Students will be able to...
- Define key scenarios for a project and the features required to implement each scenario.
- Explain the importance of flow charting when designing an application.
- Students should each have their final project plan organizer and final project development plan
- Review [4 steps to solve any CS problem][]
- Scoring rubric (docx)(pdf)
| Duration | Description |
|---|---|
| 5 minutes | Do Now |
| 10 minutes | Review pitches |
| 20 minutes | Defining Scenarios |
| 15 minutes | Flow Chart |
| 5 minutes | Debrief and wrap-up |
- Project the Do Now on the board, circulate around the class to check that students are working and understand the instructions.
- If desired, give students a few minutes to rework their pitches or get more feedback from a classmate or instructor.
- Ask students to choose which idea they want to pursue, and write it down on the top of their Final Project Plan Organizer.
- A description of a set of interactions and/or tasks that describe a start-to-finish example of how a user might want to use the application.
- Explain that defining scenarios helps a programmer focus on what features are actually necessary to enable the key user interactions for their application.
- Instruct students to write down at least 3 scenarios for their project describing, from start to finish, interactions a user might have with their program to accomplish a specific goal.
- The scenarios should have a moderate level of detail in the description of the user interaction (e.g. "print a board," "input their name," etc.) but should not include any design or implementation details.
- Since this semester is text based a scenario would more likely be: text-based user flows (interactions with the console).
- Once students have written their scenarios, they should review them and develop a list of the necessary features to enable each scenario.
- there should be minimal technical detail in these descriptions, instead focusing on details of the user experience. The feature lists should should be more about requirements than implementation.
- The different paths a user can take through a program.
- At each step write down what options the user has and what scenarios that can lead to.
- Similar to the wire frame of last semester (wire-frames typically deal with screens, so a flow chart is a good alternative).
- Flow Charts do not include any details (such as specific text), but instead provide a broad impression of what an application will be like to aid in design and planning.
- Students will complete page 1 of the organizer by writing out the important interactions of their program.
- Encourage students to reference their feature lists to ensure they include all necessary interactions for their project, including simple things like a intro interaction, help interaction, or exit ("game over").
- As class ends, ensure students retain their work as they will use it to construct a detailed specification and implementation plan tomorrow.