1. Prepare for Masterclass II
This week (March 25), the presenting teams will prepare a short presentation (5-10 mins max, 5 slides max) to the class about their System / Study Design. Please keep the presentations as short as possible, to leave more time for feedback. The instructor will post a PDF of the presenting team's Overleaf paper to the #presentations channel by March 20. Teams who are not presenting should read the System / Study Design sections of the presenting teams' papers, and be ready to critique the writeup and the presented argument during the discussion.
Specifically, each non-presenting team will be asked to share their answer to the following three questions during the discussion: (1) Does the experimental design address the stated research questions? (2) What are some potential confounds and risks? (3) If there is a system presented, does the system design seem novel / compelling to you? What questions / doubts do you have about the interface and functionalities of the system?
2. Complete your System and Pilot Study Materials
Think of your pilot study as a first stab at the problem. Try to design your study to test for things that are likely to yield surprises, or things you are curious to find out, or design options that you want to explore. The best possible outcome for the pilot study is a set of insights that helps you re-design your system and study for future investigations. Your pilot study should be time-limited to 30 minutes max from beginning to end (i.e., participants should be able to finish interacting with the system as well as any surveys/interview within 30 minutes).
During the week of March 29-April 2, about 1 week from now, you will be pilot testing with your classmates as participants. For this, you need to prepare your study materials by this coming Friday March 26, and pin links to these materials to your team's private Slack channel. This includes (a) a 1-page instruction for your participants to tell them what to do (Google Doc), (b) pre-study and post-study questionnaires (Google Spreadsheets), (c) a list of interview questions (Google Doc). The instructor will provide some quick feedback on March 26 on your pilot study materials, before you launch your pilot study the following week. Your prototype system, if any, will also need to functional and accessible by your classmates by March 29.
3. Coordinate with your Participants
If you are in team X, use the #pilot-team-X channels to release your pilot study instruction and coordinate with your participants. For example, your pilot study might require people to be in groups, in which case, use #pilot-team-X to specify who is in which group. If you require people to do the study at a specific date/time, schedule the sessions using #pilot-team-X (e.g., posting a Google spreadsheet and asking other students to choose one of the pre-defined sessions) You can also contact your participants through direct messaging.
You can start doing this coordination (assigning participants to groups, scheduling testing sessions) any time, even before you release your pilot study instructions. It is expected that each student will be a participant in all team's pilot study; in total, expect to spend 3 hours total acting as a participant to other team's studies.
Due Friday March 26
● coordinate with your participants
● pin your pilot study materials to your team's private channel