Assignment 2 – Ideation and Prototyping
In this assignment, you will run an “ideation session” to generate ideas, select amongst those ideas, and then craft a rapid prototype of the product/service/experience being designed. The final deliverable for the assignment will be a written report documenting this process along with supporting media. This is your chance to get creative!
This assignment provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate the achievement of the following course learning outcomes:
Use a variety of tools to develop empathy with users and customers.
Lead the design of innovative solutions tailored to user needs
Instructions and Structure
In this assignment, you will continue to work on the design of a hypothetical mobile app to be used in hospital waiting rooms by patients, health care practitioners, and administrators. This assignment will begin with the Ideate phase of Design Thinking and then proceed to the Prototype phase across a two-part activity. Having completed some research and synthesis in the previous assignment, you will use the insights you gained to describe the mobile app you are planning to build. From there, you will lead an ideation session/workshop and use what you learn from that session to create your first rapid prototype of the solution.
The ideation session should be conducted with 3-4 participants that you recruit. Friends, family and co-workers are all suitable and an accessible problem statement was chosen in order to not require any specific expertise. The session should be run for 30-45 minutes, so you will likely be asking for about 1 hour of time from your participants.
There are three phases to the assignment:
In the first phase, your goal is to articulate, in a few sentences, the core concept for the mobile app that you are designing, as well as the value proposition that it offers your target users. This, along with the insights synthesized from your field research, will become the inputs to the next phase. Be as concise and clear as possible here.
The second phase of the assignment involves running a short “ideation session” based on what you have learned in Module 4. The specific format and structure of the session is left up to you, but it should be 30-45 minutes in length, and you are encouraged to reference different sources and frameworks described in the course when planning it. The objective of this session is to get experience in facilitating a group-thinking session. Pay special attention to ensuring that you give equal voice to all participants, rather than just the most vocal who tend to dominate such sessions. You should capture the outcomes of the session (whether in the form of groups of sticky notes, digital minutes, or any other format) along with some documentation of the process itself (such as photos). During the session, your goal is to develop 5-10 ideas for the mobile app concept. These could be in the form of high level conceptual ideas or specific features/functionalities that would be desired by end users. You should reserve the final 10-15 minutes of the session for applying a selection framework (such as value vs. complexity) to the ideas and narrow your focus down the top 2-3 while also providing a justification for your choices.
In the final phase of this assignment, you will put on your creative hat and create a paper prototype of the solution that encompasses one or more of the core concepts/ideas that you decided to focus on in the previous stage. Given that we are designing a mobile app, the paper prototype should chart a basic user flow for the experience in 5 “screenshots” that show what users will see on their mobile device. There is no need to use digital tools for this first pass rapid prototype—a pen/pencil/sharpie will make for a perfect design tool. Keep in mind that a rapid prototype of this nature exists in order to convey what value the app would bring and how it might work—it is not meant to be a work of art. Where necessary, include notes or comments to help an outsider understand the intended app flow. Each sketch/screenshot should be on 8.5” x 11” paper, and you should capture your sketches digitally in order to submit them as part of the overall assignment.
The overall assignment submission will be made up of the following:
Your core concept and value proposition (written in full sentences, max. 1 paragraph)
A brief summary of insights from your ideation session, including 3 key learnings from facilitation. (written in full sentences, max. ½ page)
A brief written description of your rapid prototype (max. ½ page)
Up to 2 pages of artifacts (photos of the session and/or photos of whiteboards/sticky notes) from your ideation session that document the process.
The 5 sketches from your rapid prototype. You can use a scanner or smartphone camera to digitize the sketches as needed.
Compile each of these components into one document/file and submit it to the proper folder (see instructions below).
Format
Length and space: 9 pages max., single spaced
Font type: Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman
Font size: 12 point
Citation guide: APA Style
File type: Portable Document Format (PDF), Microsoft Word (DOC or DOCX)
Resources
You are encouraged to use the resources provided in Library, Research and Writing Assistance, under the Getting Started module. Noteworthy tools include the Purdue OWL: APA Formatting and Style Guide and Grammarly.
Before you begin your assignment, review the rubric to understand the assignment’s expectations. .
