Breakdown for the last three classes (including today)

OUR FINAL IS ON:

Friday, May 10, from 9am-11am

Here is what is due for the final:

1. Your completed, public website
2. A 2-5 page paper, with this premise:

You are head of design of Facebook (congrats on scoring such a high-profile job while still in college!). What would you do to improve the design of Facebook, to give a better user experience? You should think of visual elements, but also think of all the design choices that don't have as clear a visual stamp – there are a ton of design decisions that go into user experience, from prioritizing what sort of content rises to the top of a news feed, to running algorithms for recommendations. You can even think of this in terms of institutional design – would there be ways that FB could change its internal aims and incentives to generate better user experiences?

You don't have to frame this is a completely "anti-Facebook" exercise (though if you think FB is indeed badly designed for its users, you can be completely scathing about its current practices). Maybe you think they're doing a pretty good job – and there can still be room for improvement. Facebook is continuously changing its user experience, and if there was a lead designer there who said "Yeah, I think FB is perfect as is, nothing needs to change," they'd be out of a job pretty much immediately.

Here's how the remaining classes will break down:

THIS WEDNESDAY (5/1)

By Wednesday, read the three linked articles in your subject area (see the blog post below). In Wednesday's class, I'll set aside an hour for all of you in your subject area to meet as a group, put your heads together, and put together a presentation summarizing what you learned, which you will actually present the following Monday.

We will also review websites-in-process that we haven't seen in class yet. If my notes are right, we still have to look at: Makenna, Elizabeth, Brea, Clayton, Harris, Ty, Savannah and Allie

NEXT MONDAY (5/6), last day of class

Each small group will present what they learned to the class (in a presentation of somewhere between 10-15 minutes. This will be a big info-dump to share our knowledge. Hopefully all of the information will help inform your 2-5 page paper on design improvements for Facebook – which, again, is due at out final, on the 10th. We will discuss your design recommendations during the final (as well as looking at your finished websites).