Reference no: EM132522512

301045 Advanced Topics in User System Interaction - Western Sydney University

Learning Outcome 1 Apply cognitive and user models to the design of application user interfaces

Learning Outcome 2 Describe ways in which users' characteristics (i.e., age, education, cultural differences, disability etc.) require adaptation of a user interface to increase effectiveness

Learning Outcome 3 Integrate appropriate user-centred design methodologies into the development of an application, website or emerging technology (such as mobile and wearable devices)

Learning Outcome 4 Describe and use the major usability guidelines and standards

Learning Outcome 5 Develop low-fidelity prototypes, and high-fidelity prototypes

Learning Outcome 6 Develop user interfaces for domain specific applications

Learning Outcome 7 Create an appropriate user evaluation plan with carefully chosen subjective and objective measures

Learning Outcome 8 Discuss state of the art research issues and novel interaction technologies under the umbrella of HCI by means of presenting discourse through a literature review paper

Assessment Details

Several practical activities (usually 3 to 5) will be provided in class as print outs. Students are requested to complete these activities to the best of their ability and as far as they can complete in the 2 hour session. Any incomplete exercises can be completed at home and submitted as part of the tutorial workbook homework component. Answers should be maintained in an online journal/workbook (for e.g. a simple A4 - word document, Online Portfolio, etc).

Before the end of the class, it is your responsibility to approach your respective tutor so that your attempts may be marked off. The tutor will maintain an online record of your practicals marks; however you may not be informed of your marks on a weekly basis due to administrative reasons. In general; if you attend the classes on a regular basis and complete the exercises diligently you can expect to do very well in this assessment. The teaching team is aware that not all students will be able to finish their exercises in class which is why a supplementary/second marked homework component to the Tutorial workbook is provided as a subsequent attachment to the tutorial workbook assessment. This particular in-class component is simply to ensure that students engage with the provided content in the tutorials.
Important Note: There will be no tutorials in Week 1 (first week of semester), giving us a total of 12 tutorials. There will be no tutorials in Week 9 due to the semester break.

The following guidelines will be used to mark the weekly exercises:
1. Marking for each individual tutorial exercise will be based on: Relevance, Discussion and Clarity/Effort. See marking criteria table for details. All marked tutorials (a total of 10) will contribute equally to the final 10% mark (There will be no graded tutorial exercises in Week 13 and 14 due to final presentations of Assessment 3C). The tutors will also mark/evaluate the effort of the student and appropriate marks will be deducted for non academic activities during tutorial classes (social media, recreational multimedia, non academic discussions etc).
In sum, you will be marked on the basis of 10 face to face tutorials. Remember the last two weeks are dedicated for presentations.
2. If a student misses a tutorial due to special consideration, he/she should proceed with applying a special consid- eration application as per the WSU special consideration policy. Missing a tutorial without just cause will result in nil marks being awarded for that class.
3. Tutorials will be marked at the end of the class by your tutor. No late submissions will be accepted or marked, unless with an appropriate special consideration application.

Research Project A - Project Brief

General Project Instructions
The goal of this individual project based activity is to provide you with hands-on experience of completing all the phases of a HCI Project (where a HCI project is defined as an interactive solution through which a computer or a machine and a user interact). These include: idea generation, conceptualisation, design, implementation and evaluation.
The HCI Project (components) is divided into 3 assessments:

- 3A Project Brief worth 10%,
- 3B Low Fidelity Prototype Report worth 15%
- 3C High Fidelity Prototype and Evaluation Methodology Presentation worth 25%.

The goal of the project as a whole is as follows:
To design an interactive solution for a chosen problem area (where currently ine?icacies or inadequacies exist), such that the interactive solution must be either a mobile app OR a tablet app OR a website.
Initially you will choose a topic for the project and work on that throughout the semester for all the assessments. The final goal of the project is to present a proof of concept hi-fidelity interactive prototype; which may be non-functional in the true sense and ideally comprising of a series of software wireframes. Ensure that your choice of topic is not too minimalistic in nature as for the assessments you will require at least three features/scenarios; where a scenario will be defined as the point of when a user initiates an action to the point when the user is (un)successful in completing the action.
Choosing your topic
At the start of the semester you will have to choose a topic.
You will have some freedom in choosing the problem area of your topic. It could be related to your daily life at home, work, university, etc. You may decide to address the research problem by improving the current interactive solution that is in place or coming up with a completely new solution.
Example Topics
Here are some sample topics to guide you accordingly:
1.An Fun and Stimulating Educational Interface to teach English for Young Children whose first language is not

English
2.A 3D visualisation tool to simulate buying furniture at IKEA
3.A single student app that integrates all student apps in one
4.A mobile app that translates teenage slang in received messages and emails for the elderly 5.An Interface that tracks energy usage at the home and provides alerts, suggestions
6.An Interface that tracks the medicine intake of patients at home

After you have selected your topic you will further research on the idea and proceed with developing both low and hi-fidelity prototypes for your intended system.
The three assessments that together form the HCI project are now described in detail hereunder. Assessment 3A:

Project Brief

Instructions
The goal of this project brief report is to present your topic, the rationale and motivation of choosing your topic and to relate its importance with relevant HCI literature. You will also need to benchmark your proposed idea/concept by comparing it against 3 existing commercial applications that are similar. The main purpose of this assessment is to provide feedback to you on your chosen topic so that you may address any concerns for the remaining two assessments. You are strongly recommended to use this feedback to keep the project on track and improve your subsequent submission of other assessments in the unit.
The project brief report must be written and formatted using the SIGCHI conference template (which will be provided on vUWS). You must follow the SIGCHI template completely and meticulously. Therefore, all formatting must be according to the template. The best way to manage that would be to replace the text in the template with your own text. After you have written all your content, remove text that is leftover from the template. The content (not formatting!) of the headings, subheadings are somewhat your choice and the suggested headings below are a good starting point.
The required length of the report is approximately 1200 words; excluding the bibliography section. There is no threshold associated with this first assessment.
The following subsections/subheadings must be included in the project brief report:
1. Introduction and Motivation: introducing your topic and problem; providing a context for your topic/problem; justifying the choice of the topic/problem and highlighting the importance of the topic/problem.
2. Literature Review or also known as Related Work Section: Linking your chosen topic and its importance by showcasing what other HCI researchers have done in similar areas and if any gaps exist. A minimum of five to seven relevant academic articles must be cited. A sample literature review document will be provided which will clarify tips and techniques on how to approach a literature review (such as starting from the general themes and drilling down to the specifics). In this assessment the literature review can be about three short paragraphs (approximately 300-500 words).

3. Benchmark Design: Benchmark your proposed idea/concept by comparing it against 3 existing applications that are similar (either iOS or Android). Clearly state at least one issue with each of the existing apps (conceptual or interface/UI related). Give more details than "hard for user to navigate, etc.". Discuss pros and cons and how your idea advances the app, web or system market in comparison to the existing 3 applications. 4.Design Statement: One line design statement describing what you will attempt to do.
5. Personas: Present two personas (i.e. major stakeholders) of your interactive solution. You can present the two personas as text or visually or in a tabular format.
6. Conclusion and Future Work: A short paragraph on the way forward.

7. Bibliography: listing all references using the Harvard referencing style.

Resources Provided
1. Relevant Literature will be provided; including state of the art and pioneering articles from the HCI/CHI do- main area
2. Sample Document on how to conduct a literature review
3. Exemplars of concise literature review
4. End Note style details: we will discuss End Note in the lectures/tutorials

Assessment 3B: Low-Fidelity (Design Concept) Report Relevant

Instructions
In this report you will present your initial design ideas of how the interface that addresses your chosen topic should look like and behave using paper wireframes only. Please use the templates for paper wireframes as provided on vUWS and as discussed in the lecture and tutorials. All paper wireframes must be hand sketched and annotated extensively; use of software is not allowed to enhance the sketches.
The low-fidelity prototype report must be written and formatted using the SIGCHI conference template (which will be provided on vUWS). You must follow the SIGCHI template completely and meticulously. Therefore, all formatting must be according to the template. The best way to manage that would be to replace the text in the template with your own text. After you have written all your content, remove text that is leftover from the template. The content (not formatting!) of the headings, subheadings are somewhat your choice and the suggested headings below are a good starting point.
The required length of the report is approximately 1250 words; excluding the bibliography section. The wireframes can be included in the appendix. Please scan the paper wireframes and then insert into the report; do not take a picture with your smart phone camera as that will reduce the quality of the image when inserted in the document!
A threshold pass mark of 50% is associated with this assessment.
The following subsections must be included in the low-fidelity prototype report:

1. Introduction: Brief recap of your chosen topic and its motivation.
2. Scenario Description: Clearly highlight and then briefly describe 3 interaction scenarios within your chosen topic. As stated prior, a scenario will typically be one feature of your system. Showcase the scenario description by employing one of the following techniques: use cases, storyboards or task analysis. Feel free to use any one of the 3 but not more than one mentioned visual techniques to represent each of the scenarios. So for example Scenario 1 can be represented by Task Analysis, Scenario 2 by storyboards, Scenario 3 by Use cases OR Scenario 1 can be represented by Task Analysis, Scenario 2 by Task Analysis, Scenario 3 also by Task Analysis and so on any combination thereof. Also each scenario must be explained through text and through one visual technique as mentioned above.
3. Design Conceptualisation: For each of the 3 scenarios present your paper wireframes (each scenario can be a subheading for the sake of readability and clarity). Also clearly indicate any user actions that result in traversing the wireframes and describe the layout and design of the interface. Some of the wireframes will be identical (such as the home page or home screen); feel free to include them once in the report and refer to them from thereon in. In this section, feel free to include any wireframes/design choices that were rejected. Indicate why! Moreover, briefly state what process or method (i.e. brainstorming, research, iterative etc..) you followed to come up with the design ideas before you begin to talk about the ideas in detail. IMPORTANT: It is mandatory at the end to include at least 10 unique wireframes in total across the 3 scenarios (not each) to attain a higher mark. Each screenshot counts as 1 wireframe. So some templates which have three iPhones across them will count as 3 wireframes. Please stick to one platform (web or mobile or tablet); depictions of multi platform screenshots of the same scenarios will not satisfy the 10 wireframe benchmark. Please note that it is not just the quantity of wireframes but also their quality that the marking criteria will focus on.

4. Design Rationale: Briefly analyse your design choices and highlight the rationale of them by linking them to prior HCI literature or design guidelines/conventions as discussed in the lectures. Clearly add references to any such linkage. Random choices of design decisions without rationale will be penalised. Feel free to refer/cite to the content discussed in the lectures/video snippets. In the first instance, can you please attempt to find the original source of the guideline (Normans books, HCI book by Alan Dix, etc). If you are unable to pinpoint the exact reference, you can refer to the lecture slides using the following category from Endnotes: "Personal Communication". See Lecture (unpublished)/Personal Communication category on Page 12 in the UWS Harvard Style Sheet (for those who are not using Endnotes). In the Design Rationale section, you are encouraged to cite and go beyond articles that will be uploaded on vUWS and information in the lectures. Remember to look for domain-specific articles.

5. Conclusion and Future Work: A short paragraph on how you see the prospect of designing software based wire- frames for your topic.

Assessment 3C: High-Fidelity Prototype and Evaluation Methodology Presentation Relevant

This assessment comprises of two integral parts submitted as an oral presentation. Firstly; you must deliver a demo of the front end; i.e. therefore without necessarily a back-end of your hi-fidelity prototype and secondly; you must deliver an evaluation plan of how you would conduct an evaluation of your prototype given you had the right resources, i.e. time and ethics clearances. You have freedom in choosing the software/tool for your prototype but all choices must be clearly articulated, introduced explained and justified in the presentation. Similarly you must also jus- tify your evaluation plan, its structure, data collection instruments employed, methods chosen, choice of participants, etc. The range of software tools that can be employed for building the hi-fidelity prototype include any wireframing software as discussed in the lectures or tutorials (Visio, Balsamiq, Just in Mind Pro, etc) or HTML 5/Phone Gap. Please discuss your options of particular tools with your tutor in advance to get a formal approval. However Just in mind will be the most discussed and encouraged software of choice. Please note that the professional version of Just in mind comes with a 30 day free license period. SCDMS computers will have the Just in mind professional version pre-installed (version 8.7.0). Also, Just in mind has a version conflict, so try installing the identical version on your laptops. Do this in week 9. SCDMS will also be providing each student with their individual login credentials for Just in mind for the purposes of licensing.

Literature Review Report

Instructions:
This literature review report will be separate to the main project assessment. In this report each student will be provided with a research area in HCI by the unit coordinator.
The student will then have to conduct research on the topic and present a literature review document and how to follow the methodology of a systematic review. Proper training, guidelines and assistance will be provided to the students in how to write a literature review. Clear differences between annotated bibliography and literature review will be explained and it will be expected that the student delivers a report including critical and analytical synthesis.
It is expected that the student will employ a large range of references of academic nature (30 and beyond). It will also be expected that the student consult with top tier journals and conferences in the specific area and HCI in general.
The student will be provided with a list of research topics by Week 3, allowing gradual progress on the assessment. Sample topics or research area include: Cross-Cultural studies in HCI, the use of mobile phones to support users with impairment, User perception of online educational tools,an overview of persuasive technology for health and well being,etc. It is noted that these topics will be highly specific in nature, allowing the student to focus on a particular aspect of the literature review.

Attachment:- Advanced Topics in User System Interaction.rar