Week 12 To-Dos

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Week 12 Objectives:


(1) lectures
(2) complete course evaluation
(3) refine final prototype and prepare demo video
(4) prepare for final project presentation
(5) create blog post
(6) CS649 research proposal

Week 12 To-Dos

1. Lectures
Watch the week 12 lecture videos.

2. Complete Course Evaluation
Your feedback is extremely useful for helping us improve this course for the future. Please complete the official course survey at evaluate.uwaterloo.ca. Please try your best to give constructive and informative feedback. As mentioned in the "teamwork" lecture video, don't just say what you like, say why (i.e., "Don't just praise. Analyze!) and don't just say it's bad, specify what could be better and how (i.e., "Don't just diagnose. Suggest!").

3. Refine Final Prototype and Prepare Demo Video
After the hi-fi prototype evaluation, spend some time improving/refining your high-fidelity prototype based on the feedback from the heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough. After completing the final version of the high-fidelity prototype, as a team, create a 3 min (max) video (Deliverable 4.b) demonstrating your final product (i.e., high-fi prototype). Keep in mind that the video can be used for your final project presentation, so think about how it might integrate with the rest of the presentation. 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 to; for example, you can show your paper prototype briefly to illustrate the progression of the design. To see some examples of hi-fi prototype demo videos, visit the CS449 Spring 2019 website (click on "Project"). Include a link to your interactive prototype (i.e., one that people can play with as if it is a real app) and a link to your demo video in the design notebook.

4. Prepare for Final Presentation
The final presentation will be held from 10:30-11:30am on July 28 on Ohyay (link provided in the Slack #presentations channel). Please check the time and location for your presentation on this Final Presentation Schedule spreadsheet. Please try to log into Ohyay ahead of the presentation, in order to double check that you are able to access the site. Please use Chrome, as that has been shown to work well with Ohyay.

When it's time for your team to present, head to the cabin/space that you are assigned. Designate two people from your team to present. The presentation should be 6 min sharp and 4 slides max. There might be time for a very short discussion (e.g., 1-2 questions), depending on time. You can start the presentation only after the TA arrives and indicates that it's okay to do so.

The presentation should be structured as follows:
● Slide 1: Introduce Your Problem (suggested duration: 30 seconds). What problem is your app trying to solve?
● Slide 2: Show a Quick Demo (suggested duration: 1 minute 30 seconds). Show a video of your high-fidelity prototype in action. As the video is playing, explain the different features and functionality of your app, and the purpose they serve. You can reuse part of your demo video, as you see fit.
● Slide 3: Name 3 Surprises (suggested duration: 3 minutes). What are 3 most surprising things you learned during the design process? These can be your assumptions about the users, the problem, or the design that ended up being false.
● Slide 4: Your Hope for the Future (suggested duration: 1 minute). In the ideal world, what do you hope the impact of your app would be? What kind of future does your app help build?

When you are not presenting, either attend a presentation or hanging out in another empty cabin/space or at any of the firepits, as you wish. Each student is required to attend 2 other presentations of your choice, and required to provide informal feedback to the presenting team using this Feedback Form. Your feedback to the presenting teams count towards your presentation grade (i.e., Deliverable 2b). The presentation will be graded by a randomly assigned TA, who will take into account the feedback that other students provided to the presenting team.

5. Create Blog Post
Start creating a blog post that documents your entire design process. This is simply a polished version of the design notebook, where you have adddressed all the feedback from the TAs / instructors. See Deliverable 4.d for more details on the expected structure of the blog post. The blog post should be self-contained and of an appropriate length. In the blog, 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 users, (3) User Interviews, (4) Initial design ideas, (5) Paper prototypes and evaluation, (6) Design Iteration, (7) High fidelity prototypes and evaluation, (8) Conclusion. You can embed the demo into the blog post as well. Make sure that your blog post adequately addresses the feedback provided by the TAs throughout the term.

6. CS649 Research Proposal
This final proposal report is 4-6 pages. Make sure that the feedback on the proposal draft has been adequately addressed in your final report. Your proposal should contain the following sections:
● Introduction - describe what research questions may be interesting to ask given the application that you designed,
● Related Work - conduct a literature review of prior work related to your research questions,
● System Description - describe your app, including its functionalities and rationale behind its design
● 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.
● Study Design - For each research question, describe the design of a study for answering that research question. Explain why your chosen HCI methodologies is appropriate for the research question. Describe in as much 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.

Due Wednesday (July 28)
● Final Prototype (4.a) - include link in the design notebook.
● Demo Video (4.b) - include link in the design notebook.
● Final Project Presentation (4.c) - post slides in the #presentation channel by 10:30am July 28.

Due Next Friday (August 6)
● Blog Post (4.d) - include link in the design notebook.
● CS649 Research Proposal - upload PDF to vault.