Syllabus
Note: I try to front-load the course with what you most need to do your projects. That means galloping through some topics, which we will revisit as needed later. There’s lots of information online in various places about all these topics; in class we’ll emphasize key elements, but we can’t cover all the details. You’ll be expected to do a lot of reading and investigation on your own.
1. Jan. 17 & 19: Intro to course and participants
Please fill out student information form, print it, and bring to class
Intro to User Experience Research and Usability
UX for different circumstances: e.g., mobile usability
Overview of Methods
Initial discussion of final projects
2. Jan. 24 & 26
Jan 24: Assn 1 due; discuss in class
Jan. 24: Project fundamentals:
- Issues in taking on projects (for this course and in professional practice)
- Scoping the work
- Dealing with clients
- Project design and scheduling
- Choosing appropriate methods
- Working with users
- –Selection and recruiting
- –Ethics
3. Jan 31 & Feb. 2
Measurement: key issues of quantitative and qualitative methods as applied to UX
Data collection method: Observation
Intro to interviewing & surveying: deciding what to ask, how, of whom
4. Feb. 7 & 9
Feb 7 (tentative) potential clients pitch projects
Feb 9: observation assignment due; discussed in class.
Interviewing and surveying, cont.
5. Feb. 14 & 16
Usability testing
First discussion of recording and reporting UX research: intro to vide and audio recording; photography
Feb 16: diary studies, cultural probes
6. Feb 21 & 23
Analyzing quantitative & qualitative data: usability testing results; diary studies and cultural probes results.
8. March 6 & 8
Usability Testing Assignment due: a summary video and written report. We’ll view some of the videos in class
Further discussion of usability testing.
9. March 13 & 15
Scenarios and personas
10. March 20 & 22
March 20: NVH out of town. Guest speaker.
March 27 & 29: Spring Break
After Spring Break: at this point our emphasis will be on working with what you’re learning on your projects. We’ll spend a lot of time discussing how your projects are progressing, problems encountered; and summarizing and reporting your results. Exact schedule TBD.
11. April 3 & 5
Analyzing, summarizing, reporting data
12. April 10 & 12
Reporting
Working with people in your organization
Guest speaker
13. April 17 & 19
Buffer
14. April 24 & 26
Overview, summary, recap, conclusions, leftover topics — ???
Probably start presentations, depending on how many we have.
15. RRR week
Project presentations
We will treat these as dry-runs, i.e., the class will give feedback.
May 8: papers due, 5 pm