DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 1 DECO2500 – DECO7250 Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction INDIVIDUAL REPORT TOPICS 25% of final grade NB: You must achieve a minimum grade to pass the course Deadline 13 May 2016, 23:59h BACKGROUND The individual report is to be done on an individual basis. You submit just one (1) individual report for this class. You must pass the individual report with at least 50% (DECO2500) or 65% (DECO7250) to pass this class. The first practical session after the Easter break is on "preparation for the individual report". It will be about writing reports and papers like this. We will give examples, and will also provide guidance on doing literature searches, identifying high-quality peer-reviewed papers, constructing arguments, presenting data, using bibliographic software, and other aspects. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS Mode The individual report is a piece of individual assessment for each student, as its name suggests, and is not group work. Therefore it is to be conducted and written up by each student individually, without help from others. Topic In this assessment you are required to prepare a small independent report that might involve a literature review, a design problem, or a critique. Length Word counts are listed below for each class. Word counts do not include page headers (top of page), page footers (bottom of page), title page material, reference list, table captions or contents, figure captions or contents, or appendix contents. Word counts do otherwise include all words in the main body of the text, including headings and in-text citations of the literature. For DECO2500 students: • You must achieve a 50% minimum grade on the individual report to pass DECO2500. • The target word range for the individual report is 1200 and 1500 words, not including the title page or the bibliography. • Points will be taken off for going above or below the target word range. • There should be at least 10 peer-reviewed journal articles or peer-reviewed conference papers cited and used in the paper. DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 2 • The individual report should be in 12-point font and it should have headings for its separate sections. For DECO7250 students: • You must achieve a 65% minimum grade on the individual report to pass DECO7250. • The target word range for the individual report is 1500 and 1800 words, not including the title page or the bibliography. • Points will be taken off for going above or below the target word range. • There should be at least 15 peer-reviewed journal articles or peer-reviewed conference papers cited and used in the paper. • The individual report should be in 12-point font and it should have headings for its separate sections. Bibliographic support Regardless of the topic you choose, you should provide support for the ideas and activities in your individual report from the peer-reviewed literature (scholarly books, conference papers, and journal papers, not just websites). Use library database software such as Web of Science, PsychInfo, PubMed, ACM Library in addition to any general searching with (for example) Google Scholar. You will not get credit for bibliographic items that are effectively just webpages on the world-wide web. Bibliographic style The individual report should adhere to a specific standard, such as ACM, Vancouver, APA 6th, IEEE, or whatever. You can use any kind of bibliographic software, such as BibTeX, Mendeley, or EndNote, etc. Scholarly referencing You should be drawing upon the peer-reviewed literature for your individual report: high-status journals and conferences for which all papers submitted are reviewed by other researchers after which a paper is either accepted or rejected. All background and related material should be appropriately referenced and should appear in a properly formatted bibliography. On your cover sheet, state which reference/citation standard you have used (e.g. IEEE) and which form of bibliographic software (e.g., EndNote). Plagiarism We follow UQ's guidelines on handling plagiarism. Any cases of suspected plagiarism found will be subject to formal investigation. UQ has adopted the following definition of plagiarism: Plagiarism is the act of misrepresenting as one's own original work the ideas, interpretations, words or creative works of another. These include published and unpublished documents, designs, music, sounds, images, photographs, computer codes and ideas gained through working in a group. These ideas, interpretations, words or works may be found in print and/or electronic media. Please read the UQ Student Integrity and Misconduct policy (http://ppl.app.uq.edu.au/content/3.60.04-student-integrity-and-misconduct) which makes a comprehensive statement about the University's approach to plagiarism, including the approved DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 3 use of plagiarism detection software, the consequences of plagiarism and the principles associated with preventing plagiarism. Outline and structuring The individual report should be written in clear English prose (not point form) and it should use headings to structure the sections. Depending on your topic, you may also need some second-level headings to provide further structuring and clarity. Submission and late submissions Submit via Turnitin "Individual Report" on the Blackboard site for DECO2500/DECO7250. No extensions will be granted except in exceptional personal circumstances (documented medical reason, bereavement, or family emergency). Requests based on demands of a student's paid employment will not be granted. Personal hardware or computer failures are not grounds for extension. All requests for extension must be submitted on the UQ Application for Extension of Progressive Assessment form(http://www.uq.edu.au/myadvisor/forms/exams/progressive-assessmentextension.pdf) no later than 48 hours prior to the submission deadline. The application and supporting documentation (e.g. medical certificate) must be submitted to the ITEE Coursework Studies office (78-425) or by email to [email protected]. If submitted electronically, you must retain the original documentation for a minimum period of six months to provide as verification, should you be requested to do so. Marking scheme (out of 100%) Marking focus Percentage of grade Comments Structuring of paper and appropriate use of headings 10% Headings are included in the word count. Quantity and quality of peerreviewed literature referred to 20% Textbook and webpages are not adequate by themselves. Quality of activity/analysis performed to answer the question 30% Evidence of original thought and effort needed. Clarity of presentation of findings Appropriateness of conclusions drawn from the activity/analysis 20% Balanced conclusions needed, including limitations of your own analysis (don't try to "sell" it). Adherence to an identified bibliographic standard 10% ACM, APA, IEEE, Harvard, Vancouver, etc. English expression, spelling, punctuation, grammar, etc 10% Most important issue will be grammatical sentence structure Length Up to 10% off total Points will be taken off for using any more than the maximum words or fewer than the minimum words in the body of your report. 10/100 points off for each range of 100 words that your word count lies in that is outside the range. So for DECO2500, 1199 words or fewer or 1501 words or more would lose 10/100 points. For DECO7250, 1499 words or fewer or 1801 words or more would lose 10/100 points. DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 4 QUESTIONS Pick just one (1) of the following 14 questions for your Individual Report. Do not answer all questions! For the question you choose, "answer the question, the whole question, and nothing but the question" given the suggested structure framework given above. Chapter 3 topics Cognitive aspects of HCI Q1 How are HCI researchers designing everyday or office-based devices and applications to be "attention aware" and not to interrupt or distract their human users at the wrong moment? What theoretical knowledge about human attention and perception is being used? What technical innovations are being exploited or invented to make everyday or office-based devices and applications more "attention aware"? What evidence is there for success in making applications "attention aware"? Suggestion: structure the body of your answer around the questions posed above. However don't use point form to structure the paper. Q2 Find two distinctly different food/drink vending machines or transport ticket purchasing machines and explore the conceptual model motivating their design. First, find and report on research on conceptual models in the peer-reviewed literature that might help you in the next steps. Second, analyse the conceptual model underlying each of the two machines you have chosen. Third, for each of the two machines, observe 4-6 instances of a consenting person purchasing an item (should be different people for each instance). Fourth, assess whether each user can work effectively with the machine, given the machine's conceptual model, and draw conclusions about whether the conceptual model is effective for users. Suggestion: a structure is suggested by the steps in the question above. Chapter 4 topics Social aspects of HCI and the mental model practical Q3 Why and how are users' mental models "buggy"? Suggestion: a question like this involves defining your terms, followed by some digging into the literature for (1) theoretical background and (2) great examples. Q4 Re-do the mental models practical, but in a much more systematic and informative way. First, identify what a "mental model" is and provide some evidence from the literature in how the "mental model" concept has been used in HCI. Second, find 6-10 consenting people, and ask them to sketch (or otherwise express) their mental model of their personal and UQ-related computing environment (the devices, applications, and services). Third, ask them to explain their mental model to you. Fourth, looking across all your participants, identify the areas of similarity and areas of difference in how the different people understand the same (in principle) devices, applications, and services. Fifth, offer some speculations for why the mental models are similar where they are, and different where they are. DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 5 Suggestion: Find a way of constraining the task a little so that each of your 6-10 participants will cover the same kinds of devices, applications, and services. This will make it easier for you to analyse the similarities in your participants' mental models of how those particular devices, applications, and services work. It's up to you how you achieve that. Chapter 5 topics Emotional aspects of HCI and the ATM emotional design practical Q5 What evidence is there for cultural differences in how users expect intelligent agents to behave and how users respond to anthropomorphism in intelligent agents? Q6 Using evidence from the literature, identify how an ATM interface might be made to impart a "cool professional" emotional tone vs. a "warm friendly and personal" emotional tone. Then storyboard some interactive sequences and step through those sequences with around 6-10 consenting sample users. Ask the users to judge (on 7-point Likert scales) various aspects of their interaction, such as (1) the coolness or warmth of the interface, (2) workload of working with the interface, (3) how competent the user felt after their interaction, and further questions that the literature on emotional design will guide you towards. Then draw conclusions on whether your two interfaces had the desired effect, and whether you found effects other than those you were designing for. Suggestions: the evidence from the literature could relate directly to ATMs or to similar kinds of devices. When designing your interfaces, don't exaggerate the emotional tone – make the interfaces plausible. Chapters 7 and 8 questions Data gathering and data analysis Q7 Compare and contrast Distributed Cognition and Activity Theory as two ways of understanding how one or more users work with different artifacts in the world to achieve goals. Put your answer in the context of work that others have done. Suggestion: structure the body of your answer around the questions posed above. Describe DC, then describe AT, then note similarities, then note differences. Hopefully you will be able to draw on work that other people have done comparing and contrasting DC and AT. If so, be very careful with your referencing and acknowledgment of others' ideas, to avoid plagiarism. At all times, make it clear where your ideas are coming from, and give appropriate referencing, citations, quotes, etc.. Impress us with the breadth of your reading and your ability to show us where the ideas have come from. When putting forward your own ideas, make it clear that they are your own ideas. Q8 Perform a test to see if well vs. poorly designed questionnaires have an impact on the efficiency (speed), effectiveness (ease of understanding/accuracy) and satisfaction experienced by users when answering the questionnaire. Construct a questionnaire of around 20 items asking about some aspect (not too personal) of people's interaction with technology. For example, you could be asking about how people use Facebook and Twitter, and ask about further features they would like. For Questionnaire A, make your questionnaire conform to all the principles of good questionnaire design. For Questionnaire B, use the same basic 20 questions, but break some of the principles of good questionnaire design. Along with many other changes, this may include slight changes in the exact wording of some of the questions. DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 6 Then test the questionnaires on two groups of people. One group of people (approx. n=10) should just get Questionnaire A. When they have completed Questionnaire A, use a short (well-designed!) follow-up questionnaire to ask them how quickly they were able to answer Questionnaire A, how easy it was to understand the questions and give answers, and how satisfied they were with their experience. Measure how long it took them to answer the questionnaire, and note any glitches in how they answered it. A second group of people (approx. n=10 again) should get Questionnaire B. Give them the followup questionnaire too, and measure their performance as described above. So – does good questionnaire design help people answer faster, more accurately, and do they think they are faster and more accurate? Are they more satisfied with the experience? Write up a mini-report of your study, including Introduction, Method, Results, and Conclusions. Chapters 6, 9, and 11 questions Interface types and prototyping Q9 In Chapter 6 of your textbook, 20 different interface types (interface paradigms) are described. Select one (1) of the 20 interface types and give a report on the history and current use of that interface type. When was it first introduced, and by whom? What kinds of applications has it been used for (give specific examples from the literature)? What is the current state of the art/latest developments in the use of that interface type? Q10 In one Practical you will be introduced to Balsamiq and to fluid UI. In this individual report you have an opportunity to explore one of those tools in more detail. You will use either the Balsamiq or the fluid UI prototyping tool for prototyping and generating test cases for the following sample application: Develop a simple mobile application for a user to keep track of the times at which they watch TV, and to monitor the amount of time per day or week they spend watching TV. In your report, first briefly review prototyping tools. Reflect on how low-fidelity prototyping tools such as Balsamiq and fluid UI have been used in the user-centred design process. Review the chapter in your text on prototyping. and the kind of personal technology you are focusing on. Then present the prototype you created in your selected prototyping tool, including screen dumps of the screens and indicating linkages. Present a user test plan you would use for your very first round of user testing with the prototype. Are there some tests you could conduct easily with the prototyping tool you selected but other tests that are harder to conduct? (Note: you do not need to actually conduct the tests. You only need to identify what the important features would be to test, given their importance to the user, frequency of use, or the risky design decisions you made). Submit an electronic prototype (or links to a running version) with your report. Please note: no substitutes for the Balsamiq or fluid UI tools will be accepted and no substitutes for the sample application topic will be accepted. DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 7 Chapter 10 questions Requirements gathering Q11 The concept of personas now has quite a long history in interaction design. Nonetheless, some interaction design professionals and researchers are critical of the idea of using personas and are critical of how personas have been used in interaction design. In this report, please identify peer-reviewed papers that have criticized the concept of personas and the use of personas in interaction design. In the report, convey exactly how the concept and use of personas has been criticized—what arguments have been made against it, and by whom. Have there been efforts to improve the robustness and effectiveness of personas as an interaction design tool? If so, please outline those efforts, again referring closely to the peer-reviewed literature. If not, please identify why not. Q12 Cultural probes are a requirements-gathering technique that is sometimes used to learn about everyday personal aspects of a person's life that are not amendable to observation, interview, etc. For this individual report, you will first review cultural probes. Then you will construct a cultural probe package that each of six (6) consenting people will use during one (1) day on campus to let you know about (a) the important physical locations in university life, (b) how they move between those locations, and (c) positive and negative feelings they have about those movements and locations (inconveniences, frustrations, pleasures, etc.). Your participants should have the ability to take photos (e.g., on their own phone) but you should provide them with further artifacts with which they can provide information (maps, notebooks, and other things you deem useful.) Gather the information from the six participants and analyse it using qualitative methods (see text or other articles for ideas) to determine if there are any common themes suggesting needs that could be addressed with interactive or location-based information and communication technology. Your report should include the literature review of cultural probes and the results of your investigation. Chapters 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15 Paper Prototyping / Cognitive Walkthrough Q13 Over the years, interaction designers have developed quite creative ways of representing interface functionality using paper prototypes. As a result, quite sophisticated evaluations can be performed even with paper prototypes. In this individual report you will take a problem encountered in an earlier Practical (but not from the Linked Project of the last few weeks) and create a paper prototype of a possible interface for it. Then run tests of the functional and usability issues with n=6 participants and reflect on the strengths and limitations of your paper prototype. In your report, (1) write an introduction highlighting previous uses of paper prototyping in the literature than have motivated how you built your paper prototype, (2) describe your paper prototype, the tests you performed, and the measures you took, (3) present the results and (4) comment on the strengths and limitations of the paper prototype for testing the functional and usability issues that you addressed. (Put your raw data and materials in an Appendix). DECO2500+7250-2016-IndividualReportTopics-QuestionsTopics-v02.docx 8 Q14 The cognitive walkthrough is a useful method for testing the effectiveness of interactive prototypes early in the design process. In this individual report you will take a problem encountered in an earlier Practical (but not from the Linked Project of the last few weeks) and create a paper prototype of a possible interface for it. Then run cognitive walkthroughs with n=6 participants and reflect on the strengths and limitations of your paper prototype. In your report, (1) write an introduction introducing the theory underlying cognitive walkthrough and outline how cognitive walkthroughs have been used in the past, (2) describe your paper prototype, the design issues to be examined, and the cognitive walkthrough tests you chose to test those issues, (3) present the results of the cognitive walkthrough, and (4) comment on the strengths and limitations of the cognitive walkthrough method for testing the design issues you were investigating. (Put your raw data and materials in an Appendix).