lesson 5.8 - the review process: criteria, strengths & weaknesses
Master the review process for digital user interfaces. Learn to evaluate designs against project criteria and identify strengths and weaknesses for BTEC DIT.
Welcome to the Majestic Cinema App design project! You have planned, you have designed, and now it is time to put on your critic's hat. Today we are reviewing a working prototype, listening to the actual design meetings, and figuring out what works perfectly and what needs a little more polish to truly meet our users' needs. Let's find out if the design team actually listened to the client!
Learning Outcomes
The Building Blocks (Factual Knowledge)
The Connections and Theories (Conceptual Knowledge)
The Skills and Methods (Procedural Knowledge)
Recall the specific user and system requirements outlined in a project proposal.
Describe the difference between a design strength and a design weakness in the context of user interfaces.
Analyse a client's initial requests to determine which ones fit within project constraints.
The Connections and Theories (Conceptual Knowledge)
Describe how specific design choices impact user experience, accessibility, and task efficiency.
Analyse the relationship between a rejected client request and a specific project constraint.
Evaluate the extent to which an interactive prototype meets the psychological design goals of the target audience.
The Skills and Methods (Procedural Knowledge)
Apply a structured review process to assess a digital prototype against original criteria.
Evaluate a design objectively, documenting justified strengths and weaknesses.
Create a formal review summary that clearly links design features back to the project proposal.
Digital Skill Focus: Evaluate digital prototypes against specific project proposals to ensure they meet the specific needs, accessibility requirements, and constraints of the target audience.
The Review Process: Evaluating Your UI Prototype
Welcome to the critical evaluation phase! Once you have built a digital Prototype, you cannot just assume it is perfect. You must conduct a rigorous review against your original Project Proposal.
The Single Source of Truth
Your proposal is the master document. It contains the agreed User Requirements (what the user needs to do), System Requirements (the hardware inputs and outputs), and the overarching Design Goals (like reducing task completion time). A professional review involves taking these criteria and checking if your prototype actually delivers for the Target Audience.
The Art of Compromise
As a designer, you will receive dozens of requests from clients. However, you must filter these through your Project Constraints (time and budget). You cannot build a £10,000 voice recognition system on a £500 budget! You also have to prioritise mandatory Accessibility Needs over fancy, unnecessary features.
Identifying Strengths & Weaknesses
A Strength is a specific design feature that successfully solves a problem or meets a requirement in the proposal. A Weakness is a specific area where the prototype fails to fully meet the brief. To get top marks, you must provide a Justification for both, explaining exactly *why* a feature is a success or failure using technical vocabulary. You can read more about standard evaluation methods on the Nielsen Norman Group website.
Task From Brainstorm to Blueprint
Welcome to the Majestic Cinema App design project! Originally, Mr. Sterling provided a wishlist of 12 feature requests for a new digital booking system. However, in real-world design, not every idea can be built. Alex, the designer had to make some tough decisions based on project theory, strict constraints, and the needs of the target audience.
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Get organised
Download a copy of the Request Analysis document and open it up in Word (Other word-processors are available).
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The Client Meeting
Listen to the audio clip below of the final project proposal meeting between Mr Sterling (the owner of Majestic Cinema) and Alex, the designer. (Download Transcript)
The Meeting
As you listen, review the table in the worksheet to see which of Mr. Sterling's 12 requests made the final cut, and the exact design justifications Alex used to make those decisions.
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The Missing Requests
Look closely at your worksheet. Requests 4 (a search bar) and 8 (a warning beep for taken seats) are missing from the conversation! Do you think these two requests should be kept or cut? Write a short justification for your decision.
Need some inspiration on standard UI features? Search for booking app UI features.
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The Prototype Review
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Download the completed Project Proposal document. This is your "Single Source of Truth."
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Now, open the interactive prototype: Open Majestic Cinema Prototype
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Click through every screen. Try to book a ticket. Look closely at the Project Proposal and identify three strengths and three weaknesses of the prototype. Record your ideas on your worksheet.
Remember: You cannot say a weakness is "It doesn't have voice control." We already agreed to cut that! You must find weaknesses based ONLY on what is written in the Project Proposal you downloaded.
Need help structuring your evaluation professionally? Click on this carefully crafted AI prompt...
Act as a BTEC IT teacher. Explain how to write a formal evaluation of a user interface prototype. Keep the response under 100 words. Audience is Key Stage 4 students. Tone is encouraging and academic. Constraints: must include the words 'justification' and 'criteria'. NO intro, NO outro, NO deviation from the topic, NO follow-up questions.
4
Submit your masterpiece
Finally, submit your word document for assessment.
Outcome: A completed worksheet and a formal review document containing two justified strengths and two justified weaknesses linked directly to the Majestic Cinema project proposal.
Application to the Component Sample PSA
Component 1: Majestic Cinema
In Task 4 of your Component 1 assessment, you will be required to formally review your Majestic Cinema user interface prototype. This lesson perfectly mirrors that exact task. You cannot just state that your app looks good; you must critically evaluate it against the initial constraints, accessibility needs, and user requirements established during the planning phase. If you had to cut a requested feature because of the £500 budget constraint, your evaluation must explicitly state this as a justified design decision rather than an accidental omission. Examiner marks are awarded for the depth of your justification.
Component 2: Pedal Power Cycles
For the Pedal Power Cycles data dashboard in Component 2, the review process is equally rigorous but focuses on data presentation and system constraints. You will need to evaluate whether your dashboard successfully meets the store manager's specific requirements, such as rapidly tracking electric bike sales. A key strength in your evaluation might highlight how your choice of high-contrast colours meets accessibility needs, while a weakness might involve acknowledging that the software constraint limited your ability to create fully automated, real-time data updates.
Out of Lesson Learning
⭐ The Budget Buster
Imagine the Majestic Cinema manager asks you to add a live video feed of the cinema lobby to the mobile app prototype so customers can see how long the queue is. Write a short paragraph explicitly rejecting this request, justifying your decision by linking it directly to the original project constraints of time and financial resources.
Imagine the Majestic Cinema manager asks you to add a live video feed of the cinema lobby to the mobile app prototype so customers can see how long the queue is. Write a short paragraph explicitly rejecting this request, justifying your decision by linking it directly to the original project constraints of time and financial resources.
⭐⭐ The Pedal Power Palette Test
You have designed a bar chart for the Pedal Power Cycles dashboard using dark blue and dark purple bars to represent different bike types. Write a formal evaluation paragraph identifying this specific design choice as a weakness. You must explicitly explain how this fails to meet standard accessibility needs for users with colour vision deficiencies and propose a better, justified alternative.
You have designed a bar chart for the Pedal Power Cycles dashboard using dark blue and dark purple bars to represent different bike types. Write a formal evaluation paragraph identifying this specific design choice as a weakness. You must explicitly explain how this fails to meet standard accessibility needs for users with colour vision deficiencies and propose a better, justified alternative.
⭐⭐⭐ The Post-Prototype Pivot
After reviewing your Majestic Cinema prototype, the client admits they forgot to include a crucial requirement: users must be able to securely scan a physical QR code at the physical kiosk to print their tickets. Evaluate the impact of this late request. Write a professional response explaining how this new hardware requirement changes the system input specifications and impacts the previously agreed project timescale and task dependencies.
After reviewing your Majestic Cinema prototype, the client admits they forgot to include a crucial requirement: users must be able to securely scan a physical QR code at the physical kiosk to print their tickets. Evaluate the impact of this late request. Write a professional response explaining how this new hardware requirement changes the system input specifications and impacts the previously agreed project timescale and task dependencies.
Last modified: May 14th, 2026
