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2 DESIGN & BUILD SOLUTION

Design a prototype of the solution for a detailed internal review and evaluation by a sample of stakeholders. Based on what you learn from your prototype, organize a development strategy to methodically program and style your solution with efficiency and quality. Also prepare for the promotion and launch of your solution, and conduct unit testing to ensure all is in working order before an in-class demonstration.

Many of the tasks for this stage may occur in parallel with occasional starts and stops appropriate for your development progress.

Question Bank Development

You will find that creating good trivia questions will take careful thought and multiple iterations. So getting a good start on your question bank will be very beneficial. Follow the instructions for managing a question database for your team and make an intentional plan to develop your 20 or more questions.

❏ Deliverable Your completed 20+ question database.

Interface Mockups

After careful review of your team's sketches and ideas (from 1.5), agree on the main game features and the visual theme of your team's design. Then create digital interface mockups that represent your different screen states that can demonstrate the game flow. These mockups will be used in the next step to create an interactive prototype.

If your team is has having difficulty agreeing on a design direction, determine a plan to come to a decision. Maybe, instead of one mockup, you make two or three unique mockups to compare before deciding.

❏ Deliverables Five digital screen mockups (or more) that represent:

the welcome screen
the question screen
the question screen on correct answer feedback
the question screen on incorrect answer feedback
the closing (thank you) screen once the player is done.

Interactive Prototype

Provide enough visual and interactive detail in your interactive prototype to allow thorough testing of each potential user scenario in your game. We recommend you use Marvel App to create your prototype.

❏ Deliverable A link to your working Marvel App prototype that uses your interface mockups.

Prototype Evaluation

Each team member should evaluate the prototype by having two people individually play the prototype game using the think-aloud protocol. Synthesize your results and define important decisions for your trivia design before coding begins.

Thinking Aloud from Nielsen Norman Group.

❏ Deliverable A document or slide that summarizes the results of your prototype evaluation.

Code Development Outline and Begin Coding

Outline the features to program by priority--core features, enhanced features, and wish list features. You will find an example of a basic requirements document in the examples tab, as well as the feature map example that can serve the same purpose. Begin coding and maintain well organized code as you progress towards your first full demonstration. It is important to code in "chunks" that you can test frequently to minimize the chance of some bugs getting very hard to diagnose.

Optionally, you could use pseudocode to outline your plan for development as well. This Kahn Academy tutorial is a good introduction to the technique.

❏ Deliverable A document or slide that outlines your progressive development plan.

Marketing card

Create a 3" x 5" marketing card. The marketing card will be a valuable lead-in to your game that could be distributed physically or as a digital image. Think about what your elevator pitch would be for the game and make it visual.

❏ Deliverable A PNG image file of your marketing card.

Code Testing

Conduct some basic code testing to verify that the app is acting as expected under different conditions. Ensure that everything works as expected on different size screens and with touch or mouse interactions. Consider all the things a user might do, like double click, click and drag, swipe, change browser dimensions mid-game, etc.

❏ Deliverable A document outlining the results of your code testing.

Prepare Development Review and Demonstration

Take this opportunity to wrap-up your trivia app the best you can in order to begin testing your game in the next phase.

❏ Deliverable A slide set with a link to your prototype, a summary of evaluation results, a copy of your marketing card, and a link to your working trivia app. Prepare to demonstrate and present your background work.