Business Case Project

English 3130 Project–Business Case

Overview
This project requires you to work in small groups (2-3 people), identify a business document with obvious flaws, redesign it, and write a memo to the person who designed the original document to justify your redesign.

Scenario
You’re the communication specialist of your company, and you’ve been working with this company for less than three months. You have a probationary period of six months before you can be officially a regular employee of the company. Your boss called you into his office one day and handed over a “document,” which he said he had “just whipped up in a hurry.” He asked you to “look over it and tweak it if necessary” because you’re the communication specialist and also because the document will be used for very important business purposes. Once you’re done, he added, you should send him the redesign and also a memo to explain what you did. After taking a quick glance at the document, you immediately noticed some major issues with the design. You left your boss’s office already feeling a headache.

Complexities
Obviously, your boss did a poor job in designing the original document. You’re faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, you need to tell your boss the truth about the original design, one way or another. You also obviously need to make it really good because the document will be used for important business purposes. If poor design ends up being used, you as the person ultimately responsible for the final quality of the document will surely be blamed. On the other hand, you can’t really offend your boss, especially when you’re still in the probationary period. Either way, your job might be on the line.

Identify a business document of mediocre quality
Document type
This document you select for this project can be any kind of business document: a letter to shareholders, an advertising flyer, a poster, a business memo or letter, a brochure, a set of instructions, a guide, a training manual, a web page, etc. The document you used for the Document Analysis project could potentially be used for this project, but you need to be careful about it. If the document is too long, you could select a section out of it for this project. You should limit the document (or the section you use) to a manageable length (four or five pages and probably no more than 10 pages).

Quality of the original document
The document you select must have rather major problems in both content and format design. Look for documents that have a balanced combination of text and graphics. Avoid those that have only graphics or only text. Important: The overall design quality of the document should be no better than mediocre. 

Redesign the document to make it effective
After analyzing and identifying the weak aspects of the original design, redesign it to improve its overall effectiveness. Your redesign should include both content and format. Consider the rhetorical context of the design: audience, purposes, medium, constraints, etc.

For content design, consider the following aspects:

  • does the content serve the intended purposes?
  • is the right information selected?
  • is the amount of information appropriate?
  • is the level of technicality appropriate?
  • is the information well organized?
  • does the content design show a good audience awareness?

For visual design, consider all the four major aspects:

  • use of graphics (are graphics well designed? are they meaningfully related to the text? are they effectively used? are they appropriate? are they of good quality?)
  • page layout (are different elements on the page logically laid out? are text and graphics placed at appropriate positions considering their relationships? is there a good balance between white space and text? are different textual elements properly formatted for visual hierarchy? does the formatting, for example, indicate clearly the different levels of headings?)
  • typography (is the typeface, font size, or style appropriate?)
  • use of color (is the document too plain in color or too colorful? is the use of colors justified? does the color serve the content and the purpose of the document?)

Write a memo to justify your redesign
After redesigning the “document,” you need to write a memo to your boss to point out the problems with the original and justify your redesign. You’re essentially communicating a negative message, but you don’t have the luxury of being blunt. Carefully consider such factors as the nature of your message, your audience’s feelings and possible reactions, your relationship with the audience, the potential consequences, etc.

In your memo to your boss, do not simply describe the look of document pages, but discuss its degree of success or failure, giving convincing reasons for your opinions. Don’t simply claim it’s good or bad. Instead, show your boss why it’s effective or ineffective. For both your critique of the original and your justification of the redesign, make sure you discuss all the aspects in detail, with specific examples. Don’t give vague, general descriptions. What sections to include in your memo is up to you. Remember you’re both critiquing the original and justifying your revised version. In discussing the document design, consider such things as the intended audience(s) of the document, its purposes, the content design, the visual design, how the visual design complements the content design, how such a design serves its intended audiences and purposes, etc.

What to Turn in
You must turn in all of the following:

  1. Memo, saved as “BusinessCase(YourLastNames)-memo.doc,” e.g., “visual(GuSmith)-memo.doc.”
  2. Your redesign, saved as “BusinessCase(YourLastNames)-redesign.doc.”
  3. Original document, either hardcopy or electronic. If electronic, save it as “BusinessCase(YourLastName)-original.doc.”

Email the above as Word attachments to me at bgu@gsu.edu. Each group should have only one person to email me the project and copy everybody in the group.