Capstone · The mini portfolio

Now do the whole loop

This is a miniature of the real university assessment. If you enjoy the next two hours, that is the strongest signal this page can give you.

The module this tutorial condenses is graded on one thing: a portfolio that carries a single product idea through the early design stages. Not an exam, a body of work. Here is the honest miniature, doable in an afternoon with paper, a pen and one recruitable human.

Step 1 · The idea, 10 minutes

Pick a small annoyance from your own life and invent an app that fixes it. Homework tracking, splitting money after a group order, deciding what to cook. Small and real beats big and vague. Write three sentences: who it is for, what problem it solves, why existing apps fail at it.

Step 2 · The persona, 20 minutes

Interview one real person who has the problem (chapter 2 rules: open questions, no leading). Write a persona: name, age, goal, biggest frustration, one real quote from your interview. Every line must trace to something they actually said. No inventing.

Step 3 · The prototype, 45 minutes

Sketch two different rough designs for the main screen, force yourself to make them genuinely different, then pick one and draw six paper screens covering one complete task from start to success. Marker pens, boxes and honest ugliness (chapter 5 rules).

Step 4 · The test, 30 minutes

Wizard of Oz it (chapters 5 and 6): give your interviewee a goal in goal language, play the computer, stay silent, log every hesitation. Afterwards ask two questions: what almost made you give up, and what would you change first?

Step 5 · The write-up, 20 minutes

One page: the idea, who it is for, what the test revealed, and what you would change in version two. That last part matters most. In the real module, marks live in the honest reflection, not in pretending the design was perfect.

What you just did is structurally identical to a postgraduate assessment: research, persona, competing sketches, a prototype, a user test and a reflective report. The university version adds referencing, word counts and eight weeks of readings, but the thinking is the same thinking. Which is the real question this page was built to answer: did those two hours feel like homework, or did they feel like a Tuesday you would happily repeat? Take that answer seriously.

If it felt good

Keep the artefacts. Photograph the sketches, keep the one-pager. If you do end up applying for a design course, a small folder of self-directed projects exactly like this one is what portfolios and interviews are made of.