Design Concept
This is the starting point for design. The concept describes the initial idea and with best practices includes Mockups.
How do projects get started?
There can be many ways and reasons that a project is initiated. It may be that a company has a customer has a need or you see a problem that needs solving. Sometimes it may be your own circumstance and interests that collide and generate the germ of an idea.
Some important practices to employ when launching a project
Design Concept: Create a design concept document that heavily features Mockups which in essence can illustrate the use of the software. If you are actually creating a product with a presentation layer (an interface) this is easy to do. In the case of a back-end piece of software you might consider instead the use of UML case diagrams.
Design Concept Template
Title:______________
(author:)
****fill in the following sections and modify as needed******
Abstract
1 paragraph describing the idea, possibly with some motivating images illustrating a use case or something related to the project
Concept
Give a run through of a typical use-case by showing Mockups of the Application or if no GUI Mockups visualizing data exchanges or chages in state
How it Works
A system diagram (at a high level) that hints at the architecture and modularization of your system
Issues
Give important issues that need to be researched (basically list things you dont know yet how you will do). Also give impacts that are important--like budgetary issues.
Feedback: get some initial feedback from other developers and potential customers of your product. At this point your ideas may be very loose if possible use a design concept document with some mockup interfaces you can use to talk about your idea to them. Based on this feedback you might get new ideas or even change your product. I often find this useful for getting ideas for future versions --it may not be possible for an initial release to give all of your “testors” all of their desires.
Requirements Elicitation - there are many Software Engineering techniques that discuss how to create insightful probing questions when you are meeting with others during your initial feedback process. My suggestion is to Keep It Simple and to come up with the best set of questions you can and go over them. Sometimes if you are luck your initial feedback group might meet with you more than once or take email questions. Often you think of things you might want to ask after you have worked with a few people on feedback. My suggestion is to stage it--go your first meeting with someone (maybe a cohort) who will spend the extra time with you that can generate these insightful questions.
NEXT = using the Feedback you are ready to generate a Design Document