Design Concepts

• the physical
• the psychological
• the cognitive - will they have to interact, do they know how the interaction works?
• the metaphorical - the representation of the idea, defining the concept people understand it.

Thought Processes

• This could be an idea which is implemented in a class room scenario. It could be a blog type set up which would allow for a teacher to hand out the log in details for the blog, the children could then go away adn upload their own ideas and comments and then these ideas could be reviewed in the next class. This is a way of gettingthe children to look at the website and look through the information on the website then talk about it and come up with their own ideas, it is a way of making the children and their parents aware of the website and the physics sciences around robots. Having a specific log in for the children will also provie a security blanket for the ideas and ensures that only specific users can upload information and comments. This log in will allow for the teacher to them log in to the blog and the work can be reviewed in classrooms.
• the concept of having this as a product which can be used in a class room, this means that the product has a focus and the teacher can make the students look over the website first and then talk about what they see, this idea also keeps the students and ideas contained.
• Teachers could start a blog and then write their exercise for the students to then log in to and view and then talk about.
• Teachers could be encouraging the students to design their own robots, this would mean that they would have to look throught the website and learn about the robots and then the students will have to write about their own ideas and use the drawing tool to draw a basic mock up of their ideas.
• When writing the posts there will be no 'commenting' function as this could be used for bullying and the teacher can talk about the ideas in class.
• we are trying to keep it as simple as possible, therefore there would be no archive or column to the right with extra links which is usually the case with blogs, however having an archive could allow the taechers and students to look over the work they have done already and assign more homework and build up a portfolio of work from the students which they can look over.

Planning focus session

Interactive
Solution Planning Guide
This provides some guidance to help plan your interactive solution. Review
the questions in the Planning Guide to help you decide what your solution will
be about – to better conceptualise it.
Who is it for?
*Is it for students, what age group? Adults,
technical folk? Non-technical folk?
Is it for one person at a time, or a group of people?
Are people going to share information? Compete?

The age group will be year 9 and GCSE students.

The information is going up on to the website so that it can be seen and shared by many, this could lead to the users becomming competative but that is not the sole intention of the product.
The age group typically uses social networking websites, so will be accustomed to using a website where there are discussions or live chats.

because we are targetting the children to encourage them and their sciences we will also be targetting the parents and teachers as they willperhaps have to get the children to get in touch with the website.
This could be linked from choices websites which parents and children of this age group have to look over before they choose their GCSE subjects

What is it for?
What are the aims for your interactive solution for this user group?
The aim of the product is to make users aware of robots and the physics behind them. It is also a chance to make people aware of the university.

It is targetted at an age group which is choosing their GCSE subjects and this product will hopefully promote sciences and therefore prompt students to be more enthusiastic about these subjects.

Which one(s) are you going to focus on?
*What do you want your solution to do? What kind of interactivity ?

The product will be an interactive page which allows for users to leave comments about different robots, this will envcourage discussions between the users. The website will be encouraging an age group which already use social networking to use a networking tool to communicate about science.

What time period will its usage be over?
Does it have to be in a specific time/place or could it be over a period
of time? Is it time-limited?
Do you want people to do things in a particular order? Do they need to
have prior access, register?

because this is a product where the users can talk to eachother and chat, having a user log in would help to prevent some spamming and would also act as another small safety barrier.

Perhaps having a log in and register which requires a school address in order to allow for a user to be registered would act as another safety barrier so that this product is speciafically for students, although this is limiting.

During a school lesson, so allowing for introduction and review at the end it may be used for around 25 mins

Time limit set by the teacher 

Registration is in at 2 levels, one higher access for the school and the teacher to set the work and one for the students. 

How long is the experience/interaction meant to last? Or is there no set
time?

There could be a number of lessons running over a period, for example a term each with knowledge building on the last so the order could be important

Where and how will it be used?
Will it be from home? Or at
work? Or at school? On the move on a mobile device? On an interactive touch
screen?

It will be used at school but could also be used at home because home work has been set. 

How are you trying to make people feel? What is the intended “user
experience”?
* Excited? Reflective? Interested in the technology?
Interested in the event?
This will affect what sort of content, media and images you create or
use, as well as your overall themes – colours/fonts/layout/tone

This is educational to introduce the children to Robotics,  it should be fun and exciting for them to keep their interest and stimulate their creativity. 

What will the person take the initiative in the interaction or will the
system? What will drive the interaction process?
Will people have to look at the screen and click on the areas or
specific interaction objects or will the system be automatically updated and
prompt the person?

The child will be asked to do things by the system and the system will record the result. 

What sort of content will you collect or make?
The focus will be on using content that
enables a high level of interactivity, is engaging and is of course relevant to
the context. Where will you get your content from?

The system will collect text and images via embedded drawing software, 

Will it need to be kept updated? Who will do
the updating? How often? What level of expertise will they need to have? Will
they need an interface? Will there be privacy, access right issues?

As part of a school term syllabus the updating will be done by a teacher who will have higher access rights than the children

Will the end-users supply content?
What will the nature of the content be?
Will moderation be required? Where will the
data be stored? Will there be privacy, access right issues?
What about simultaneous multi-user usage?
What are the implications for this?

The children as the end user are reply to work set by the teacher. The teacher will be responsible for moderation, although being that this is a classroom situation the children should be aware that they’ll be punished for adding inappropriate content.

The data collected will be stored in a MySQL database

Target Audience

• Make assumptions about the audience clearly defined
• what are their motivations
• where is their initiation coming from - bristol website
• who? parents or children?
• why are they coming?expectations?
• how much information will we need to supply to them along with our product?
• when are they going to be using the website - in relation to how much time before the event
• will they be doing it in the classroom? evenings? weekends?
• how much time will they have to spend using our product?
• if they didn't have lots of time (or vice versa) how would we format the product to accomodate that.
• are we going to allow continuation of our product or is going to be just one use

Competitive Products

Similar to what we will be developing - not necessarily within the same age group.

Ford

• Users encoraged to comment, rate and share.
• Filtering of posted ideas.
• Visual representation of the popularity of different ideas.

Playstation

• A leaderboard of users who have submitted ideas
• Voting up/down
• Ideas categorised

Personas

Primary Personas we are designing for

There are 3 personas

Cloe

Cameron

Dan

Field Studies

• look at statistics of who uses facebook and how useful it really is as a tool.
• look at other similar sites for learning
• learning sites: what content is being put up on other sites.

Team Skill Set

Martin:

• Programming
• Presentations
• Idea generating

Matt:

• Designing
• Photoshop
• Research

Rose:

• Designing
• Research
• Report Writing

Lizzie:

• Presentations
• Idea generating
• organised
• Report writing

Contextual Design + Specifying Formal Requirements

goals and objectives:

• to encourage learning/creativity in a specific age group.
• To create an interactive interface which encourages users to engage with the website.
• encourage competitiveness, in terms of getting them to upload ideas to the best of their ability.
• enhance their existing knowledge of robots/encourage their knowledge of physics
• raising awareness of the robotics labs and what they are doing.
• robotics lab technicians can possibly validate/reaffirm their research previously done by looking at the comments/uploads from the children.

usability goals and objectives:

• users want to have fun on the website.
• upload good ideas which rival other ideas on the website which have been uploaded.
• learn more about robots and physics.

Developments

• Once the kids have submitted their ideal robot which they have designed and drawn, they can then go on to rate the other ideas and pictures which have been uploaded.
• this gets them even more involved, because if they don’t have their own ideas or the time to make their own robot drawing, getting them to interact with the website and other images is another way of capturing their attention and getting them involved.
• added value: the ideas which the children upload could then be sent to teachers and the workers in the robotics labs and these ideas can be grown upon and developed.

Developments

• Once the kids have submitted their ideal robot which they have designed and drawn, they can then go on to rate the other ideas and pictures which have been uploaded.
• This gets them even more involved, because if they don’t have their own ideas or the time to make their own robot drawing, getting them to interact with the website and other images is another way of capturing their attention and getting them involved.
• added value: the ideas which the children upload could then be sent to teachers and the workers in the robotics labs and these ideas can be grown upon and developed.

Research Process

• Brain storming possible ideas, no limitations on the ideas which were put in to brain storm.
• Decided on a user group.
• Looked in more depth at the existing website and other similar websites to get a further knowledge of and understanding of the FIRA and the TAROS conference.
• Decided on a possible user group.
• Ran through ideas categorizing them in order to make our decision making process and narrowing down of options easier.
• Decided on 2 ideas which worked well with our decided user group.
• The two ideas made it to the top because they are interactive, cater to the chosen user group and are feasible and cater to the teams technical abilities.
• we had to think about how to get the users involved, therefore the ideas decided on would have to implement persuasive design.
• designed a basic wire frame for one of the proposed ideas.
• made a presentation to pitch to the robotics lab technicians.
• started the design process
• storyboarding
• assess skills so that the tasks can be evenly distributed, this also means that the idea to be developed can be done with the restrictions and abilities of the team in mind.
• look up 'canvas' as an idea for how the children will interact with the website and be able to update their ideas.
• http://mrdoob.com/projects/multiuserpad/

Planning Guide

Summary of whats happened so far and fill in any gaps

Feedback and Review of Pitch

Client Feedback.
Following our pitch the client made the following points.

1. Who will moderate it?
2. How maintainable is it?
3. Who among us has the skills to and time to do it?

These concerns have a direct effect on our idea and we will have to iterate because of them. 

Client management
Our role is help the client see opportunities and see what their site could be. What cannot happen even if their current website is terrible is to tell them why that is. This will only damage any future relationship and in short, fire ourselves from the project.

A better approach may be to educate the client in what good practices are. Then show them what we have to offer based on that.

Better for them, with their new knowledge to be critical in their evaluation of their current site.

Pitch

Venue : Bristol Robotics Labs
Date: 02/02/2012.

Introduction -  Martin Francis
Slide 1: Brainstorming - Matt Jones
Slide 2: User Group - Rose Nicholls
Slide 3: Ideas - Liz Bailey
Slide 3: Ideas and Conclude - Martin Francis

Speaker Notes for the Pitch

1. Introductions 


2. Share Ideas 
Our group is aware that this is a collaborative effort and so our our Brainstorm is open for the other groups to look at and they are free to take any of the ideas and iterate on them. 


3. Matt will talk about our ideas – The results of our brainstorming session.


4.Rose will talk about our chosen User Group that we will focus on. 


5.Lizzie will talk about our first Idea which is all about informing the users. 


6.I will talk about our second idea that is more collaborative plus I will explain how these ideas could be taken further. 


Hand over to Matt:- 

Wireframe - Lo - fi

On the left there would be some interactive information about the robots and after viewing the users could add their own ideas to the page by submitting the form. 

Their ideas would be published in the right hand column. 

Usergroup

At this time my twelve year old daughter is making her choices for her GCSE subjects that she will be taking at school.

For this project her age group would be a good target audience because:-

• Use their creativity for our consulting type idea
• Influence their future career choice
• Apply their science knowledge
• Learn new science extending their basic knowledge they already have
• Information aimed at this group’s education level is good for the wider public

Pitch Preparation

What Needs further Investigation?

After reviewing the check lists at freelanceswitch and www.traceygrady.com/ I have come up a list of information that I would like to find out

1. Motivation for the event

I would like to dig deeper into the motivation for such an event and why they need a better website for publicising it?

Terms like “Encouraging Public Interest” and “engage people of all ages” are not specific enough. 

2. Where do they think that their current website is failing?

3. Who are the Robotocists?

It is also unclear who are the Robotocists at the BRL and what they intend to get out of the event,

4. What does the BRL do?

5. What do they expect visitors to gain?

What they expect the visitors to get out of it, that is what will they get out of the website and what will they get out of the event when they visit.

6. How will the potential visitors of the site find it?

What words and phrases would they use in a search engine?

Brain storm

Public engagement with science - methods

http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/how/methods

Looked at the different types of methods of public engagement from the website.

Reviewed the FIRA-TAROS web site and knew that it is lacking in useful content to the content useful content on the site was lacking and so one method, as per the definition, is “Informing”, that is we must have an idea for pitch that provides useful information about the robots or the event.

This however might not have enough interactivity for the project, since this we are doing it for the module Interaction Design so looked at the methods under the heading of “Consulting”. So our idea should in some way have a method of online feedback so the users feel as though they are making a contribution to the site.

So in the pitch one idea should come under the heading "Informing" and the other should be a "Consulting" idea.  

Expert Evaluation of Current Site FIRA-TAROS 2012

Purpose of the site

The site has one purpose and that is:- 

To publicise an event

• What? – RoboWorld Cup, combined with a robotics conference called Towards Autonomous Robotic Systems” (TAROS),
• When? – August 2012
• Where? – Bristol Robotics Laboratory (BRL)
• Why? –             1. Encouraging more public interest in the event

2. Engage people of all ages, to find out more about robots and get excited about, and involved in science and robotics.

                       

• How much – What will the event cost to visit?
• Who? – Who are the roboticists at the BRL? 

Review of the site

Aim of the Evaluation

I will conduct a brief evaluation to find out the usability issues that the current site has and to the extent of the improvements (if any) are necessary.

The scope of the evaluation is limited to just one scenario of use, for one particular user attempting one specific task. 

Scenario

The Fira organisers want to “Engage people of all ages” so a typical scenario could be:-

Father (Steve) with his 13 year old disabled (wheelchair bound) son (Jack) wants a day out with his son during the school summer holidays that will be fun and educational and low cost.  They live in Fishponds, Bristol.

Will Steve be able get the basic information he needs to have a day out with his son?

Steve will need to

1. Find the FIRA site using Google and search terms
2. Find out what will happen at the event
3. Find out how much it is
4. Find out where it is
5. Find out it there is wheelchair access
6. Find out it he can park his car in a disabled space next to the event

The link below is to the evaluation itself. 

Usability Review of FIRA-TAROS 2012 Site. 

Conclusion

The FIRA-TAROS 2012 site is only going to be found by some one who is very determined and knows what to enter as a search term.

Once on the site it is either difficult or imposssible to find out the most basic information about attending a free, fun and educational event being held in Bristol

Recommendations

 1. FIRAS event organisers should think about the sort of search terms that would be used to find the website and add content to the site that uses these terms.

2. Fix broken links

3. Add content that gives more detail about the event.

4. Add location information to the timetable. Minimum should at least say the this part of the event is at the BRL, UWE, or Bristol University.

3. Provide basic information on Price, Access, and Parking.