Technical and Professional Writing
Engl 402 Spring 2018
Redesign Project
Grade breakdown:
Progress Report (due by 3 p.m. on April 18): 2%
Letter (due by 12 p.m. on May 1): 10%
Redesigned Graphic (submitted with the letter, and due with the letter by 12 p.m. on May 1): 3%
Overview
Most documents begin with text and basic formatting. Visual cues and other formatting, such as the inclusion of graphics, are introduced later. As we can see in the examples in your textbook, the difference between a page with minimal formatting and a well-designed page can be significant. We also see how important audience and purpose are in designing a page with text, and consideration of audience and purpose should affect every design decision we make. Documents and graphics are often redesigned due to changes in audience and/or purpose.
Assignment:
In follow up to your R&D Project, you have been asked to redesign the graphic your team created for a new audience. In the R&D Project you created a graphic as a team. This time you will redesign your team's graphic on your own; each member of your team must create their own redesign. Your redesign must be in a different medium than the original (i.e. redesigning a website to a user-friendly brochure) and should be different enough from your team members' redesigns to show you completed the assignment on your own.
In accordance with what you learned from Chapter 13 and Nielsen, you are required to do at least two usability tests of your redesign: a test of your original redesign, and a test of your final design.
Progress Report, Memo
The progress report should include the same content as your R&D Project Progress Report, with a focus in this project on your progress with the redesign and usability testing. Be as specific as possible in your introduction, discussion of work completed, work scheduled, problems, and conclusion. The instructor needs to know as much as possible in order to help those who are struggling with the project.
Letter
Additionally, you must write a letter to the audience of your R&D Report explaining how you redesigned the graphic and persuading them to adopt your redesign. You may create your own visuals or use visuals from elsewhere, such as the internet, but you must give credit and provide appropriate documentation for any designs, graphics, etc, not your own. In other words, don't plagiarize.
Your letter must include:
- Introduction—identify the subject, the purpose, and background/context. Summarize key findings and recommendations. Identify the type of graphic you have changed your R&D graphic to and explain why.
- Body—at least one (and probably two or more) paragraphs
- discussing your methods for redesigning your graphic and your methods for how you set up usability testing,
- and analyzing your redesign (what is it and why is it a design worth adopting?).
Reference specific design principles (Chapter 11) and how you evaluated and tested your redesign (Chapter 13). Saying, "My revised graphic uses contrast effectively" or that three out of four testers found your revisions effective is a good start, for example, but you would still want to explain why.
- Conclusion—recommendation and/or action proposed. Why should your audience adopt your redesign?
- Appendix:
- usability documents which include the questions you asked and the answers to those questions,
- the original graphic,
- and your final graphic.
- You may include additional documents or information you feel are relevant to the project, such rough drafts.
- Minimum length of one page, not including works cited/reference pages and appendix, and there is no maximum length.
- Must follow appropriate formatting for a letter (see Chapter 14).
Your letter will be graded on how clearly and specifically you discuss and analyze how you redesigned the R&D graphic, with emphasis on the body and clarity of understanding of design principles. Missing parts (such as usability documents) will result in a grade drop of approximately a third of a letter grade (i.e. from a B to a B-)
Your redesign will be graded on how effectively you apply those principles. Please reference the review rubric for additional information.
You may use templates as starting points but you must be prepared to demonstrate (and if necessary document in your written report) how you adapted the template. Graphics which closely resemble a template may only receive partial credit.
Please choose either MLA or APA style to document ideas not your own, including graphics you take from elsewhere. Keep in mind many companies and organizations, including WSU, require you to get permission to use their graphics and designs.