Deliverables

Note: All deliverables are due 5pm on Friday, and presentations are always on Wednesdays.


Deliverable 1.a -- Ethics Training

Due: Friday May 14

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 be interviewing target end users. Before contacting users and conducting interviews, you are required to complete the ethics tutorial. Each student needs to complete the ethics tutorial individually.

From the Welcome Page, click on the "Login to Core / Create Account" button on the right. Click "Create new account here" and fill in the required fields; make sure you register using your uwaterloo.ca email address. A confirmation email will be sent to the email address that you provide (check spam if you do not see it in your mailbox. Click on the activation link only once to activate your account. Once your account is activated, you can log in and begin the tutorial. It can take up to 3 hours take to complete CORE, depending on how many examples and activities you explore. You can go through the modules at your own pace; your progress is automatically saved, and you can log out and in again to resume your session. If you experience any difficulties, refer to TCPS 2: CORE Frequently Asked Questions.

After finishing the online course, submit the certificate of completion with your name on it to LEARN under the "TCPS2 Ethics Training Certificate" Dropbox.

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


Deliverable 1.b -- Team Building and Monitoring

Students are to work in teams of 4-5 throughout the term. Team must be formed at the beginning of the term and are expected to stay the same throughout the term. All project deliverables are submitted per team and marked accordingly. At the beginning of the term, each project group is required to choose a unique project topic from the list of suggested projects. If your team wants to work on a different project, not listed among the suggested projects, it would require an instructor's approval.


Team Formation

Due: Friday May 14
Use Slack to find a teammate. You can browser the #introductions channel to get a sense of who are in the class and what their interests are. You can use the #search-for-teammates channel or direct message individual students to see if anyone is interested in joining your team, or if anyone has room in their team for you to join. There must be 4-5 students in your project team.

After forming a team, meet with them (e.g., using Zoom) to finalize your team information, including team name, team member names/emails, preferences for project topic and challenge report presentation dates, your weekly team meeting's day/time (Your weekly meeting time must be between 8am and 8pm EDT) and Zoom link.

After your initial team meeting, designate one person from the group to submit the finalized team information using this online Project Team Informaion form. The instructors will do a random draw to determine the order in which teams are assigned a project topic and challenge report presentation date.

Team Building

Due: Friday May 21
The team must meet and complete the team building exercise, which includes the drafting of a team contract and buddy team contract. The writeup for these team building exercises should be completed in the design notebook. These contracts specify how teams will work together, and are considered to be agreed upon by all members of the teams / buddy teams.

Team Monitoring

Due: Friday June 4/11, July 2/9
Once a month, each team member must individually complete the team health survey. This is to check how well the team is functioning, and how team processes can be improved. There is no right and wrong answer for the survey; students should complete the survey by providing an honest opinion about what they think. The team will be asked to reflect on the aggregate results, and suggest concrete actions to improve team processes.

Grading Scheme: All components are graded out of 1 based on completeness (i.e., all the required information is provided and nothing is missing.)


Deliverable 1.c -- Reading Reflection

Due: Every Friday

Every week, all students must individiually select 1-2 items from the reading list to read/watch, and describe at least one thing that they learned and how it can be applied to their project. Each person's reflection should be unique, i.e., does not duplicate other teammates' comments. Please include your name in bracket after your description. Reading reflection is individually graded. Each student's reading reflection entry must be under 250 words.

Grading Scheme: Reading reflections are graded out of 1 based on completeness; specificially - (1) the writeup accurately reflects the content of the articles/videos, and (2) the student is able to articulate how insights from the articles/videos can be applied to their project.


Deliverable 2.a -- Weekly Team Meeting

Due: at a fixed scheduled day/time determined by the team


Students must attend every weekly team meeting, and attendance is reported on the design notebook. Special consideration can be made for a few exceptions (e.g., academic travel, ilnesses and family emergencies). However, you must discuss your anticipated absence with the instructor, and provide the necessary justification and documentation. Every week, there will be a design activity that the team must work on together over a video conferencing meeting.

Grading Scheme: Weekly team meeting is graded out of 1 based on attendance. Students are asked to keep track of their attendance at each team meeting and report this information in the design notebook.


Deliverable 2.b -- Small Group Discussions

Wednesday June 2, June 16, June 30, July 14, July 28, time TBD

Throughout the term, teams will be presenting their work. Specifically, there will be 4 challenge report presentations and one final project presentations. These presentations will be done in small groups (~20-30 students). Students who are not presenting are expected to attend some of these presentations, and provide comments and questions to generate meaningful discussions.

Grading Scheme: Small group discussions are graded out of 1 based on attendance.


Deliverable 3.a -- User Interviews

Due: Information Interview (May 28, June 4, June 11), Prototype Evaluation (July 2, July 9, July 16)

You should recruit 6-8 target users (as identified in your personas and empathy maps) to participate in informational interviews and prototype evaluations. You must follow ethics procedure, collect verbal 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 target users beyond just fellow students.

For every user 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 target users (who are not students in the course), and have completed at least 6 informational interviews and at least 3 prototype evaluations with these target users.


Deliverable 3.b -- Documentation of Design Activity

Due: every Friday

Each team will be given a Design Notebook, a google doc (or online Microsoft Word document) for documenting the process and product of the design activities each week. The design activities instructions provide the list of questions to answer, and images and descriptions of design artifacts to include in the design notebook. The design notebook entry will be graded every week, and the instruction / TAs will provide feedback on the design notebook, which should be addressed in the final blog post.

Grading Scheme: The design notebook entry is graded out of 10 based on completeness (i.e., all sections are filled in, all text/images/captions provided).


Deliverable 3.c -- Challenge Reports and Presentation


Challenge Reports

Due: Friday May 28, June 11, June 25, July 9
There are 4 challenge reports, which ask students to think critically and "poke holes" in their own design and assumptions about the users/problems. The challenge reports ask you to (1) describe about your assumptions/hypotheses/design arguments since the last challenge report, (2) why you hypothesize as such, (3) what you did in the past two weeks do to test your assumptions/hypotheses/design arguments, (4) what you find out (5) What your new assumptions/hypotheses/design arguments are based on what you found out. Each challenge report will have a slightly different focus based on the phase of the user-centered design cycle the project is in. The challenge reports will be entered into the design notebook, and should be around 1-2 pages. These reports are perhaps the most important exercise of the course and will be graded rigorously.

Grading Scheme: The challenge reports are graded out of 20 based on a rubric.


Challenge Report Presentation

Wednesday June 2, June 16, June 30, July 14.

There are eight 30-min sessions on each presentation day -- 9-9:30am (Theme C), 9:30-10am (Theme B), 10-10:30am (Theme C), 10:30-11am (Theme B), 11-11:30am (Theme A), 11:30-12pm (Theme D), 12-12:30pm (Theme A), 12:30pm-1pm (Theme D).

Each team will choose one of 4 challenge reports to present during the term. Two people from each team will together give a short presentation (~5-10 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. The presenting team must provide a link to their google or powerpoint online slides midnight the day before the presentation, and post the link to the #presentations Slack channel. The presentation must be at most 10 slides.

Grading Scheme: The presentation is graded out of 20 based on a rubric.


Deliverable 3.d -- Buddy Team Feedback

Each group is assigned a buddy team. Each team is expected to provide the buddy team with concrete suggestions during certain phases of design (e.g., draft of interview questions, feedback on high fidelity prototypes, etc) and the receiving teams should incorporate some of these suggestions in subsequent weeks into their evolving design.

Value Proposition and Target Users

Due: Friday May 21
Each team will provide feedback on the value proposition and assumptions about target users to their buddy team. Describe your feedback in point form, and enter the feedback into the design notebook of your buddy team. Include at least 5 recommendations in total.


Mock Interview

Due: Friday May 28
Two people from each team will act as interviewee and provide feedback on the draft interview questions from their buddy team. Describe your feedback in point form, and enter the feedback into the design notebook of your buddy team. Include at least 5 recommendations in total.


Mock Evaluation (Low Fi Prototype)

Due: Friday June 18
Each team will provide feedback on the design of the low fidelity prototype and evaluation procedures to their buddy team. Describe your feedback in point form, and enter the feedback into the design notebook of your buddy team. Include at least 5 recommendations in total.


High-Fidelity Prototype Design

Due: Friday July 9
Each team will provide feedback on the design of the high fidelity prototype to their buddy team. Describe your feedback in point form, and enter the feedback into the design notebook of your buddy team. Include at least 5 recommendations in total.


Mock Interview (Hi-Fi Prototype)

Due: Friday July 16
Two people from each team will act as interviewee and provide feedback on the draft interview questions from their buddy team. Describe your feedback in point form, and enter the feedback into the design notebook of your buddy team. Include at least 5 recommendations in total.

Grading Scheme: All components are graded out of 1, 0.5 based on completeness (i.e., 5 concrete) and 0.5 based on the quality of the team's recommendations to their buddy team (e.g., whether they are well thought out, described clearly, actionable, etc).


Deliverable 4.a -- Final Prototype

Due: Wednesday July 28

Each team will produce a final high-fidelity prototype. The prototype should contain features that are effective at addressing the problem at hand, is usable and aesthetically appealing.

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; the score is the average of the score from a random TA and from the instructor.


Deliverable 4.b -- Demo Video

Due: Wednesday July 28

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; the score is the average of the score from a random TA and from the instructor.


Deliverable 4.c -- Final Project Presentation

Wednesday July 28, time TBD

Designate two people from your team to present. The presentation should be 6 min sharp and 4 slides max, with no discussion:

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?

Grading Scheme: The presentation is graded out of 20 by TAs based on a rubric, taking into account feedback provided by students and the instructor. Different from the rest of the deliverables, the final presentation is not graded by your theme's TA, but a random TA.


Deliverable 4.d -- Blog Post

Due: Friday August 6

Create a blog post (e.g., on Medium) 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. The blog post should be self-contained and of an appropriate length. You can embed the demo into the blog post as well.


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

  • Describe the general market segment you are targeting, potential contributions you see as important for the area, what potential value you are bringing to the area, what problems / empty niches you originally identified and how your project addressed them.
  • Describe what specific problems you focused on for your project

(2) Product anticipated users

  • Describe user groups you have identified for your product and include personas / empathy maps you have created.

(3) User Interviews

  • Describe your interviewees in general terms (number, average age, gender distribution, other demographic information important for your study)
  • Describe the methods you used to conduct and analyze the user interviews (e.g., interview questions, affinity diagramming, work models)
  • Report on interview results: describe and discuss identified themes and detailed results, problems (breakdowns) you identified and decided to focus on.

(4) Initial design ideas

  • Discuss how you came up with the initial set of features (e.g., user stories, storyboarding), and what specific information from the user interviews you used in your initial design
  • Include sketches, user flows and images of your paper prototypes

(5) Paper prototypes and evaluation

  • Describe the goals and hypotheses you have formulated for your paper prototype evaluation study
  • Describe the set of tasks you gave to your participants
  • Report on paper prototype evaluation results: describe and discuss identified themes and detailed results, your analysis of possible reasons for identified problems in design.

(6) Design Iteration

  • Describe design changes you have identified as required based on paper prototype evaluation results, provide corresponding reasoning. Include screenshots of your evolving design.

(7) High fidelity prototypes and evaluation

  • Describe goals you have formulated for your high fidelity prototype evaluation study
  • Describe the results of heuristic evaluation: which heuristics were used and why, which tasks you gave to your participants, report on results
  • Describe the results of cognitive walkthrough: which tasks you gave to the participants, report on results
  • Report on design changes that are required to improve the prototype based on the hi-fi evaluation

(8) Conclusion

  • Reflect on design process you went through and to include you final thoughts on the project (e.g., do you think your app has sufficiently addressed the problems you set out to solve at the beginning of the term? What would you do differently if you could re-do this project again?)

Grading Scheme: The blog is graded out of 20 based on a rubric. Different from the rest of the deliverables, the blog post is not graded by your theme's TA; the score is the average of the score from a random TA and from the instructor.


CS649 Deliverable - Research Proposal

Due: Friday June 11 (Draft), August 6 (Final Report)

Your report should be at least 6 pages, using either LaTex Template and Word template.

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 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.
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.