Casa Basa ˜ blending art with technology

Syllabus

Course Description: This course provides an examination of the interplay between design elements, content organization, and cognitive function in the design of interactive education and training.  This course focuses on content structures, visual information systems, and user-centered design.

Download the Word version of your syllabus here

Final project examples:

• Let's Eat Right! by Jen Van der Henst
• Bunny and Girlie's Playhouse by Ruth Martin
• Chessmates by Michael Salvador
• Leaving the Nest by Mandy Norman

Course Length: Summer 2010. Section A, 11 weeks. Wednesday, July 14, 2010 to Wednesday, September 22, 2010, from 1-5 p.m., Room 402. Punctuality is expected. Points are deducted for excessive (more than 3) tardies.

Course Prerequisites: FS297 Portfolio I

Course Competencies:
Upon successful completion of this course, the student should be able to:

• Apply principles of design and interactivity to develop user-centered training materials.
• Understand and apply principles of grid structures to layout navigational systems.
• Understand and apply principles of symbolic systems design to instructional navigation.
• Understand basic learning theory as applied to instructional design issues.
• Evaluate interaction and usability with assessment methods.
• Adjust project design based on usability assessment

Required Texts: Interaction Design (Paperback) by Dr Jenny Preece (Author), Professor Yvonne Rogers (Author), Dr Helen Sharp (Author). Wiley; 1 edition (January 17, 2002). ISBN-10: 0471492787.

Materials and Supplies: Storage drive, notepad and pencil or pen

Estimated Homework Hours: 4 Hours per week

Technology Needed: Access to necessary software and hardware to complete required assignments.

Process for Evaluation:       
Attendance and Participation                                                                                      25%
Assignments and Exercises                                                                                        45%
Mid-Term Project/Examination                                                                                    15%
Final Project/Examination                                                                                           15%

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List of lectures and labs

Weeks: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Students should check this section weekly prior to class. Updated lectures, homework, and points are listed below. Feel free to email me at sharon{at}casabasa.com if you have any questions.

Week 1: July 14, 2010

Please complete my student survey.

Lecture:

• Review of the school’s emergency evacuation procedures. Introduction to course.
• The Principles of Interaction Design. What is good vs. poor design? Who will use and where? What kind of activities is the user doing when interacting with the product? How does making a cell phone call differ from a public phone? Affordance essay by Don Norman, author of "The Psychology of Everyday Things" and the review of it by another institute.
• Types of jobs in this field: interactive/interaction designers, usability engineers, web designers, information architects, user-experience designers.
• Heuristics - a set of usability principles, or as Nielsen says, "recognized usability principles".
• Interactive heuristics toolkit: http://www.id-book.com/catherb/index.htm

Lab:

• Hands on exercises and discussion: Heuristics and Usability Principles
• Read http://loop.aiga.org/content.cfm/software---interactive-design to be discussed. Here's more information about Robert Horn's theory, cited with the article.
• Small-group discussion of conceptual models – function first, presentation later. What do you need to know? List on a piece of paper all that you need to know and all the user may need to know. What part should a project play in the development of the user's creative/learning process?

Homework:

Read Chapter 3 "Understanding Users" of the book*additional week given for receipt of book
• Conduct a heuristic on this site: http://www.sfgate.com/ vs. this site: http://www.nytimes.com/

Additional readings:

• Visit http://www.id-book.com and read.
• A short paper describing Thomas Whisenand and Henry Emurian's analysis of mouse movement in different directions. http://www.acm.org
• Jakob Nielsen's useit.com website. There is a link on the home page to the full list of Alertbox articles, containing a wealth of information on Web usability design and testing topics. http://www.useit.com/ . fyi
• Bruce Tognazzini, Apple's original user interface evangelist, offers a series of articles and items on interactive design. Just browse this section. http://www.asktog.com/menus/designMenu.html
• Here is an overview of usability and user-centered design. Again, just browse. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/
• The Gestalt principles

Week 2: July 21, 2010

The Deliverables for Education and The Process of Interaction Design.

Lecture:

• How can the goal of designing usable interactions may differ when delivering in a learning environment.? Usability Goals (pg. 14) and the ten-minute rule
• Fitts' Law demonstration: http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~cs5724/g1/tap.html and what it is: http://www.cs.umd.edu/
• What is cognition?

Lab:

• Hands on exercises and discussion: Understanding Users
  • Activity 1.1 How does making a phone call differ when using:
    • a cell phone?
    • a public phone box?
  • How have these devices taken into account the kind of users?
  • The problem space: in order to understand and conceptualize interaction, instead of starting with the design of the end product, we first have to understand what is needed. Sometimes the best way to answer usability questions is through direct activity. These include instructing, conversing, manipulating and navigation, and exploring and browsing.
  • Activity 2.2 A company is building a wireless information system to help tourists find their way around an unfamiliar city. What would they need to find out in order to develop a conceptual model?
    • what do tourists want? would they want you to list all options? allow you to ask questions? or to structure information to allow browsing and exploring in leisure?

Homework:

• Read http://www.uxbooth.com/blog/complete-beginners-guide-to-interaction-design/

Complete reading chapters 1, 2 and chapter 3 from the book, Interaction Design: beyond human-computer interaction.

Create a blog page for this class and email me the url. Complete the assignment on page 103 of the book. The aim of this assignment is for you to elicit a mental model of what your target audience may need. Answer the questions listed on your homework page.

Bring to class next week two possible designs that could be your final project. On both, include any initial user requirements. We will use these to create a needs analysis next week.

Additional readings:

• The Microsoft Official Guidelines for User Interface Developers and Designers. http://msdn.microsoft.com/library
• The Apple Human Interface Guidelines. http://developer.apple.com/
• .pdf on Making the Web easier for users with disabilities courtesy of Jeremy LeVan
• Teaching Tips: Courtesy of Mark Condon: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu

 

Week 3: July 28, 2010

Understanding and Conceptualizing Interaction.

Lecture:

• Needs Analysis and examples

• The components of an educational model of interaction. Class notes.

• Classifying content as to type of learning:

  • Memorizing - does your content require rote recall that doesn't change? The behavior change would be the ability to recognize or recall (such as a list, associations, an ordered list). Instructional strategies: Presentation of information, practice, feedback. These are routine for all lessons. A higher level tactic would be the use of chunking of information, mnemonics and repetition.
  • Applying skills - performance changes under various conditions. Requires classifying and identifying behaviors. Produce and perform, or predict and solve. It is an application of skills. Instructional strategies: There are 3 distinct types of skills: classifying concepts (ability to classify an idea by stating the criteria necessary to to belong to a category, common characteristics), using procedures (an ordered set of actions to achieve a goal), and using principles (application of a cause and effect relationship). Routine tactics are presentations, practice and feedback. Relational tactics involve examples and practice items, and easy-to-difficult sequencing of cases. Enrichment tactics would be attention focusing exercises (tell the learner what they should know and focus them on important tasks or ideas), representation (making the learner exercise as real to possible) and automaticity (making a skill automatic.)
  • Using complex domain-specific knowledge to solve or predict. Understanding relationships. Use of reason, ability to analyze, compare and contrast. Relating new ideas to prior knowledge. Instructional strategies: there are two types of understanding: conceptual and causal. Conceptual understanding is linking new information to previously learned material. Causal understanding happens when you develop the ability to make predictions or draw implications, give explanations or make inferences, or to solve problems. Instructional strategies would include paraphrasing information and elaborations. These are when you ask the learner to compare/contrast, analyze an idea, present a case study, or describe similarities and differences with an analogy.
  • Higher-level skills or thinking. These are skills that can be used for learning, remembering, and thinking across the subject matter. The ability to analyze a previously unencountered situation and to develop an hypothesis. It is problem solving, analysis, synthesis and evaluation, learning strategies and metacognition. Problem solving involves mental organization of skills, and then creating a mental representation based on analysis. Learning strategies involves requiring the learner to come up with ways to present the information. Meta-cognition is the ability to monitor one's own learning and thinking processes.

Lab:

• Begin developing project. Create Study Guide for project.

  • To begin your project, you will write down everything you expect that needs to be included in your project. This should include your objective(s), task analysis, target audience, types of training needed, how you will consider different learning abilities, and how you will test for understanding.
  • Begin layout of study guide. Like your eventual project, this should incorporate the design you deem will attract (and hopefully cause the viewer to interact) with your project.

Homework:

• Read chapter 7 "Identifying needs and establishing requirements" and complete your Needs Analysis

  Additional readings:

  • An article by Aaron Marcus that explores the return on investment of usable design. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/

Week 4: August 4, 2010

User-Centered Design and your final project

Lecture:

• Writing your documentation
• Example of documentation/user persona: http://drs375.aisites.com/
• Understanding Users. Community/Participation.
  • functional layering
  • direct manipulation
  • Methodologies are no substitute for creative thinking
• Ethnography - studying people in place.

Classroom discussion:

Finding what is alike and what differs - the task of trying to categorize all the interactions observed - is not easy. Differences matter when designing for asynchronous learning. We are not there to respond if there is any misinterpretation of the delivered information.

• Language - There is a cultural barrier when the language you are teaching in, is a second language to part of your audience. How well can your target audience read, write, speak and understand the language the lesson plan is written. Avoid cliches and colloquialisms. Simplify writing, graphics and multimedia. Provide a written guide if you determine a need for translation.
• Culture - When we communicate, we find out what we share in common and we explore our differences. Language certainly is one aspect of our culture, but there are other differences you may not have considered. Think of other differences that can impact your course:
  • Symbology - Are our symbols, images, icons and navigational elements interpreted the same across cultures?
  • Values - Values that are important to the American culture may not be relevant to other cultures, or at least, less relevant. How does the target audience respond to the day-to-day aspects of American culture - what we take for granted? Do they define correct behavior in the classroom, work space, and social activities the same as you do? Is innovation or tradition more important? What are expected relations between classes? Ages? Genders? Economic classes? What is the relative importance of self to the family, classroom, workspace?
  • Educational expectations - How do people expect to learn? Theory or practice? Structured or free exploration? What is the expected role of the instructor?
• Geographic Location - Where will learning take place? Will there be any temporal changes that can affect your application? Can their daily activities affect the outcome and success of your proposed project? How will it affect their willingness to learn and to apply and participate in your course?
• Technical capabilities - Take into account your target audience's experience, skills, and technical capabilities. How reliable is their ability to access your course?

Lab:

• Observation lab.
• Continue project development.
• Testing your project: Formative vs. Summative evaluation
• Students meet with instructor to discuss target audience.

Homework:

• Develop user persona. Download .pdf assignment. Describe your target audience fully. What do they like? What do they do in their free time? etc. Get a picture of them, develop their history, and cite at least one reference to back up your description - listed in your site in MLA fashion. Due next week. Courtesy of jeremylevan.com - http://www.hceye.org/downloads/Persona-Lene.jpg. Read Chapter 12 "Observing Users"

Week 5: August 11, 2010

 

The Process of Interaction Design.

Lecture: Research

• Designer: know thyself. In creating your persona (above), the goal is to so visualize this person, that you would know whether or not they will interact with your project.
• In designing for education, a common learning theory is The Multiple Intelligences described by Howard Gardner: http://www.ldpride.net/learningstyles.MI.htm
• Learning theories: http://www.learning-theories.com/

Lab:

• Modify projects based on new information. In class, create Storyboard interactions for your project. Discuss techniques. Information Processing Theory.

Homework:

• The Process of Interaction Design. Create a task analysis for each module of your project (this is just the ongoing project). Performing a Task Analysis on your website. Read chapter 8 "Design, Prototyping and construction"

Week 6: August 18, 2010

Promote Learning – Motivation.

Lecture:

• Mid-quarter check-in. Instructor meets with students individually to discuss progress of final project.
• Promote Learning – Consistency.

Lab:

• Critique of projects to date. Using the materials you created, test your project.
• Design, Prototyping and Construction.

Homework:

• Continue working on projects. Create pre and post questionnaires for both project and to test user. A sample of your questionnaire should be included within the pre/post testing documentation due week 11. Read chapter 10 "Introducing Evaluation"

Relevant Links:

• Experience(s) in creating distance learning texts
• Web Survey Best Practice: Understanding Question Types and Data Validation
• Best practices in questionnaire design
• Using a Retrospective Pre-Post Questionnaire to Determine Program Impact
• http://usability.gov/process.html

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Week 7: August 25, 2010

Principles of Symbolic Systems Design

Lecture:

• How have symbols affected society? How can you incorporate symbols effectively within your interactive project?

Lab:

• Small-group discussion of symbols in our society. Go to this site: http://www.symbols.com/ and find examples of symbols that denote: love, friendship, closing a door, and anything of your choice. How can symbols be more effective than text? Write a sentence using symbols - in class assignment.
• Memory is discussed as it relates to quiz #3. Take this test: http://www.memorylossonline.com. Be sure to take your time and take the test seriously. Once completed, be sure to read some factors that may affect memory. If you are up for the challenge, you can try this memory matching game. How is this relevant to an online course? Discuss in groups.
• Class discussion of individual projects - there's some surprises out there!

Homework:

• Research online memory as it relates to your project and prepare a mla formatted document for your website, as part of your documentation. Explain how you will help your target audience remember the goals you have set as your primary learning objective. Prepare a small presentation on what you discovered for next week

Relevant Links:

• Free symbols, icons list from Smashing Magazine
• Mark Boulton: opinion article on use of icons and symbols on the web
• Semiotics - the study of signs - is presented by Dr. Daniel Chandler
• http://www.thelostsymbol.com/symbolquest/index.php

Week 8: September 1, 2010

• Lecture: Special guest speaker, Charles Wedge, Reading Producer for Leapfrog Enterprises. In Chuck's words:

  " I am a Reading Producer at LeapFrog which means that I manage the project as well as act as the game designer/writer/handle the budget/schedule/develop the project in a proprietary software. I also have to opportunity to work with the art, audio, and tools teams. I am the Tag baseROM Producer as well as a Reading Producer so I work with the team that develops the software that runs the device and the engineers and Industrial Designers that work on the hardware.
  
  I also am the Licensor (Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks, Harper Collins) contact person for the project and do submissions of builds, designs, written scripts, stories on whatever project I get assigned.
  
  The good thing for me is that my job changes throughout the year based on where we are in the project. It is very creative in the pre-production phase, very technical in the development phase, and crazy when the project gets towards the end because we have to decide what gets fixed and what gets dumped in order to ship on-time."

Lab:

• Please be prepared to ask at least one question of our guest

Homework:

• Continue work on final project design and physical materials (adjunctive material to your web site/cd, such as a study guide. Here's a site that develops study guides: http://www.studygs.net/.
• Your final project needs to include a one page summary of what you are teaching, why your project fills a need, and includes at least one site and one research item you used in its creation. Post this to your design documentation.
• don't forget you need to test your program for usability and you need to test your users to see if they gained anything - probably two separate submissions. How will you study your subject? Questionnaire? Observation? Form?

 

Week 9: September 8, 2010

Lecture: User-testing. http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html

•  

Lab:

• Discussion of projects, and what you need for successful completion.

Homework:

• Continue project. Final user testing completed and results uploaded to blog. Review http://www.usability.gov/basics/index.html and email me one interesting fact you discovered there.

Week 10: September 15, 2010

Completion of project. Usability assessment.

Lecture:

• Motivation is discussed
• Critique of projects from outside source due
• Completed project is due, though you will be able to make minor tweaks.

Lab:

• Presentations of projects to instructor for individual grading.

Homework:

• Work on project.
• take home Final Exam. Due next week
• Study guide or adjunctive materials due next week.
• Read this article and comment in your blog: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/07/health/views/07mind.html?emc=eta1

 

Week 11: September 22, 2010

Presentation and Critiques

Lecture:

• Formal presentation and critique of Student Projects.

Lab:

• none

Homework:

• none

How you are graded and points assigned:

Points are given for completion of certain tasks, including your portfolio and process book. Grading rubric - this is the worksheet that I use to grade your final project. It is a combination of this and individual assignments, attendance and participation that equals your grade.

Criteria by which you and your projects are graded for this course. Please see me if you have any questions.

Attendance and Class Participation Policy - Attendance and class participation are 25% of the final grade for the course. Students will be expected to attend class as well as act as active participants in class lectures. This is worth 10% of your overall grade. 5% is awarded for perfect attendance, recognizing that you cannot learn if you do not attend, and how difficult it is to do. This is a sign of excellence. The remainder 10% is given for posts that you make to your production log.

Assignments and homework are graded by points for a total of 45% of your grade. Usually the homework is to demonstrate skill, or as a check of knowledge, or to encourage exploration and higher level of thinking. In this course, 25 points are awarded for several smaller projects like creating a preloader, or doing research. The remaining 20% is your final project, as it will demonstrate your understanding of the class and its goals.

Midterm and Final tests and presentations are a combination of tests and projects. The midterm test is a check for knowledge on both our parts. The final test demonstrates your hard work, skill and knowledge gained in this class. Because this class produces a final project, part of that demonstration includes using the software, xhtml, css and web graphics, and part of that demonstration is the actual final project, your portfolio. These items total 30% of your grade.

Class Standings

Click on this individual score link to access scoring information on your completed projects.  Enter your name and id (password) exactly as you provided in the student survey.

I upgrade my grades every Sunday, usually no later than 2 p.m. I may update points for work received after this time, but before 7 p.m. only.

If there are any questions at all, please feel free to email me. I usually respond the same day and sometimes immediately, or at least within the hour.

If you have any problems, email me.