btec tech award in dit - component 1

Welcome, Detective! Your mission is to investigate User Interfaces (UIs) online. A UI is simply the layout, buttons, and menus you use on a website or PC program. Your job is to find good, bad, and accessible examples using your PC and file a report on your findings.


Download and open the ‘UI Detective Report’ Word document. This is your report file where you will record your findings. To take screenshots, find and open the Snipping Tool or Snip & Sketch app on your PC (search for it in the Start Menu). This lets you copy part of your screen.


Visit a website that you think is well-designed and easy to use (e.g., BBC, YouTube, a favourite brand). Take a screenshot of its homepage and paste it into your report.


It can be hard to find bad websites on purpose! The easiest way is to search Google for “bad website design examples”. Look through the articles or images to find a website that looks confusing or is difficult to use. Take a screenshot of it and paste it into your report.


"Accessibility" features help people with disabilities use computers. In your PC’s main Settings menu, find the ‘Accessibility’ section. Choose one of the features (like ‘Magnifier’, ‘Colour Filters’, or ‘High contrast’) and take a screenshot of its description or settings panel and paste it into your report.

For more ideas, you can look at the examples on the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative website.


For each user interface example, type your analysis in the space provided for each one.

Outcome: A completed report.

Every app on your computer or phone started as just an idea. Before any code is written, designers have to do two very important things: Plan the project and Design what it will look like. Think of it like building with LEGO. The plan is your instruction booklet telling you the steps to follow. The design is the picture on the front of the box showing you what you're trying to build. In this task, you will do both for a simple pizza takeaway app.


Download and open the ‘My Pizza App Plan and Design’ Word document. This is the document you will record your work in and that you will print when the lesson is over.


Your first job is to plan the project. In the "My Project Plan" section of the worksheet, you need to write a simple to-do list with three main steps for creating this app.


Write these down on your worksheet.


There are three online tools which I would like you to investigate. Your teacher will talk you through accessing these sites and setting them up correctly. You will need access to your school email account to verify you aren't a robot 🤖!


If this is a bit overwhelming, I'd suggest you use Microsoft Powerpoint; it's actually a really great vector graphics tool.


Before you start designing your own app, research some existing ones. Open up Google Images and type in "pizza app designs" and explore the results. Choose three that you like and open the images in a new tab (right click on the image > open in new tab).

There is a space in the report document to paste these three images in. Right click on each image and choose 'Copy'. Click your cursor in the place in the word document and paste.


Now it's time to complete Task 2 from your plan: design the main screen. The app screen must include:


You can create your design using the tools in Diagrams.net, Penpot, Figma or Microsoft Powerpoint if you don't want the same learning curve, creating your design there, and then copying it into your Word document.


Make sure your three-step plan is typed into the first section of the Word document, your researched UI's are in the second part and the app screen design is placed inside the phone outline in the third section of the document.

Outcome: A completed Word document with both your three-step plan and your app screen design. Print this document and hand it to your teacher for your checkpoint.

Welcome to your final introductory mission! Now that you've explored different UIs and even planned your own, it's time to become a reviewer. A review is where you look at a finished product and judge how successful it is. To do this fairly, we use criteria – a set of rules to judge something against. For this task, you will visit a website and rate it using five criteria to see how effective its interface is.


Download and open the ‘Website Review Card’ Word document. This is where you will record what you have found out during this activity.


You will be investigating and reviewing the BBC Newsround website.


Spend about 5-10 minutes exploring the website. Click on different stories, use the menu, and look at the overall layout. Dig deep! As you explore, think about the five review criteria:




Outcome: A completed Word document with all five-star ratings and justifications filled in. Print this document and hand it to your teacher for your final checkpoint.