Remaining deadlines

Assignment Overview

Assignment status can be found on course page in the studentportalen where you sign in with your student id and password A. If you don't know your id please contact the it-kansliet.

The assignments in the course include sketching, analysis, design and evaluation of a user interface to a system supporting a particular task - work task or other. You do not have to do any programming. You should present your work through the studentportalen, and your will continuously be evaluated by one of your fellow students. The purpose of these assignments is to give you hands-on experience of the activities, methods and techniques discussed in the course.

Assignment deadlines are published in the schedule. Read the project specification carefully!

Please note that the different assignments (A1-C3) are linked together and are to be worked with in numerical order.
You use the same design problem (i.e the context of use and the task that you want to create a user interface for) for all parts of the assignments.
Try to finish all the lectures before starting assignment B1.
All assignments have to be approved to complete the course.
You should work with your assignment on your own, and continuously, throughout the course.
The assignments make up 2 of the 5 credits given for the course.

Choose a design problem

The best thing to do is to choose a design problem from a context/environment that you are familiar with and interested in, or something from your work situation. Just because your design proposal results are to be presented on the web, it doesn't mean your design problem has to be a website or something similar. Contrary, we encourage you not to choose "design a website" as a design problem.
Here are some examples of design problems that you can look through to get some inspiration when choosing your design problem. We do encourage you to choose a design problem on your own. If you do, write a brief description of the context and the design problem. Keep in mind that it is essential that you focus on the user interface and the interaction in your design problem. Mail the description to the course assistant or course responsible for further discussion about whether or not it is suitable for the assignment.

Some design problems are way too large to completely cover in a course like this. Therefore you are allowed to restrict your assignment to cover just a certain part of the problem. If you do, carefully explain this restriction when you submit your choice of project.

Publish your design proposal

If you choose to work with an ordinary windows application, a PDA program, some kind of operator interface etc. you can use some kind of image editor (e.g. Photoshop, PaintShopPro, CorelDraw, Illustrator ...) to make interface images. You can also draw interfaces by hand and then photograph or scan them in order to publish them on your studentportal. There are many ways to do this. The most important is that you clearly can explain/express your design proposal and that you do this in a way that makes it possible to evaluate.

Before you start working with your assignment, we wish to review your choice of design problem. Send an e-mail with a proposition of a design problem to the course assistant or course responsible. Design problems sent in will be reviewed continuously.

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Presentation on the studentportalen

All course participants should publish their work on their studentportal so that you all can check out the ideas and designs of the other participants. Therefore the text in the assignment is to be written in English and available in text format (i.e. not as vectors or bitmaps). You should publish the results of each part of the assignment on your studentprotal as soon as you are finished with it.

Supervising

If you need any help with your assignments or choice of design problem, contact the course assistant Gunnika Isaksson-Lutteman. The other lecturers on the course can provide brief support at their respectively special occasions, preferrably via email.

Schedule of deadlines

Assignment	Date of deadline
A1	Thu 31 Mar
A2	Mon 4 Apr
B1	Thu 14 Apr
B2	Mon 18 Apr
C1	Mon 2 May
Mid Course evaluation	Mon 2 May
Exam	Sun 15 May
C2	Mon 23 May
C3	Fri 27 May
Final course evaluation	Fri 27 May

Assignment specification

Deadlines

If you meet ALL deadlines and fulfill the requirements of the assignments you have the CHANCE to raise your final grade on the course. This means that if you receive for example the grade" 3" or the grade" B" on the exam you will get the grade "4" or "B" if you have met ALL deadlines and if you are closer to the higher level than the lower level.
The exam is released May 9th 2011 at 12.00 and will be turned in at the latest May 15th 2011 at 15.00.
Mid course evaluation is to be turned in at May 2nd 2011 at 15.00.
Final course evaluation is to be turned in at May 27th 2011 at 15.00.

Assignment A

A1.

Task: You will individually present a naïve design solution on usability problem. With a naive design we mean that you don´t need to study any theories for this assignment, assume only from your self and your own experiences. For this assignment you are free to use any tools. You can for example use paper and pen and then take a picture of your sketch, a photo editor, a vector based drawing tool etc. (if you are quick in ASCII art - feel free to use that!)

Presentation: The solution is going to be presented in a PDF-document and to be saved in "Studentportalen" in the forum Assignment A.

Write a short text of with motivations and explanations to your solution and present a picture. Mark the post and the pdf-document with "A1 your name". Maximum length is 1 page. There is an example of how to present this under the forum A.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 3 hours of work.

Deadline: March 31st 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: The picture and short text should clearly explain your intentions with your design and motivations on your decisions.

A2.

Task: You will comment on one of your fellow student's design solution by using the form "Form for assignment A2.pdf" that is provided through the file area "Documents" in Studentportalen. The list of who you should comment on will be presented in the same file area after the deadline of assignment A1 has expired.

Presentation: The comments are to be presented as an attached pdf-document as a reply to the commented-on assignment in the forum "Assignment A" in Studentportalen.

Mark the post and the pdf-document with "A2 your name". Maximum length is 1 page.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 1 hour of work.

Deadline: April 4th 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: The comments should be constructive and creative.

Assignment B

B1.

Task: You will do a field study or user investigation of the same usability problem as you first approached in assignment A. The potential users will be identified and interviewed in order to constitute basis for a new solid design solution in assignment C later on.

Presentation: The field study and the analysis are to be posted in the forum "Assignment B" in Studentportalen.

Mark the post and the pdf-document with "B1 your name". Maximum lenght is 2 pages of a presentation of your procedure, analyze and conclusions of the field study. Enclose the questionnare or interview questions as an appendix, no limit in pages. There is an example of how to present this under the forum B.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 14 hours of work.

Deadline: April 14th 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: You should do a serious attempt to do a field study and document your work very accurate. You should do a collection of data and also analyze this according to your choice of method. You should present your procedure and choice of field study objects. You should do an analyze and draw conclusions from it.

B2.

Task: You will comment on one of your fellow student´s field study by using a form which you can find in the file area under Documents. The list of who you should comment on will be presented after the deadline of assignment B1 has expired in the fiel area as well.

Presentation: The comments are to be presented as an attached pdf-document as a reply to the commented-on assignment in the forum "Assignment B" in Studentportalen.

Mark the post and the pdf-document with "B2 your name". Maxuimum length 1 page.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 2 hours of work.

Deadline: April 18th 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: The comments should be constructive and creative.

Assignment C

C1.

Task: You will do a design solution on your user problem that you worked with in assignment A and B, based on your analysis and the assumptions from Assignment B, also use the comments from your fellow students. Use theories that are brought up in the lectures.

Presentation: The design solution should be presented as a PDF-document and are to be saved in "Studentportalen" in the forum Assignment C.

Mark the post and the document with "C1 your name". Maximum length 6 pages including pictures and motivational and explanational text and theories to your new design. There is an example of how to present this under the forum C.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 19 hours of work.

Deadline: May 2nd 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: You should present sketches of your design solution.

You should present scenarios or personas for a user that can be helped by your solution.

You should also describe how and why you decided on your final design solution using theories brought up during the course.

C2.

Task: You will make comments and heuristic evaluations on one of your fellow student´s design solution. Download the complete instructions from the file area under Documents in Studentportalen. The list of who you should comment on will be presented after the deadline of assignment C1 has expired also in the fiel area.

Presentation: The evaluation analysis are to be presented as an attached pdf-document as a reply to the commented-on assignment in the forum "Assignment C" in Studentportalen.

Mark the post and the document with "C2 your name". Maximum length 6 pages, which is 1 page for each evaluation method. There is an example of how to present this under the forum C.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 8 hours of work.

Scenario: 2 hours
HTA: 30 minutes
SCW: 2 hours
HE: 2 hours
Think Aloud: 1 hour
Ranking: 30 minutes

Deadline: May 23rd 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: The document shall clearly show that you have understood how to use the evaluation methods presented in the instructions.

C3.

Task: You will respond to the evaluation that one of your fellow student performed on your design solution. Possible altering in your design solution may occur after the comments of your fellow student´s evaluation, or if not explain why.

Presentation: The comments and eventually the new design are to be presented as an attached pdf-document as a reply to the commented-on assignment in the forum "Assignment C" in Studentportalen. The possible new design solution and comments should be presented as a PDF-document and are to be saved in "Studentportalen" in the forum Assignment C. Try to keep the document as short as possible with pictures and motivational text.

Mark the post and the document with "C3 your name". Maximum length 5 pages. There is an example of how to present this under the forum C.

Duration: The assignment is equivalent to 6 hours of work.

Deadline: May 27th 2011 at 15.00

Requirements: The document shall clearly show that you have reflected on your own design solution. The document shall clearly show that you have understood the critics and created a new design if neccesary.

Exam

The exam is a home exam.
You have to solve it individually.
The questions require well-founded answers.
The home exam is here at 12.00 on Monday 9th May 2011: DOC, PDF.
The exam must be turned in at the latest May 15th 2011 at 23.59, through the file area for home exams in Studentportalen.
You do not need to register for the exam.
You may write the home exam in English and NOT in Swedish..

You must answer each question by yourself and in your own words. You are allowed to use all possible references and literature and to discuss with your friends, but you are not allowed to copy or plagiarize the text of other people, from a book, an article, an internet site, etc.
When you submit your home exam in Studentportalen it is automatically checked for plagiarism by Urkund, which is a system to check your answers against a database of known articles and internet sources, as well as to compare your responses with your peers'.

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Please send any questions regarding the home exam to Iordanis Kavathatzopoulos.

Mid-course Evaluation - May 2nd 2011 at 15.00

To get understanding of your opinions about the course, we ask you to fill in a mid-course evaluation. The survey contains only a few questions and your feedback is very valuable to us. The evaluation is here: Midcourse evaluation.

Course Evaluation - May 27th 2011 at 15.00

In order to improve the course for coming semesters, we ask you to fill in a course evaluation after you have finished your studies. Your feedback is very valuable to us. The link to the evaluation form will appear here: Evaluering.