Final Design Briefs

For the final project, your assignment is to design a new tool and/or new activities that support and encourage creative learning experiences -- and to write a "design brief" discussing the motivations, rationale, and principles underlying your design. If possible, you should test your tool/activities with sample users.

Key Elements of a Design Brief

What Problems/Challenges Are You Addressing

• What activities do you want to support?
• What do you hope people will learn?

Existing Approaches

• What is already out there?
• How have existing approaches informed your work?
• How are they lacking?

Design Principles/Rationale

• What guides your design?
• Examples:
  • low floor, high ceiling
  • encourage collaboration
  • support multiple learning styles
  • engage users in thinking about particular ideas/concepts
  • foster creative expression

Design

• Design constraints
• Design process: how it evolved
• Description of key features
• How it highlights key concepts, supports creativity

Scenarios

• Provide a concrete example (or two) of how people will use your design and discuss what they'll learn as they use it.

Evaluation

• How did you introduce the technology/activities to users?
• How/what did they learn as they used it?

Future Directions

• Suggest next steps for your project

Below are two examples of design briefs. Although these design briefs were written in different contexts, with somewhat different goals, they provide you with a sense of how and what to include in a design brief.

Datagotchi Deep Dive

Report from a design charrette focused on the use of handheld computers for mathematical learning. (PDF)

Development of the I-Mail Prototype

Design of an email prototype for people with mental and/or physical disabilities (by Leo Burd and others). (PDF)