Unit 1 Reflection and Diary Entry 

Design Document

Work Done

In this unit, I have layed out the design in detail for my website. The website will focus on a particular hobby of mine, the video game Tetris, specifically, a more obscure version of the game called Tetris the Grandmaster. There is not a ton of information on this game online, so I figured that designing a website about it would be a great way to share some of my knowledge and improve my javascript skills. I outlined the key themes of the site and what topics it should cover, including guides to improve at the game, how to set it up, the general history of the game and a leaderboard of the best scores. I also laid out specific personas who will be visiting the site and the scenarios that may occur when these users want to interact with the site in detail. This will allow me to develop a website with a better end-user experience because the functionality of the site will be designed with these personas and scenarios in mind. Finally, I laid out a mockup for the design of the site as well as a site map for how it will be navigated in accordance with the needs of the personas.

Rationale Relating to Personas and Scenarios

This section is not as applicable for unit 1 as it will be in later units since the personas and scenarios were actually created in this unit. I’ve outlined the creation process for the personas and scenarios in the ‘Work Done’ section.

Learning Outcomes

I have met the two stated learning outcomes for this unit namely to identify the potential audience and purpose for a website and to use a process to identify how the website will address the needs of this audience. I did this by following the process outlined in unit 1 and carefully crafting my own personas and scenarios that address who a user might be and why they will come to my site. By outlining these things, I was able to define requirements in accordance with the needs of the end-users and go through the mockup design process such that these requirements were met.

What Went Well, What Didn’t

I find that sometimes I’m in a creative mood, sometimes I’m not, so one of the more difficult things for me was picking a topic for what my website should be about. In the end, I decided to pick a hobby that I was interested in, Tetris, because I figured I would have a lot of information to provide for this topic. After selecting this topic, I found that the rest of the design process went really well and the personas and scenarios came naturally to me.

What I Would Change if I Did it Again

If I were to do this again, I may perhaps do a bit more research and analytics into the types of users that view similar websites so that I could be more accurate in describing the audience for my website. Perhaps even machine learning could be used on similar data sets to identify the types of users that would use my site and why. This would obviously increase the amount of time I would spend on the design report, however. Overall, I am happy with the way that my design report turned out for the purposes of this course.

The Most Surprising and Useful Thing I Learned

In this unit, the most surprising thing that I learned was also the most useful: the concept of personas. Upon first reading about the concept in the course overview, I thought it seemed a bit silly. After actually writing the personas, I found that this design process was actually very useful and almost immediately provided me with design insights and ideas. It is a good design method and I will be using it in projects in the future.

How My Previous Experience Impacted My Work

As an engineering student, I have completed a lot of projects and have learned that laying out your requirements early is one of the keys to success. This experience helped me in this unit since writing a design report ahead of time for what my website will look like felt very natural and almost automatic.