Week 5

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Design Notebook Entry for D6

During the lab, each team member has designed a set of screens for a particular feature, and depicted the main user flow for that feature. For each feature, include screenshots of the sketches and user flow for that feature, and explain what persona and task the user flow is for. Each team member is responsible for including a writeup (1 paragraph, 250 words) describing that feature's design user flow and how these follow the design principles (focus on 2-3) discussed in lecture, such as signifier, affordance, constraints, feedback, discoverability, mapping, consistency of the interface with the conceptual models of the user.

PO1: User Interviews - Informational Interview

In PO1, find at least 2 users to interview; someone who are NOT a students in CS449/649 class. Follow the same instructions and ethics guidelines as the ones provided in week 3. It is helpful to have two people conducting each interview, one serving as the interviewer, the other serving as a note-taker. Over the course of the term, your team should interview 6-8 unique people in total who are meant to be your target user (people who are likely going to be the primary audience for your app). Each team member should serve as the interviewer at least once in this course.

For each interview, add a section to the design notebook to capture (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 based on what you learned. Based on the findings, update your affinity diagram and consolidated cultural or flow model. Include a screenshot of the updated affinity diagram and the consolidated work model in the design notebook.

CH1: Challenge Report - Notes

The challenge report, due on Friday Oct 25, documents how your team has challenged your assumptions over several weeks. To build up to that, record some notes about how you have challenged your assumptions this week. What assumptions did you make? What interview questions did you create or what information search did you do to test these assumptions? What did you learn? What are your new assumptions? How did you refine your interview questions to test these new assumptions? Be specific, and describe the concrete actions your team took to test assumptions. Complete this writeup in the design notebook.

R1: Research Proposal Draft (CS649 Only)

Pick two different HCI methodologies to read from the reading list (link and instruction on Slack). You are expected to learn 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 your CS449/649 design project, and provide a convincing argument on how and why these questions can be appropriately answered by the corresponding methodology/study design. Your proposal draft should have the 5 sections - Introduction, Related Work, System Description, Research Questions, Study Design - as described in the Deliverables page of the course website. The proposal draft is 2 pages minimum, not counting references, using this overleaf template (use sample-sigconf.tex). To submit, simply send the instructor a link to your overleaf project on Slack.

P6: Prepare for Next Studio (Challenge Report and Presentation)

Complete the challenge report in your design notebook. In the challenge report, list THREE assumptions that your team managed to break that were particularly surprising, and the methods/strategies you used to break these assumptions. Describe each assumption, including the rationale behind the assumption (i.e., the concrete evidence that caused you to have this assumption in the first place), how you challenged the assumption (i.e., the specific methods and strategies that you used to test the assumption), the insights you gained from testing the assumption (i.e., your findings), and new assumptions that followed from those insights. In discussing methods/strategies for testing assumptions, be specific and concrete. Don't just say "we did interviews" or "we did evaluations". Of course, we know that you have done interviews and evaluations! Tell us a story about how you managed to find the right strategies to test your assumptions, and the challenges or doubts you encountered along the way. The goal is to make the report interesting and something that other students can benefit learning from. Your challenge report will be graded based on this rubric (see pg 1).

The challenge report presentation is held during week 7's studio labs. You will assign 2 members of your team to present a 6 minute presentation. Your presentation must be 6 minute sharp. Start by describing the motivation for your project (Slide 1), followed by a description of the core features of your app (Slide 2), then describe the three most surprising assumptions that your team managed to break over the last few weeks and the concrete strategies / methods you used to break these assumptions (Slide 3-5), and finish with a conclusion (What did you learn? What are some doubt you still have about the project's direction?). Make your presentation engaging! For example, you should add lots of visuals and include interesting anecdotes about how your discoveries happened. There will be a 4 minute discussion, led by an assigned discussant team (selected on the spot). Non-presenting team members should be ready to answer questions during the discussion period. Post a link to your slidedeck (6 slides at most) on the your studio lab channel (e.g., #s101) by midnight the day before the presentation. Your challenge report presentation will be graded based on this rubric (see pg 4).