CS 449/649

F26 CS 449/649 Deliverables

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1. Preparation Activities

P1. Ethics Training

The TCPS 2 Tutorial Course on Research Ethics (CORE), also known as the TCPS2 tutorial, is mandatory for all researchers who intend to engage in research with human participants. In this course, you will spend quite a bit of time interviewing people. Before contacting people and conducting interviews, each student is required to individually complete the ethics tutorial before they can proceed in the course.

The tutorial is available online at the following link: https://tcps2core.ca/welcome. You will need to create an account and complete the tutorial. Once you have completed the tutorial, you will receive a certificate of completion. Please download and save your certificate as a PDF file. You will be required to submit this certificate as part of your deliverables for this course. If you have done the training within other courses before, the certificate of completion can be reused.

Grading Scheme: No grade is assigned, but all students must complete this requirement; otherwise, they cannot continue in the course.

Submit completed TCP-2 Core certificates with your name on it to the corresponding folder on LEARN Dropbox.

P2-P12. Studio Preparation

See additional details on preparation activities here.

There are 11 preparation activities in total, involving lecture videos and individual/team-based design activities. Each week's preparation activity must be completed before the upcoming studio lab. The studio activity depends on and builds upon the preparation activity, and so, failure to complete the preparation work will negatively affect the team's ability to complete the studio activity. All preparation activities should be documented in the design notebook.

Grading Scheme: Each preparation activity will be graded based on completeness, (i.e., all sections are filled in, all text/images/captions provided). Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, with a score of 1 (complete) or 0 otherwise.

2. Studio Activities

D1-D8. Design Activities

See additional details on studio activities here.

All teams will maintain a design notebook to document their progress in their project.

The studio labs are interactive and fast-paced. Students will work with their team, as well as with other teams, on a variety of design activities; these include a value proposition workshop, mock interviews, affinity diagramming workshop, value sensitive design workshop, and paper prototyping. Teams should upload all in-class work (photos, drawings, notes) to the design notebook by midnight after the studio class. Polished writeup of the design activities should be documented in the design notebook.

Grading Scheme: The design activity will be graded out of 10 based on completeness (i.e., all sections are filled in, all text/images/captions provided) and quality:

Teams with complete and perfect submission may be given 5 bonus points for being considered further for being the best submission amongst all submissions in the lab section. Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

CR. Design Critique Session

See additional details on the design critique session here.

There is a design critique session where teams will present designs and provide critique to each other's designs.

Grading Scheme: Each design critique session is graded out of 40, based on:

Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

E1-E2. Prototype Evaluation

See additional details on prototype evaluation here.

Students will conduct two prototype evaluations---a low-fidelity prototype evaluation (E1) and a high-fidelity prototype evaluation (E2), with fellow students in the studio lab acting as their identified personas. The findings from the prototype evaluations should be documented in the design notebook.

Grading Scheme: The prototype evaluation will be graded out of 10 based on completeness. Completeness here means:

  1. completeness of the writeup (i.e., all sections are filled in, all text/images/captions provided),
  2. completeness of the prototype itself, i.e., is it interactive? does it adequately cover/test your features?
  3. completeness of the evaluation procedure, i.e., is the evaluation procedure properly followed

Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

CH1-CH2. Challenge Report and Presentation

See additional details on challenge report and presentation here.

The challenge report (CH1) asks you to:

  1. describe your assumptions/hypotheses
  2. describe where these assumptions/hypotheses come from
  3. describe what you did each week to test your assumptions/hypotheses
  4. describe what you found out
  5. describe what your latest assumptions/hypotheses are based on what you found out.

The challenge reports should be documented in the design notebook, and should be around 1-2 pages. Students are asked to keep notes each week to keep track of their assumptions/hypotheses and how they challenge/test them.

During the challenge report presentation, two people from each team will together give a short presentation (~6 mins total) to describe their challenge report. The rest of the class should engage in a discussion, by asking questions, giving feedback or sharing their own experiences (~4 mins). The presentation must be at most 6 slides.

Grading Scheme: The challenge reports are graded out of 25:

Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

3. Team Building Exercises

See additional details on team building exercises here.

T1. Team Contract

At the beginning of the course, the team will draft a team contract, which specifies how the team will work together. The team contract should be documented in the design notebook.

Grading Scheme: The team contract is graded out of 1 based on completeness (i.e., all the required information is provided and nothing is missing.) Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

T2. Team Reflection

Each team will reflect on their successes and challenges that they face as a team over the term. Learnings from the team reflection should be documented in the design notebook.

Grading Scheme: The team reflections are graded out of 1 based on completeness (i.e., all the required information is provided and nothing is missing.) Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

4. Project Outputs

P01. Interviews

You should recruit 6-8 representative people (as identified in your personas and empathy maps) to participate in informational interviews and prototype evaluations. You must follow ethics procedure, collect written consent, keep all the data (notes, images, etc) in a password-protected computer, data server or cloud services, private and viewable to your team only. The data must not have identifiable information about the participants (e.g., names or faces). Try to find people beyond just fellow students.

For every interview (information interviews or prototype evaluations), enter into the design notebook (1) a summary of your findings, (2) a description of any changes to your interview questions or procedures that you plan to introduce in future interviews.

Grading Scheme: This deliverable is graded based on completeness, i.e., you will receive 100% if you interviewed and followed up with 6-8 unique people (who are not students in the course), and have completed at least 6 informational interviews and at least 3 prototype evaluations with these people. Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

P02a. Final Prototype

All the work over the term culminates to a final, high fidelity prototype produced by each team. The prototype should contain features that are effective at addressing the problem at hand, is usable and aesthetically appealing.

Grading Scheme: Grading Scheme: The final prototype is graded out of 12 based on a rubric. Different from the rest of the deliverables, the final prototype is not graded by your theme's TA, but by a random TA. Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

Share your prototype: https://help.figma.com/hc/en-us/articles/360040531773-Share-files-and-prototypes.

P02b. Demo Video

Each team will create a 3 min video demonstrating your final product (i.e., high-fi prototype). You should have supporting comments in the video to explain what is being shown. You can also include any other aspects of work you have done, if you would like to and if time on the video allows you (for example, your paper prototype to show the progression of the design).

Grading Scheme: The demo video is graded out of 12 based on a rubric. Different from the rest of the deliverables, the demo video is not graded by your theme's TA, but by a random TA. Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

P02c. Final Presentation

The presentation should be 7 minutes long (+ 3 minutes for questions), describing the following:

Grading Scheme: The presentation is graded out of 50:

Different from the rest of the deliverables, the final presentation is not graded by your theme's TA, but by a random TA or the instructor. Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

P02d. Final Report

Create a design portfolio---in the form of an blog-style google doc---that documents your entire design process. This is simply a polished version of the design notebook, where you have addressed all the feedback from the TAs / instructors. The design portfolio should be self-contained and of an appropriate length. You can embed the demo into the design portfolio as well. The final report should be about 2700 words in length.

In the design portfolio, you should include carefully chosen visuals (e.g., images of the artifacts from your design activities) and describe the following:

(1) Describe your value proposition and project goal

(2) Product anticipated use

(3) Interviews

(4) Initial design ideas

(5) Paper prototypes and evaluation

(6) Design Iteration

(7) High fidelity prototypes and evaluation

(8) Conclusion

Grading Scheme: The design portfolio is graded out of 16 based on a rubric. Different from the rest of the deliverables, the design portfolio is not graded by your theme's TA, but by a random TA. Each team member's individual grade will be adjusted based on their contribution, i.e., each student will receive the team's grade if they contributed to the activity, 0 otherwise.

5. Research Report (CS 649 only)

Students taking CS 649 are expected to learn, through assigned reading, at least two different types of HCI methodologies, and individually produce a report that describes the design of two studies, one per methodology, to investigate research questions related to their CS 649 project/application, and provide a convincing argument on how and why these questions can be appropriately answered by the corresponding methodology/study design. The report should be at least 6 pages, using this Overleaf template.

See the required reading list for CS 649 students, which will be essential when preparing this report.

The research proposal should contain the following sections:

  1. Introduction - describe what research questions may be interesting to ask given the application that you designed,
  2. Related Work - conduct a literature review of prior work related to your research questions,
  3. System Description - describe your app, including its functionalities and rationale behind its design
  4. Research Questions - Describe 2 different research questions you can potentially ask in the form of hypotheses. Describe what you expect the results to be and why.
  5. Study Design - For each research question, describe the design of a study for answering that research question. Explain why your chosen HCI methodologies are appropriate for the research question. Describe in as many details as possible how you would go about conducting the study---e.g., what type of participants would you recruit? How many? What procedure would the participant follow? what survey/interview questions might you ask participants before and after the study.

Grading Scheme: The research draft will be graded out of 1 based on completion. The final research proposal is graded out of 16 based on a rubric.