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Submit Team Information
Form a team of 4, then decide on a team name and a topic. Next, make a copy of the
design notebook template, add all your team members as well as your TA to the notebook. Please note that if your team is not at capacity, there may be additional students added to your team later this week, in order to accomodate all the students in the class. Submit your initial team information using the
Project Team Information Form by end of your studio lab. We will let you know what topic you are assigned through Slack.
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 be interviewing target end users. Before contacting users and conducting interviews, each student is
required to individually complete the ethics tutorial. In other words,
you cannot proceed in the course until you have completed this ethics tutorial. If you have already completed the TCPS 2 Core ethics training (e.g., for another course, or for a research project outside of courses), you can just submit the certificate of completion that you obtained previously. There's no need to re-do the training.
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 the tutorial, 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.
T1: Team Contract
The success of your project depends on your dedication towards teamwork. Watch the lecture video on "Teamwork". The contract specifies how the team will work together, and are considered to be agreed upon by all members of the teams. With your team, develop a team contract by answering a set of questions about how your team will function this term. Write up your team contract in the "Team Contract" section of the design notebook.
P2: Create Persona and Empathy Maps
First, watch lecture video on "Persona and Empathy Maps". Each team member, without consulting with each other, should
indivdually create 1-2 distinct personas of your future application. These personas are your best guesses about who the target users are, and represent the type of users whom you will interview and observe throughout the term. Your design notebook writeup should contain, for each persona, (1) a persona description, written in paragraph format, (2) a screenshot of the completed
persona template, (3) a screenshot of the completed
empathy map. It is up to you exactly how you want to complete the persona templates and empathy maps. You can print out the templates and complete them by hand. You can also fill in the templates digitally, using a PDF or other online tools that provide similar (or ideally, the same) templates. In the end, you just need to include a screenshot of your persona template and empathy map in the design notebook entry. Under Contribution / Task Division, each team member must
clearly specify what contribution each person made, i.e., who has created which persona. In general, your writeup describe the demographics, goals, motivation and pattern of users' behaviour that each persona represents. Here is an
example of persona descriptions (see section 3), persona templates and empathy maps (see appendices).
Print out and bring your personas and empathy maps to the next studio lab. During the studio lab, you will discuss and merge your personas with your teammates, and use the full set of personas to create your value propositon. Towards the end of the next studio class, you will share your value proposition and your personas with the rest of the class.