Your out-of-class work for the second half of this class will involve a single user experience research project of your choice. For the midterm, you will create a project plan; for the final you will deliver a presentation, a project report and a brief reflective paper.

Your project may be:

• an investigation of user needs for a proposed product, information system, service, website, or similar; or
• an evaluation and assessment for a prototype or an existing one, or
• some combination of these.

The more real it is, the better the project. The best projects are for an actual client. But you can also pick a site or product with which you have no direct connection.

You must use a minimum of three substantive methods that we address in the course. Two of those methods must involve empirical (qualitative or quantitative) data you generate from engagement with users. (We’ll discuss this further.)

Given the constraints of the semester, this is likely to be more of a pilot project than an actual, completed project for a client. It’s most important that you get to practice a variety of methods and the entire process from planning to to analysis and delivery of a product. It’s unlikely that you’ll have time to go into enough depth with each method to have defendable results.

This can be an individual or a group project; group projects are recommended.