Published: Thu 15 February 2018
By BB&A Teaching Team
In assignments .
Design and implement a user experience for the game "Treasure" or for your final project. For the purposes of this assignment,
the nature of the application is not important. Rather, your focus will be on designing user interfaces and
user experiences for learning. You will discuss these ideas in depth in class in upcoming weeks; taking a stab at it first
on your own will prepare you to engage more deeply with the theory later.
Programming : Writing a working piece of code. The technical quality or impressiveness is not important--choose the right level of challenge for yourself.Designing experiences : Going from theory to implementationConnecting the interface to the code : The interface might be physical buttons, an on-screen display, or some other surface where the user and the program meet.
Option 1: Treasure
Working alone or in a group of 2, create an interface to the game "Treasure." In this game, you and an opponent are competing for thirteen treasures, with point values ranging 1 to 13.
Each round, a random treasure is displayed and then you and the opponent each choose a card from your hand, showing them at the same time. Whoever plays the higher card wins the treasure.
(However, a 1 beats a 13.) Whoever has the most treasure points at the end wins.
Chris has built a treasure server at http://treasure.chrisproctor.net , which you can play by typing in URLs in your browser. Play with it so you understand
how it works:
Create a new user by going to treasure.chrisproctor.net/players/new/USERNAME , replacing USERNAME with the username you want. You will get a
secret pid. Don't lose this!
Now you can see your profile at http://treasure.chrisproctor.net/players/PID , again replacing PID with your PID.
Create a new game with /players/PID/games/new, join an existing game with /players/PID/games/join, or resume a game you're already playing with /players/PID/games/resume.
Now you will see information about this game. You can play your next card with /players/PID/games/GID/play/CARD, where CARD is a number between 1 and 13.
With a bit of fussing, you should be able to play a whole game. You could create two different users and play against each other if you like. This works, but it's not a nice interface or a particularly
nice experience. Your job is to build a better interface.
Designing the interface
First, think about what kind of experience you want your user to have. For example,
Who is your target user? What do you expect will be the context of use?
Do you want to encourage the user to think about game strategy? Will this function as some kind of microworld?
Do you want to encourage social play? Do you want to encourage competition?
What kinds of emotions do you want the user to have?
What tasks will the user need to perform? (These are sometimes described using user stories .)
What representations and interactions will you supply to help the user accomplish these tasks?
How would you decide your interface was successful?
Develop and iterate some ideas for the user interface. You will need to articulate a rationale for your choices connected to learning.
Implementing the interface
You may use any technology you want, but code is provided for Python and for Scratch.
Deliverables
Your interface, in some playable format.
Your code. (If you use Scratch, this should be your SBX file.)
A brief writeup explaining your design choices in terms of learning. Explain how you want your user to think or interact with your interface, and connect this to specific design choices in the interface. Aim for ~300 words. Possible formats:
Annotated screenshots, wireframes, or sketches (See Teacher Portal or Student Journalism in Interface design case studies )
A list of user stories with interface features supporting them (See Interactive Storytelling in Interface design case studies )
Several paragraphs summarizing your design process, explaining what you were trying to achieve and options you considered for achieving it.
Option 2: User interface for your final project
If you are planning to have a computational aspect to your final project, you may instead use this assignment as a chance to design the interface. In this case, your
final project group will submit one interface. Your interface should work, even if the back end is stubbed (Often, one part of a software system can't function without other parts. In such cases,
it is helpful to create a stub or a mock , which pretends to be a fully-functioning component. For example, as you design your interface, you could have it consume a static JSON file instead of implementing
whatever kind of dynamic back end you ultimately plan to have.)
Note: If you choose Option 2, this assignment will be an ambitious milestone in your final project. We recognize that your interface will not be a complete implementation of your final project, and encourage you to
share your plans for the complete interface, along with a working implementation of part of it. This will not look like an unfinished assignment; it will look like you've completed part of a larger, intentional whole.
Deliverables
Your interface, in some playable format.
Your code. (If you use Scratch, this should be your SBX file.)
A brief writeup explaining your design choices in terms of learning. Explain how you want your user to think or interact with your interface, and connect this to specific design choices in the interface. Aim for ~300 words. Possible formats:
Annotated screenshots, wireframes, or sketches (See Teacher Portal or Student Journalism in Interface design case studies )
A list of user stories with interface features supporting them (See Interactive Storytelling in Interface design case studies )
Several paragraphs summarizing your design process, explaining what you were trying to achieve and options you considered for achieving it.
Sketches or design documents showing how the interface components you are turning in fit into your larger project. (This might already be achieved in your writeup explaining design choices.)