TASK
You are to develop at least two different initial concept designs that would meet the needs of the Mountain Artist Cooperative. These designs will be wireframe only designs at this stage.
The Mountain Artist Cooperative Market case study is located in Interact Resources. You need to read this case study before starting this assessment item.
You will prepare a presentation for the Mountain Artist Cooperative to display your concepts as well as discuss both concepts and the recommended design.
Your Task:
1. Sketch two (2) alternative interface designs for the Mountain Artist Cooperative problem. These designs should be for a web page as viewed on a standard 60cm (24 inch) PC monitor with a suitable screen resolution. It is recommended that you use the Balsamiq Mockups wireframe tool for these concept designs. (60 marks)
2. As part of your presentation, you should indicate why these designs are a good solution for the Mountain Artists Cooperative. The presentation should recommend one of your designs for further development and state why this design is recommended. (40 marks)
There are two goals in this assignment:
• The first is to exercise your user interface design abilities. Creativity in balancing usability with the constraints of the interface will be essential to successfully completing this assignment.
• The second is to start thinking about WHY you chose and used certain designs or design patterns. You need to be able to discuss why your design is a good solution to the problem.
The design sketches for this assignment can be hand drawn. But, if you do use hand drawn sketches, then you need to ensure that they can be easily read when they are scanned into your presentation. It is highly recommended that you use the Balsamiq Mockups tool for the final copies of your concept designs.
Remember that you are sketching a concept design for an interface. Your designs are concepts that you are presenting to your client. They should not be accurate to the pixel-level.
CASE STUDY
The Mountain Artist Cooperative Market problem
You have been approached by the Mountain Artist Cooperative (the Co-op). The Co-op has for some years run a series of successful weekend markets for the member artists where they can sell their tee shirts, cards, candles, pottery, knitted products, paintings and other artisan-made products. The market is now struggling because of competition from large retail stores, as well as from the many products that are available online.
The Co-op wants to create an online market where each of their members can display and sell their individual goods. The Co-op would like to be able categorise its artists by name or by product, or by other appropriate categories. It wants these categories to be available to all users so that they can use these categories on the site in order to find artists and products. The Co-op also wants an effective search engine that will search for artists, products, categories, styles, etc. They see this search engine and the ability to categorise both artists and their products as the key to the success of this market site.
Each member of the Co-op would need a separate area where they can display photos, details of their different items, prices and whether or not they are prepared to take special orders or commissions for work. Each member should be able to change the theme of their own area to reflect their individual style, while still retaining the overall theme of the Co-op market. Each member’s area would also need to show users whether an item is available for immediate sale or whether it needs to be ordered. Each item should have the price clearly marked, except in the case of special orders or commission work. Then there should be an option for the users to contact the artist to discuss the order or work required.
The Co-op wants a single shopping cart for the whole site so that a user can order goods from one or more artists at a time, and then complete a single transaction for all purchases.
The Co-op would also like the category and search engine made available in a mobile app to allow users to search the site from any device. The app should be able to replicate much of the functionality of the main web site.
PRESENTATION
• All designs are to be presented in a slideshow format. You are to use either PowerPoint or Google Slides (download in .pptx format) for your presentation.
• All designs and design discussions are to be presented in a single slide deck. All design sketches or wireframes are to be embedded into the presentation. You should consider using the speakers notes section of the slides for any additional commentary on each slide.
• You should be prepared to present your solution as part of a tutorial.
Designs that are presented in PDF format or as Zip files will not be marked.