond (could real or imaginary)
• physical systems like a battle with multiple kinds of weapons and defenses
(could be drawn from an existing game)
• social systems like a (fictional) singles mixer in which there are many possible
combinations of couples
• economic systems like a lemonade stand
hint: start with an existing strategy game like Spore, Sim City, Lemonade Stand
2. Develop a simple scenario that you will be able to visualize, that includes
• At least 2 classes of actors (people, plants, creatures: anything living that has
needs, vulnerabilities, and the potential for multiple instantiations and states) .
o The actors should have the ability to change one another’s states,
directly or indirectly. (e.g. by eating one another, by feeding one
another, by eating one another’s food, etc)
o Examples of classes and instances a carnivore or herbivore creature;
o Examples of states: hungry or full; hunting or resting; bored or in-
love
6
• At least 1 resource that can have at least 2 values (perhaps numerical quantity, or
absence/presence) and that has an effect on the actors or on the overall state of
the microworld
o A limited resource like food
o Disputed territory
o Money, lemons, sugar, advertising signs for a lemonade stand
o An opportunity or peril with duration (disappears over time)
• Clearly distinguished positive and negative outcomes for individual actors and/or
for the microworld as a whole (frog health, pond health)
• 3-5 time steps that can be run through in a default state, and then in variations
that reflect the interactor’s choices.
3. Script the Interactor by creating appropriate gameplay: The interactor should be able
to run the same scenario, changing one or more variables, and see contrasting results
that will pique their curiosity to try other variants. Be sure to make clear how they
change the scenario, what kind of changes are possible, and what cannot be changed.
(Can you do this clearly without written or spoken instructions?)
o For examples, adding a frog without adding algae to the pond, adding
algae without adding a frog to the pond, adding both frog and algae at
the same time.
Story-board your scenario before you build it. Make sure that all the significant states are
clearly distinguished from one another, that dynamic changes in your world are clearly
readable, and that causes and effects are clear.
The system should include both local and global variables, and should be savable by saving
the state of these variables.
Note on Teams: Project II can be a team project if students voluntarily self-organize into
teams to make a more ambitious projects. Team members must register with the instructor
by April 1, stating the domain, scenario, and making clear what each member is responsible
for. Credits in the final project should confirm these separate contributions. All team
members must prepare individual Design Critiques and design documentation slides, and
must make individual in-class presentations. Students must be approved for team
membership for Project II based on performance in course so far.
Project II will be presented during week 14; a running version must be tested with
other students in the class during week 15, and the final running version revised if
necessary after testing, is due April 30 (last day of semester).
NOTE: I am adapting the concept of MICROWORLD from the domain of educational computing and particularly from the approach
founded by Seymour Papert and continued by Mitch Resnick at the MIT Media Lab.
Mitch Resnick, New Paradigms for Computing, New Paradigms for Thinking, in Computers and Exploratory Learning, edited by A. diSessa, C.
Hoyles, & R. Noss. Springer-Verlag (1995). http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/new_paradigms/new_paradigms.html
Papert, S. (1980). Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas. New York: Basic Books.
7
Due April 1: 1 Slide Presentation of Topic for Project II
• Your name
• Microworld Name with subtitle specifying all the variables, e.g. BubbleWorld: An
simulation of the effects of height, gender, and age on the size, duration, and
quantity of bubblegum bubbles
• A chart indicating the range of at least one of the variables and how it relates to
other variables (e.g. more sugar, more cost per glass of lemonade.
• Any Board Game, tabletop role playing game, or live action game that is structured
as a simulation of a complex system (Raiders of Catan, Dungeons and Dragons)
8
Due April 6: Design Critique #2 Pecha Kucha 10 slides, 30 seconds each
1. Your name, Artifact Name: Subtitle with Design Assessment (e.g. iPhone Spore:
abstracting evolution as a body-part substitution system with survival-related parameters)
2. Analyze the Abstraction
• What real world domain is simulated here?
• What is the underlying model?
• What are the key elements? How do they behave?
• What are the relationships among them?
• What are the parameters? Which ones does the player control? What effect
does it have to change them? How are these effects indicated?
• What are the explicit and implicit assumptions of the model? (e.g. what is
good and bad? What is irrelevant and left out of the simulation?)
2. Gameplay and Game Mechanics
• What can the player do? How do they do it? How does the game script them so that
they understand what they can do and want to do it?
• What other feedback does the game provide on the state of the world or the success
of the player or the appropriateness of an action?
• Are there meters or running scores? Are there intrinsic indicators of state (e.g.
character slows down or dies, snow falls and road becomes blocked) ?
• Are there turns? Squares on a gameboard? Experience points?
• Are there strategies to employ? Is there resource allocation? What are the trade-offs?
• Are there random elements? How does this affect the player’s experience?
3. Outcomes
• What are the success conditions? How are they differentiated? Are causes visible?
• What are the failure conditions, how are they differentiated? Are causes visible?
• Can you replay the same situation?
4. Conventions Used
• Any conventions common to similar artifacts?
• Any conventions borrowed from other domains or media?
• Any newly invented conventions?
5-8 Strengths and Weaknesses
9. How would you redesign it to improve it?
10. How could the same domain be abstracted to fit Project II assignment?
• Actor I: states
• Actor 2: states
• Independent resource: value
• Clear positive outcomes:
• Clear negative outcomes
• Parameters that player can control:
• Mechanic for player control (how does player change the parameters that are in
their control?)
9
Due April 20: Presentation of Project II
Pecha Kucha Presentation (automated slide changes) 10 slides/30 seconds each
1. Snappy title and subtitle indicating what you are explaining, e.g. Coffee Shop of
the Damned: A Microworld Simulating a Blind Date; Should You Shoot the Wolves?
A Microworld Simulating the Effects of Lethal Interventions in Predator
Populations on Wolves and their Prey.
2. What world are you simulating and why does it need procedural explanation?
3. What is your underlying Model of this world?
a. Actors
b. States
c. Resources
d. Parameters
i. Controlled by player
ii. Controlled by game
e. Outcomes
f. Differentiating states and outcomes
4. Other artifacts that try to explain or explore this world?
5. Other artifacts that explain or explore similar systems?
6. What have you borrowed or adapted?
7. What have you added, changed, improved?
8. Walkthrough of your microworld
9. Alternate walkthrough of your microworld showing different outcome
10. Potential Future Extensions
10
Grading Criteria for 2 Design Critiques
Fulfills Assignment
Presentation Effectiveness
Readable slides
Audible, clear oral style
Clarity and specificity of language
Clarity and gracefulness of visual design
Choice of artifacts and illustrations
Grasp of design concepts
Specificity of design observations
Application of design concepts to artifact
Grading Criteria For Projects I and II
Fulfills Assignment Criteria
Presentation Effectiveness
Readable slides
Audible, clear oral style
Design Evaluation
Identification of specific design goals
Orientation toward core need
Analysis of design context
Choice of design conventions
Scripting of interactor with clear expectations
Rewarding interaction with agency
Exploitation of digital affordances and awareness of further opportunities
Demo Evaluation
Choice of illustrative content and use case
Persuasiveness of Demo Script
Performance of Demo Script
Technical Evaluation
Fulfills Technical Criteria
Ambition
Choice of components
Execution
11
Presentation Reminders
Guidelines for discourse about design
• You must know the specific meaning of all design values: avoid words that are used
vaguely such as “interesting” “clean” “intuitive” .
• Make every word on every slide count. Use as few words as possible, by thinking
harder to make your meaning more concise and specific.
• Use design terms consistently. Choose the relevant design values from this course
and other courses and design texts, and make clear how you are using them.
12