ECS612U Interaction Design 2016-17: Coursework 2 This coursework involves designing and analysing an interactive system of your own. In order to complete this coursework you will need to be familiar with the material from lectures (particularly Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition), available on the module QMPlus page. Part 1 asks you to describe your design; Part 2 asks you to analyse it using two of the analytical frameworks described in lectures. You don't have to do the two parts in that order: in fact, you may find that thinking about Part 2 before or during Part 1 helps improve your design. Part 1: Conceptual Design (1000 words maximum, 25 marks) Produce a design for an interactive system to enhance the user experience with the cycle hire system you observed in Coursework 1. Your system should be designed to support or enhance one specific user activity, rather than trying to cater for many different ones; and it must follow the key distinction of this module by going beyond a "conventional HCI" approach, to incorporate some aspect(s) of social/physical context, artistic effect and/or entertainment. Ideas for mobile, wearable and/or multimodal designs are welcome; conventional single-user, single-modality screen-based designs or mobile apps are not. You don't need to code or build a system or a working interface: but you must explain your design and conceptual model, give a basic prototype of the interface (e.g. via sketches, diagrams and/or storyboards) and explain how it supports or enhances the activity in question. It may help to draw on your observations of user activities and/or problems in your ethnographic coursework, in order to explain the problem you are trying to solve or gap you want to fill (but you don't have to). It will definitely help to draw on concepts from the lectures to justify your design choices (but don't duplicate Part 2 below). Your design and description will be marked in terms of: 1) concept – its ability to support or enhance an interesting user activity; 2) interactivity – its ability to support interesting modes of interaction; 3) justification of design and relation to concepts from lectures (but don't duplicate Part 2 below); 4) clarity of explanation. The word limit for this part is 1000 words (excluding diagrams, sketches etc). This is only a maximum limit – it's fine to use fewer words if you can fit everything in. Part 2: Analysis (1000 words maximum, 25 marks) a) Give an Activity Theory analysis of your design from Part 1. Explain how this analysis shows that your design is suitable for the activity and context, and discuss what advantages, disadvantages or potential problems it helps reveal. b) Give a Distributed Cognition analysis of your design from Part 1. Explain how this analysis shows that your design is suitable for the activity and context; discuss what advantages, disadvantages or potential problems it helps reveal, and compare these to the findings of part a). The word limit for this part is 1000 words (excluding diagrams, tables etc). This is only a maximum limit – it's fine to use fewer words if you can fit everything in. Marking criteria This assignment accounts for 50% of the coursework marks for Interaction Design, i.e. 20% of the module marks in total (overall the two coursework assignments make up 40% of the final mark, the remaining 60% made up by the exam). Marking in Part 1 will take into account the extent to which you have: § explained how your design will support or enhance an interesting user activity; § paid attention to social, aesthetic and/or entertainment aspects of the activity; § shown support for interesting modes of user-system and/or user-user interaction; § justified your design using concepts from lectures. Marking in Part 2 will take into account the extent to which you have: § applied and explained an Activity Theory (AT) analysis; § explained some insights that your AT analysis gives you for your design, and how; § discussed those insights and the suitability of your AT analysis for your design; § applied and explained a Distributed Cognition (DC) analysis; § explained some insights that your DC analysis gives you for your design, and how; § discussed those insights and the suitability of your DC analysis for your design; § compared the insights and the suitability of the two analysis methods. Marking throughout will take into account: § the clarity of your descriptions and explanations; § evidence of critical thinking in the way you justify your claims, apply the analytical frameworks to the data, and compare alternative analyses/designs; § your understanding of the background literature including the material discussed in lectures; § your presentation (layout, images, wordcount etc). This coursework should be completed this semester; but we will allow submissions until the beginning of next semester, with a final deadline of 23:59:59 (i.e. just before midnight), Monday 9th January 2017. Submit electronic copies to the office in PDF format via the intranet coursework submission system. Note that all essays will automatically be submitted to the JISC Plagiarism Detection Service. Late submissions will be penalised at the rate of 5% of the marks for this assignment for every day, or part day, they are late (except in medical and other documented, exceptional circumstances). The late penalty is applied automatically by the submission system, and even one second past the deadline counts as late; so please be sure to submit early. In particular, do not leave submission until the last few minutes, as you will risk submitting late if you have any technical problems with file size, internet connectivity, system overload and so on.