Week 09 ToDos

1. Watch Lecture Videos

Watch the week 09 lecture videos in advance of your team meeting.

Lecture References:
See Resources→References for instructions on how to access lecture references.

• Karl Wiegers and Joy Beatty, Software Requirements, 3ed, Microsoft Press, 2013.
  • Chapter 10: Documenting the requirements
  • Chapter 15: Risk reduction through prototyping
• Ash Maurya, Running Lean, 2ed, O’Reilly, 2012.
  • Chapter 8: The Solution Interview
• ISO/IEC/IEEE, “Systems and Software Engineering – Life Cycle Processes – Requirements Engineering”, International Standard 29148-2018, November 30, 2018.
  • Section 9.6: Software Requirements Specification (SRS) content

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2. User Interface Sketches

Your team is to provide 10 annotated sketches of screens (or Web pages, or user interfaces) that make up a (possibly partial) mockup of your product. If you have not yet considered what the UI of your project might look like, I recommend that your team employ 2-3 rounds of Crazy Eights per major screen, where (1) each team member spends 5-10 minutes generating 6-8 different sketches for each screen; (2) each team member reviews all sketches and identifies 2-3 positive comments and 2-3 negative comments about each member’s collection of sketches; and (3) repeat, focusing on the positive UI design concents from the previous round. It is expected that you create hand-drawn sketches, scan them, and embed them into a PDF named «TeamName»_D9.pdf. The resultant sketches should be sketches (not wireframes or a professional mockup) and must be legible (where the TA determines what constitutes legible!).

Among the 10 screens, include (in order of priority)

1. at most two initialization screens (e.g., landing page, authentication screen, screen to choose use case) that a user sees first when they initiate a session with your product
2. the screens for the three use cases elaborated in Deliverable #8
3. limit of one error screen or “confirm or deny” screen – unless this is the only way to reach a count of 10 screens. Contact your TA in advance if you find that you need to use multiple error screens to reach 10 screens.

The focus of these sketches should be what content is on the screen, and how is it laid out. The screens should be enumerated, named, and annotated to describe each GUI widget. The annotation for an input GUI widget should explain how the user interacts with the widget (e.g., clicking on a button) and what system response, if any, is triggered by the GUI input. The annotation for an output GUI widget should explain what information is presented to the user.

Here are example UI sketches from the Modern Family project.

Grading Scheme: Your sketches and annotations will be marked on the basis of (1) the Appropriateness and Completeness of your sketches and (2) the Completeness and Clarity of your screen annotations. See the Week 9 rubric for details.

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3. Solution-Fit Hypothesis Testing

Identify five (5) hypotheses that reflect the riskiest parts of your proposed project regarding

• the ideas behind your proposed solution
• your mockup (in the form of interface sketches)
• your unique value proposition

For each hypothesis, construct a pass/fail test (falsifiable hypothesis) and a corresponding Solution-Fit Interview Question that will be used in future Solution-Fit Interviews. Include your answer (five hypotheses, and five corresponding Solution-Fit Questions) in the PDF file named «TeamName»_D9.pdf and submit it via LEARN.

Here is an example write-up of Solution-Fit Interview hypotheses and questions for the Curb’n project, which encourages students and young professionals to reduce their carbon emissions from the transportation options they use on a typical day.

Grading Scheme: This questions asks for only your Solution-Fit Interview hypotheses and questions, not for the Interview results. It will be marked on the basis of (1) the Appropriateness of your hypotheses about how well your project addresses your customer segment’s key problems, (2) the degree who which your hypotheses are Scientific, and (3) the Completeness and Appropriateness of your solution-fit questions with respect to your covering your solution-fit hypotheses and assessing your project’s mockup. See the Week 9 rubric for details.

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4. Feedback on Other Team’s Solution-Fit Interviews

Info

This section was moved from W09 to W10 on 2026-03-11.

Each team needs to pair up with one other team that is working with the same TA.

Use the Buddy Team feedback meeting to practice conducting your Solution-Fit Interviews on members of the buddy team…

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5. Start on your Software Requirements Specification

Please refer to the Project→SRS page.

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Due Next Monday (Mar 16, 8:59pm ET)

• Every team: Create a single PDF named «TeamName»_D9.pdf that includes the following, and submit it to LEARN
  • User Interface sketches
  • Solution Fit Hypotheses and Interview Questions