Application Development Design Studio II

Course Composition and Objectives

The IST design studios will be self-directed and project-based and will include instructor guided activity in the all phases of the application development process. Students will be encouraged to apply knowledge and skills gained in prior courses and to explore new techniques for managing application development challenges. Some examples of these, integrated within the 6 major phases of application development, might include:

• Application Project Planning – Gannt charts, PERT chats, functional decomposition, activity allocation, skill mapping.
• Domain Analysis & Problem Structuring – stakeholder analysis, personas, apprenticing with the user, formal and informal problem structuring methods.
• Application Requirements Analysis – scenario-based methods, use cases, task analysis, utility-theoretic design.
• Application Design – activity modeling, object-sequence modeling, class diagrams, statecharts, wireframing and other low-fidelity prototyping methods.
• Application Development – programming using application programming interfaces and other source code resources, applying design and architecture patterns, integrated development environments.
• Application Quality Assurance – black and white box testing; unit, integration, and system testing, test cases, scripting and other testing tools.
• Instructors Choice: Instructors may choose topics and learning objectives that meet the spirit of the course as defined here. Instructors may choose to devote more time to the learning objectives listed above or to add additional, complimentary objectives. Supplementary material and objectives should not overlap with the defined content of other courses in the curriculum

Course Description

This studio course will provide opportunities for students to practice technical skills acquired in their previous design and development courses to date, specifically, in IST 140, Introduction to Application Development; IST 242, Intermediate and Object Oriented Application Development; and IST 311, Object-Oriented Design and Software Applications. The course will follow the general format of experiential studios in the arts and architecture. It will be primarily largely problem-based and project oriented. Peer and instructor design critiques will be the primary feedback and assessment mechanisms. Students in the IST Software Design Studios will be expected to complete deliverables in each phase of the systems development life-cycle (i.e. problem definition, requirements analysis, design, development, test) regardless of the development paradigm employed (plan-based, agile, etc).

A key objective of this design studio will be to provide application development opportunities where students can apply knowledge and practice techniques gained from their foundation and first upper-division courses.

Projects may be undertaken by individuals, pairs, or larger groups but each studio participant will be responsible for producing significant individual project deliverables. Project ideas may come from the student or from the instructor; however, projects related to students’ other course deliverables will require the agreement of both instructors.

Students will be required to maintain a design and development journal. This journal will be the analog of an engineering notebook or artist’s sketchbook and should contain a running account of the students design and development ideas, explorations, rationale, and other notes.

The IST design and development studios are a forum for serious students to engage with the concepts, process, tools, and materials used to envision and build software applications. Both collaboration and individual performance will be emphasized, as will experimentation, risk-taking, and enthusiasm for the process of designing and building working software applications. Students will be expected to improvise and then respond constructively to feedback from instructors and peers.