Important Questions and Considerations

Created by Christian Howard-Sukhil, May 2019

Project Goals

1. What is the purpose or goal of your project?
2. What experience are you trying to convey?
3. What information are you trying to convey?
4. What are your expected learning outcomes (for both yourself and your audience)?

Audience Experience

1. Who is your primary audience?
2. Do you have additional secondary audiences? (i.e., peers, professors, potential employers, donors and funding agencies, etc.)
3. Do these various audiences come with different levels of knowledge about your project and goals?
4. How can you best speak to each kind of audience?
5. What is the most important information or takeaway that you want your audience to get?

Research and Data

1. What kind of research do you need to conduct for your project?
2. How have you gathered/collected your data?
3. How have you curated your data?
4. What assumptions does your data make?
5. What biases are inherent in your data?
6. (How) Will you make your methods and data available to the public?

Outcome/Deliverable

1. What design elements do you need to incorporate? (i.e., text, images, project portfolio, etc.)
2. What technological platform could best help you display your information? (i.e., static website, dynamic website, app, 3D model, podcast, etc.)
3. If you want to create a website, what kind? (i.e., blog, database, annotated text, etc.)
4. What is your short-term outcome?
5. What is your long-term outcome?

Constraints/Limitations

Budget

1. What is your budget?
2. What equipment do you need to purchase?
3. What resources (equipment, personnel, etc.) can you use that are already available to you or to your community?

Project Completion

1. When is the project finished?
2. Can you split the project into distinct parts or phases? How many?
3. At what point is each part of phase complete?
4. How often will you update the project?
5. Do you want to update the file formats when new technologies become available?
6. At what point do you “expire” or stop working on and updating the project?

Time

1. What time limitations do you have?
2. How long will it take to brainstorm the project?
3. How long will it take to learn the technology?
4. How long will it take to implement the project?
5. How long will it take to conduct user testing?
6. How long will it take to revise the project?
7. If you split the project into distinct parts or phases, how long will each of these steps take for each phase?

*Tip: Create a timeline that includes brainstorming, training, implementation, testing, and revision for each expected phase of your project

Access & Accessibility

1. Will your project be open access, or will it be limited to a select group of people?
2. If limited, to whom will it be available? Will you charge a fee for access or services?
3. How can the project be adapted for people with disabilities?
4. Will the project incorporate audio elements (for text), captions (for videos), and/or descriptions (for images)?

Storage

1. How will you store the project?
2. What file format(s) will you use?
3. How much space on your computer/server does the project take up?
4. Do you need to explore external hosting for your project?