Tutorials / Critiques

Tutorials and critique exercises help to sharpen your understanding and application of UI design principles and guidelines. In the tutorials, you will learn the techniques that you'll use for your critiques.

Please form project teams of 3 students each to present critiques of GUI designs during tutorial sessions. All the students in a project team must belong to the same tutorial group. The same project team will work on the critiques and the project. Give a name to your project team.

Check here for your critique presentation schedule.
 
Tutorial / Critique
Week
Weightage
Tutorial 1: GUI Design
5
Tutorial 2: System Architecture
9
Critique 1: GUI Design
11, 12
10%
Critique 2: System Architecture (cancelled)
 
Total
10%
 
Critique 1: GUI Design
Critique 1 focuses on GUI design. You will be given an existing GUI design and your tasks are as follows:
Analyse the GUI and identify its major strengths and weaknesses.
Propose ONE alternative design that overcoms the major weaknesses.
Present your analysis and proposal and explain why your proposed alternative is better. Every member of a design
    team must take turn to present.
 
Critique 2: System Architecture
Critique 2 focuses on system architecture. You will be given the software architecture of an existing application and your tasks are as follows:
Analyse the software architecture, in particular, the connection between the UI and the backend, and identify its major
   strengths and weaknesses..
Propose ONE alternative architecture that overcomes the major weaknesses.
Present your analysis and proposal and explain why your proposed alternative is better. Every member of a design
    team must take turn to present.
 
Critique Submission
Prepare a pdf version of the presentation slides of your critique.
Pass the pdf file to the instructor during critique presentation..
 
Critique Presentation
Critiques will be presented during tutorial sessions.
Each critic team has 15 minutes to present its findings and the target team has 5 minutes to respond.
Your presentation should focus on the following:
    > Brief description of the objectives of the system.
    > Analysis of the major strengths and weaknesses of existing design.
    > Your alternative design. Draw a diagram to illustrate your ONE alternative design.
       Do not present suggestions for overcoming individual weakness outside the context of your alternative design.
       Do not present multiple alternative design; just present the one best alternative that you come up with.
    > Design decisions. That is, use concrete examples of your alternative design to explain why your design is better.
Each student in a design team must take turn to present.
 
Grading Criteria
How good are your analysis of the major strengths and weaknesses..
How well does your proposed alternative overcome the major shortcomings.
How well are the design decisions explained and justified.

27 Mar 2015