OMS CS6750: Human-Computer Interaction — Spring 2024

Note: Beginning in Spring 2024, all course information—including syllabi, assignment descriptions, and supplementary course pages—is delivered via Canvas. For quick-reference as well as for public access, however, we have generated the following export of that content. Note that some of these links point to content within Canvas; if you are a student in the class, these links should take you to the appropriate in-Canvas content. If you are not a student, these links will not work; however, you can find the same content elsewhere here on this page.

Quick links to content within this page:

Syllabus

CS6750: Human-Computer Interaction Syllabus

This page provides information about the Georgia Tech OMS CS6750 class on Human-Computer Interaction relevant only to the Spring 2024 semester. Note that this page is subject to change at any time. The Spring 2024 semester of the OMS CS6750 class will begin on January 8, 2024. Below, find the course’s calendar, grading criteria, and other information. For more complete information about the course’s requirements and learning objectives, please see the general CS6750 page.

Quick Links

To help with navigation, here are some of the links you’ll be using frequently in this course:

• Tools: Canvas | Peer Feedback | PeerSurvey
• Class Pages: CS6750 Home | Spring 2024 Syllabus | Spring 2024 Full Calendar | Required Reading List | Course FAQ
• Quizzes: About the Quizzes | Quiz 1 | Quiz 2 | Quiz 3 | Quiz 4
• Tests: About the Tests | Test 1 | Test 2
• Homework: Homework 1 | Homework 2 | Homework 3 | Homework 4
• Projects: CITI Training | Individual Project | Team Project
• Class Participation: Class Participation
• Additional Resources: Course Scripts | Course Slides | Transcripts with Visuals

Course Calendar At-A-Glance

Below is the calendar for the Spring 2024 OMS CS6750 class. Note that assignment due dates are all Sundays at 11:59PM Anywhere on Earth time. For the complete course calendar, please see the Full Course Calendar.

The course is broken roughly into four quarters: weeks 3-5, weeks 6-8, weeks 10-12, and weeks 13-15. Within each quarter, you’ll do one quiz and one homework, and have the opportunity to submit two project check-ins. There is then a midterm week (week 9) after the first two quarters and a final week (week 16) after the second two quarters in which larger long-term assignments (a test and a project) are due.

Given above are the numeric labels for each lesson. For reference, here are those lessons’ titles:

Course Assessments

Your grade in this class is generally made of five components: four quizzes, two tests, four homeworks, two projects, and class participation.

Final grades will be calculated as an average of all individual grade components, weighted according to the percentages below. Students receiving a final average of 90 or above will receive an A; of 80 to 90 will receive a B; of 70 to 80 will receive a C; of 60 to 70 will receive a D; and of below 60 will receive an F. There is no curve. It is intentionally possible for every student in the class to receive an A.

Quizzes (20%)

There are four quizzes in this course: Quiz 1, Quiz 2, Quiz 3, and Quiz 4. Each quiz contains five open-ended short-answer questions intended to be answered in a paragraph or two. On each quiz, four of the questions are derived from the course video material, and the fifth will be based on one or more readings from the corresponding lessons. Quizzes are digitally-proctored, closed-book, closed-note, and closed-internet; you may not consult any other resources during the quizzes. You have 90 minutes to complete each quiz; note that the intention is not for the quiz to require all 90 minutes, but rather that 90 minutes should be plenty of time to comfortably complete the quiz. The quizzes are delivered via Canvas and proctored via Honorlock.

Tests (20%)

There are two proctored tests in this course, each with 30 questions. Each question is multiple-choice, multiple-correct with five choices and between 1 and 4 correct answers. Partial credit is awarded. The interleaved schedule alternates between Unit 2 and Unit 3; as such, Test 1 covers the first half of each unit (Lessons 2.1 through 2.6 and 3.1 through 3.4), and Test 2 covers roughly the second half of each unit (Lessons 2.7 through 2.10 and 3.5 through 3.8). Note that while Test 2 does not ask any questions about Test 1’s material directly, there may be questions that rely on knowledge from older material as well. Each test is worth 15% of your overall grade. The tests are delivered via Canvas and proctored via Honorlock.

Homework (20%)

There are four written homework assignments in this course: Homework 1, Homework 2, Homework 3, and Homework 4. These written assignments primarily—though not exclusively—focus on Unit 2 content. Each homework asks you to answer four provided questions, each of which is weighted equally. All assignments should be written using JDF.

Projects (30%)

There are two projects in this class: an individual project and a team project, each worth 15% of your overall grade. Each project follows the same sequence: you will plan and perform some initial needfinding; brainstorm design alternatives; create three prototypes; plan and perform an evaluation of these prototypes and conduct further needfinding; brainstorm a next prototype; create a new, higher-fidelity prototype; and plan and perform an evaluation of this prototype. A video prototype is required for this final, higher-fidelity prototype as well. The individual and team projects differ primarily on their scope: the team project will expect more needfinding, higher-fidelity prototypes, and more thorough evaluation. You may select your own team for the team project, but if you cannot find a team on your own, you will be assigned to one based on shared interests in project ideas. Both projects should be written using JDF.

Class Participation (10%)

HCI is a deeply collaborative field, and there is no better way to learn than to interact with your peers, to participate in one another’s usability studies, and to see the variety of approaches taken by your classmates to the class’s assignments. Thus, participation credit may be earned in one of several ways: every week there is an assignment available for peer review, and you may also earn credit by participating in one another’s surveys and interviews, by participating in discussions on the course forum, by completing annotated bibliographies or submitting candidate exam questions, and by completing the secret survey by clicking the hidden link here before the end of week 2 to indicate you read the entire syllabus. In order to support rapid feedback, additional incentives are built in to complete peer reviews quickly. Note that all types of participation are graded not only on their quantity, but also on their quality; peer reviews and the course forum contributions only receive credit if they are substantive, and participation in peers’ studies receives differing amounts of credit based on the effort involved.

Course Policies

The following policies are binding for this course.

Official Course Communication

You are responsible for knowing the following information:

1. Anything posted to this syllabus (including the pages linked from here, such as the general course landing page).
2. Anything emailed directly to you by the teaching team (including announcements via the course forum or Canvas), 24 hours after receiving such an email.

Generally speaking, we will post announcements via Canvas and cross-post their content to the course forum; you should thus ensure that your Canvas settings are such that you receive these announcements promptly, ideally via email (in addition to other mechanisms if you’d like). Georgia Tech generally recommends students to check their Georgia Tech email once every 24 hours. So, if an announcement or message is time sensitive, you will not be responsible for the contents of the announcement until 24 hours after it has been sent.

We generally prefer to handle communication via the course forum to help with collaboration among the teaching team, but we understand the course forum is not ideal for having information “pushed” to you. We may contact you via a private the course forum post instead of an email, but if we do so, we will choose to send email notifications immediately, bypassing your individual settings, in order to ensure you’re alerted. As such, this type of communication will also spring under #2 above.

Note that this means you won’t be responsible for knowing information communicated in several other methods we’ll be using. You aren’t responsible for knowing anything posted to the course forum that isn’t linked from an official announcement. You aren’t responsible for anything said in Slack or other third-party sites we may sometimes use to communicate with students. You don’t need to worry about missing critical information so long as you keep up with your email and understand the documents on this web site. This also applies in reverse: we do not monitor our Canvas message boxes and we may not respond to direct emails. We are committed to reading all top-level posts that are visible to all instructors, and to reading any follow-up in which we are tagged; while we will try to keep up with ongoing conversations, we cannot commit to reading posts beyond these two types. If you need to get in touch with the course staff, please post privately to the course forum (either to all Instructors or to an instructor individually) or tag the instructor in the relevant post.

Communicating with Instructors and TAs

Communication with the course teaching team should be handled via the discussion forum. If your question is relevant to the entire class, you should ask it publicly; if your question is specific to you, such as a question about your specific grade or submission, you should ask it privately.

Our workflow is to regularly filter the forum for Unresolved posts, which includes top-level threads with no answer accepted by the original poster, as well as mega-threads with unresolved follow-ups. If your question requires an official answer or follow-up from an instructor or teaching assistant, make sure that it is posted as either a Question or as a follow-up to a mega-thread, and that it is marked Unresolved. Once an instructor or TA has answered your question, it will automatically be marked as Resolved; if you require further assistance, you are welcome to add a follow-up, but make sure to unmark the question as Resolved in order to make sure that it is seen by a member of the teaching team.

Similarly, in order to keep the forum organized, please post as a Post or Note instead of a Question if your question does not require an official response from the teaching team. For example, if you are interested in getting multiple perspective from classmates, getting feedback on your ideas, or having a discussion that does not have a single answer, please use Post or Note instead of Question. Please reserve Question threads for questions that will likely have a single official response. TAs and instructors will regularly convert Questions to Posts or Notes that do not need a single official answer, but it will save time and allow them to focus their attention on other students if you correctly categorize your post in the first place.

Late Work

Running such a large class involves a detailed workflow for assigning assignments to graders, grading those assignments, and returning those grades. As such, work that does not enter into that workflow presents a major delay. We have taken steps to limit as much as possible the need to ever submit work late: we have made the descriptions of all assignments available on the first day of class so that if there are expected interruptions (such as like weddings, business trips, and conferences), you can complete the work ahead of time. If you have technical difficulties submitting the assignment to Canvas by the deadline, post privately to the course forum immediately and attach your submission. Then, submit it to Canvas as soon as you can thereafter.

If due to a personal emergency, health emergency, family emergency, or other unforeseeable life event you find you are unable to complete an assignment on time, please post privately to the course forum with information regarding the emergency. Depending on your unique situation, we will share guidance on how to proceed; if the emergency is projected to delay a significant quantity of the work required for the class, we may recommend withdrawing and reattempting the class at a later date. If the emergency will likely only impact a small amount of the course, we may be able to accept the work late as a one-time exception. If the emergency takes place once you have already completed a significant fraction of the coursework, we may offer an Incomplete grade to allow you to finish the class after the semester is over.

Note that depending on the nature and significance of the request, we may require documentation from the Dean of Students office that the emergency is sufficient to justify offering an incomplete grade or accepting late work. Note also that regardless of the reason, we also cannot promise any particular turnaround time for grading work that was approved to be submitted late; it may be that grades and feedback will not be returned before the end of the term, and it may be that a temporary grade of Incomplete must be entered to leave time to grade work that was accepted late.

If you are not comfortable sharing with us the nature of an emergency, or if you need more comprehensive advocacy, we ask you to go through the Dean of Students’ office regarding class absences. The Dean of Students is equipped to address emergencies that we lack the resources to address. Additionally, the Dean of Students office can coordinate with you and alert all your classes together instead of requiring you to contact each professor individually. The Dean of Students is there to be an advocate and partner for you when you’re in a crisis; we wholeheartedly recommend taking advantage of this resource if you are in need. You may find information on contacting the Dean of Students with regard to personal emergencies here: https://studentlife.gatech.edu/request-assistance

Academic Honesty

All students in the class are expected to know and abide by the Georgia Tech Academic Honor Code. Specifically for us, the following academic honesty policies are binding for this class:

First, for homeworks and projects:

• In written essays, all sources are expected to be cited according to APA style. When directly quoting another source, both in-line quotation marks, an in-line citation, and a reference at the end of the document are required. When directly summarizing another source in your own words, quotation marks are not needed, but an in-line citation and reference at the end of your document are still required. You should consult the Purdue OWL Research and Citation Resources and the Purdue OWL Avoiding Plagiarism Resources for more specific guidance if you are unfamiliar with standard citation practices. You should also consult our dedicated pages (from another course) on how to use citations and how to avoid plagiarism. Note, however, that it is not necessary to cite course content from this class itself in your essays; you may assume the reader knows you are completing homeworks and projects as part of this course, and so references to course concepts and vocabulary need not be cited.
• Any figures or images borrowed from other sources must similarly be cited. If you borrow an existing figure and modify it, you must still cite the original figure. It must be obvious what portion of your submission is your own creation.
• It is important to note that “sources” in the above contexts means any material that you did not write yourself: it does not matter whether you are referencing academic sources with named authors, general web sites with no named writer, popular open-source libraries with many contributors, or AI-generated text in response to a prompt you provided. Any text that is not originally written by you is considered an external source that should be cited accordingly.
• You may not post the work that you submit for this class publicly either during or after the semester is concluded. We understand that the work you submit for this class may be valuable for job opportunities, personal web sites, etc.; you are welcome to write about what you did for this class, and to provide the actual work privately when requested, but we ask that you do not make your actual submissions or code publicly available; this is to reduce the likelihood of future students plagiarizing your work. Similarly, unless you notify us otherwise, by participating in this class you authorize us to pursue the removal of your content if it is discovered on any public assignment repositories, especially if it is clearly contributed there by someone else.

Second, for proctored assessments:

• During all proctored assessments, you are prohibited from interacting directly with any other person on the topic of the exam material. This includes posting on forums, sending emails or text messages, talking in person or on the phone, or any other mechanism that would allow you to receive live input from another person.
• During all proctored assessments, you may only use the device on which you are completing the assessment; you may not use other devices, even during open-book, open-note assessments as it is not possible to know whether secondary devices are being used to consult resources or to interact with others. This means that the result of using any keyboard and mouse should be observable in the session recording.
• During closed-book quizzes, you may not access any resources besides the quiz itself, including both on-screen resources and physical resources.
• Finally, you may not take any content contained on proctored assessments out of the proctored assessment, such as writing down exam questions, taking screenshots, or sharing information with classmates. Any attempt to retain a copy of exam content, or to obtain or consult exam content retained by someone else, will be treated as academic misconduct.

These policies, including the rules on all pages linked in this section, are binding for the class. Any violations of this policy will be subject to the institute’s Academic Integrity procedures, which may include a 0 grade on assignments found to contain violations; additional grade penalties; and academic probation or dismissal.

Note that if you are accused of academic misconduct, you are not permitted to withdraw from the class until the accusation is resolved; if you are found to have participated in misconduct, you will not be allowed to withdraw for the duration of the semester. If you do so anyway, you will be forcibly re-enrolled without any opportunity to make up work you may have missed while illegally withdrawn.

AI Collaboration Policy

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence—Copilot, ChatGPT, etc.—can be great resources for improving your learning in the course, but it is important to ensure that their benefits are targeted at your learning rather than solely at your deliverables. Toward that end, the same academic integrity policy above applies to AI assistance: you are welcome to consult with AI agents just as you would consult with classmates, discuss ideas with friends, and seek feedback from colleagues. However, just as you would not hand your device to someone else to directly fix or improve your classwork, so also you may not copy anything directly from an AI agent into your document, nor let an AI agent directly generate content for your submission. This rule means you should disable any AI assistance more advanced than a grammar checker inside your word processors and IDEs.

Although you are prohibited from having these tools directly integrated into your workspace or from copying content from these assistants directly into your work, you are nonetheless permitted to use them more generally. The important consideration is to ensure that you are using the AI agent as a learning assistant rather than as a homework assistant: so long as your submission solely reflects your own understanding of the content, you are encouraged to let AI assistants aid in developing your understanding.

Feedback

Every semester, we make changes and tweaks to the course formula. As a result, every semester we try some new things, and some of these things may not work. We ask your patience and support as we figure things out, and in return, we promise that we, too, will be fair and understanding, especially with anything that might impact your grade or performance in the class. Second, we want to consistently get feedback on how we can improve and expand the course for future iterations. You can take advantage of the feedback box on the course forum (especially if you want to gather input from others in the class), give us feedback on the surveys, or contact us directly via private the course forum messages.

Full Calendar

This class has a lot of moving parts: lectures, readings, homeworks, projects, tests, surveys, peer review, participation, CITI training, and more. It can be a lot to track, so this calendar provides a canonical list of everything you need to do on a weekly basis. If you check off all these tasks and deliverables each week, you’ve completed the coursework.

Course Structure

Structurally, the class is broken into four quarters. Each “quarter” is made of three weeks: the first week of each quarter features a quiz (on the previous three weeks’ material) and a project check-in; the second week features a homework; and the third week features an additional project check-in.

The four quarters are broken into two “halves”, with a project spanning each half. There is a midterm week and a final week after the second and fourth quarters in which the projects are due, along with a summative midterm and final exam covering the content from that half.

Time Estimates

Numbers in parentheses are the estimated hours to spend on that task each week. The class is designed to be doable in ten hours per week for well-prepared students in Spring and Fall, and fifteen hours per week for in Summer.

Remember that for team project milestones, the time estimate listed is per team member. So, for example, we would expect a team of four to submit a medium-fidelity prototypes commensurate with ~12 hours of total work, and a team project final prototype commensurate with ~40 hours of total work on the final prototype alone.

Required Reading List

This class has two reading lists: a list of required readings, and a list of recommended readings. The required readings will be useful to your assignments and projects, and will also be tested more explicitly on the tests and quizzes. The recommended readings are more generally foundational books, papers, and courses on HCI in general.

Required Reading List

On average, you can expect to spend 1 to 2 hours reading per week. The topics of these papers fall into two categories: some are thorough, retrospective overviews of decades of HCI research; some are foundational, seminal works in the field of HCI; and some are cutting-edge research from the most recent HCI-related conferences and journals.

The information contained in these readings will be useful as you complete your assignments and projects, but it will also be tested explicitly on the course tests and quizzes. Ten questions on each test and one question on each quiz will be based on these readings. From the perspective of these assessments, your emphasis in reading these papers should be in getting a sufficient understanding of the material to answer high-level questions about the paper, as well as to be able to find answers quickly for more specific questions.

The only assessments dependent on having completed these readings are the tests and quizzes, so while we recommend completing the readings alongside the lessons, you need only worry about completing the readings by the date of the corresponding quiz and test.

We recommend reading How to Read an Academic Paper from CS6460 to better understand how to fit some of these readings into our estimated 1-2 hours per week.

All readings are also located in the Required Readings folder under Files in Canvas if the links below are broken.

Recommended Reading List

HCI is a huge field, and there’s always more to read; in addition to the required papers and chapters above, there are also several books, other papers, and other courses online that we recommend checking out. None of these are tested explicitly in any work required for the class, but they would certainly benefit both your work here as well as your future pursuits.

Books

The following books are seminal HCI literature and could be read in parallel to any course material.

• The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
• Human-Computer Interaction by Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory Abowd, and Russell Beale
• Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction by Yvonne Rogers, Jelen Sharp, and Jenny Preece
• Designing with the Mind in Mind by Jeff Johnson
• Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner’s Guide to User Research by Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsky, and Andrea Moed
• Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction by Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, and Harry Hochheiser
• Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Requirements Methods, Tools, and Techniques by Catherine Courage and Kathy Baxter
• Tools for Thought by Howard Rheingold

Papers

In addition to these books, there are several excellent readings that complement specific lessons or concepts from HCI. Many of these papers will be discussed during those lessons, but we have also provided a list of recommended papers and their corresponding lessons and topics. Where available, links go to the paper; if a link is not available, you should be able to locate the paper through the Georgia Tech library or, if noted, the Files folder on Canvas.

Courses

There are also a number of high-quality courses offered by other instructors and institutions that may be of interest to further developing your knowledge of HCI.

• Intro to Design of Everyday Things from UC-San Diego’s Don Norman (on Udacity)
• Introduction to User Experience Design from Georgia Tech’s Rosa Arriaga (on Coursera)
• UX Design from the University of Michigan’s Mark Newman (on EdX)
• Interaction Design Specialization from UC-San Diego’s Scott Klemmer, Elizabeth Gerber, and Jason Wobbrock (on Coursera)
• UI Design Specialization from the University of Minnesota’s Lana Yarosh, Haiyi Zhu, Loren Terveen, Joseph Konstan, and Brent Hecht
• UX Design for Mobile Developers, Rapid Prototyping, and Product Design from Google (on Udacity)
• The Interaction Design Foundation, home to dozens of classes on interaction design

About the Quizzes

Canvas by default hides any information about the exams until the exam opens. This page serves to give you an overview of what the exam entails so you can prepare prior to the exam open date.

Quiz Coverage

Each quiz covers a separate section of the content:

• Quiz 1 covers Lessons 2.1, 2.2, 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3, as well as the accompanying reading material for those lessons.
• Quiz 2 emphasizes Lessons 2.3, 2.4, 3.4, and 3.5, as well as the accompanying reading material for those lessons.
• Quiz 3 emphasizes Lessons 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, and 3.6, as well as the accompanying reading material for those lessons.
• Quiz 4 emphasizes Lessons 2.8, 2.9, 2.10, 3.7, and 3.8, as well as the accompanying reading material for those lessons.

Quiz Structure

Each quiz consists of five open-ended short-answer questions: four of these are derived from the lessons, while the fifth comes from the reading material. Each question is weighted equally and evaluated by a grader after the quiz deadline. You will have 120 minutes to complete each quiz; we do not expect them to require the full time, however, and we expect 120 minutes to be sufficient to complete the quizzes comfortably without feeling rushed.

The quiz questions emphasize demonstrating your understanding and recall of the course content and vocabulary. For example, one question originally considered (but ultimately not included) on Quiz 1, related to Chapter 2 of Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, was:

In Chapter 2 of Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, Norman describes processing at three levels: visceral, behavioral, and reflective.

Consider a user whose task is to get from home to work, and assume for this question that they will accomplish this task by driving. For each level of processing, describe one part of the task that exists at that level of processing; that is, describe a part of the task of driving to work that exists at the level of visceral processing; one part of the task that exists at the level of behavioral processing; and one part of the task that exists at the level of reflective processing.

Then, taking Norman’s mantra to eliminate “human error” from our vocabulary, describe one error that might occur at each level of processing, as well as how one of the interfaces involved in the task might be modified to prevent that error in the future.

Each question is intended to be answered in 2-3 short paragraphs. Grading for these questions is not based on answer depth, but rather how accurately the answer uses course principles and vocabulary.

On-Boarding

We proctor our quizzes with Honorlock. Honorlock uses your webcam, microphone, and screen capture to observe your test session and ensure you adhere to test policies. Note that Honorlock requires Chrome to run.

Prior to completing a real quiz, you should first complete the on-boarding process. First, in Canvas, go to Honorlock on the left sidebar, and then select the Honorlock On-Boarding (Quiz). Follow the prompts to enable proctoring, then proceed to complete the on-boarding quiz. Note that the on-boarding test is equipped with the same settings as the real quiz, so you can use this to assess what will be disabled by Browser Guard.

Taking Your Quiz

Each quiz is closed-book, closed-note, closed-internet. You may not consult with any other materials while taking the quiz, nor interact with any device aside from the device you are using to take the quiz. You should not interact with anyone else while taking this quiz. Any suspected attempt to access other resources or interact with other individuals for the purpose of gaining an advantage on this quiz will result in a student misconduct case, which can lead to a 0 on the quiz; sanctions including academic probation, suspension, or dismissal; and prohibition from withdrawing from the class.

That said, remember that Honorlock is not automated proctoring: it is remote asynchronous streamlined proctoring. All violations are flagged and reviewed by the instructor or teaching assistant. In this class, you will not automatically fail your exam because someone came into the room or you had to briefly get up and answer the door. If it is clear that no unauthorized collaboration could be happening (e.g., we can hear the conversations you’re having), then there will be no repercussions.

About the Tests

Canvas by default hides any information about the exams until the exam opens. This page serves to give you an overview of what the exam entails so you can prepare prior to the exam open date.

Test Coverage

Test 1 will cover the material the following material:

• Lessons 1.1 through 1.3, including their readings
• Lessons 2.1 through 2.5, including their readings
• Lessons 3.1 through 3.5, including their readings

Test 2 will cover the material the following material:

• Lessons 2.6 through 2.10, including their readings
• Lessons 3.6 through 3.8, including their readings

Test Structure

Each test will consist of 30 five-answer multi-correct multiple-choice questions. 20 questions will come from the lectures, roughly evenly distributed between the Unit 2 and Unit 3 lessons. 10 questions will come from the readings, roughly evenly distributed across the readings.

Each of the 30 five-answer multi-correct multiple-choice questions is eligible for partial credit. You will receive one point for each answer you correctly select, and one point for each answer you correctly leave unselected. For example, imagine the question, “Which of these are planets?” with the options Earth, the Moon, the Sun, Jupiter, and Mercury. If you were to select “Earth”, “the Moon”, and “Jupiter”, you would receive three points: two points for correctly selecting “Earth” and “Jupiter”, and one point for correctly leaving “the Sun” unselected. Every question has between 1 and 4 correct answers; there is no question where no options are correct or where all options are correct. No credit will be given on any question for which you select no answers or all the answers; this is to prevent blank or completely-filled in submissions aiming for half credit with no subject matter knowledge.

You will have 120 minutes to complete the test, and you are permitted to use books, notes, or the course video material. You may not interact with anyone during the exam, but you may visit the course forum if you would like as long as you do not post.

CITI Training

Homework 1

Homework 1

Answer the following questions in a maximum of 8 pages (excluding references) in JDF format. Any content beyond 8 pages will not be considered for a grade. 8 pages is a maximum, not a target; our recommended per-section lengths intentionally add to less than 8 pages to leave you room to decide where to delve into more detail. This length is intentionally set expecting that your submission will include diagrams, drawings, pictures, etc. These should be incorporated into the body of the paper unless specifically required to be included in an appendix.

If you would like to include additional information beyond the word limit, you may include it in clearly-marked appendices. These materials will not be used in grading your assignment, but they may help you get better feedback from your classmates and grader.

Question 1 (~1.5 pages)

When we take the participant view of the user, we look at the entire context surrounding their activity. However, some interfaces are designed for activities that exist in different contexts.

First, select one activity you perform with a computer interface in multiple contexts. For example, you might use a text messaging app while walking down the street, sitting at your desk, eating a meal, or driving your car (though hopefully not!). You shouldn’t select text messaging: select some activity that is not used as an example in this question prompt.

Then, discuss how the different contexts surrounding the app add different constraints or challenges to using the app. For example, with a text messaging app, your cognitive resources are more divided eating or driving, and your physical precision is less reliable while walking.

Finally, describe how the design of the interface might be altered to perform differently depending on your context to overcome those constraints. You may assume that the interface is able to magically know your context. For example, if you were writing about text messaging, you could assume the app would know if you were driving, walking, or sitting.

Hint: Context can differ subtly and change rapidly. For example, driving a moving car and sitting at a stop light are two subtly different contexts. If you were writing about text messaging, you might note that the user’s eyes are diverted to the road while the car is moving, and so the phone cannot rely on the user seeing it. A redesign might let the user dictate text messages while driving, and be prepared to show them a large view of the draft message when the car stops at a stop light, allowing the user to quickly approve and send the message after checking for transcription errors.

Question 2 (~1.5 pages)

Describe the process of submitting a question to the Ed Discussion form and receiving an answer in terms of our discussion of feedback cycles. If you want to actually test this out, please sign up for this test board and post your question there so we’re not clogging the real forum with hundreds of test questions.

For each of the three stages of the gulf of execution, describe how Ed Discussion either successfully carries the student across that stage, or in what way it fails to carry the student across that stage. Assume the student does not already know exactly what to do: how does the system help them figure out what to do?

For each of the three stages of the gulf of evaluation, describe how Ed Discussion successfully communicates the student the outcome of their action, or in what way it fails to communicate the outcome of their action. Again, assume that the student does not already know exactly what to expect.

Hint: Remember to tie your response directly to the course material. The most common issues we see in responses to this question are to describe the process at too high a level rather than tying parts of the response directly to the specific stages of the two gulfs.

Question 3 (~1.5 pages)

Select an activity from your regular life that struggles with a large gulf of execution or gulf of evaluation, especially due to a weakness of the interface involved in the activity. First, describe what makes that gulf wide. What are the failures of the current interface to bridge the gulf?

Then, select a different, but similar, activity from your regular life that does a better job bridging its gulf of execution or gulf of evaluation. Briefly describe that activity and what gives it a narrower gulf.

Finally, describe what lessons could be borrowed from the second activity’s interface to resolve the wide gulf in the first activity.

Hint: Make sure to select two different activities. They can be similar (two smartphone apps for different tasks, two different kitchen appliances, two different input devices), but they should not be the same exact task (two different game consoles, two different car navigation interfaces, two different smartphone operating systems). The goal is to redesign the weaker interface, not to describe how it was already redesigned to create the stronger interface.

Question 4 (~1.5 pages)

Among the myriad use cases to have emerged since ChatGPT’s release in November 2022 is the idea of using ChatGPT and other similar tools as a sort of therapist.

First, briefly discuss the ethics of allowing ChatGPT to be used in this way. Given that OpenAI knows that users are using it as a therapist, and given that OpenAI is able to modify ChatGPT to refuse to participate in certain interactions (such as knowingly coding malware, promoting violent activities, or engaging in hate speach), is it ethical for OpenAI to allow its tool to be used for these types of interactions? What, if any, constraints or disclaimers should be provided? Discuss the risks of your answer, and describe why you feel the benefits outweigh the risks.

Hint: Note that there are risks on both sides. Allowing, disallowing, and allowing with disclaimers all carry risks. In considering risks, make sure the risks you describe are realistic as well: many safeguards are already built in, and it may be that some of the potential risks appear to already be mitigated. Feel free to interact with these tools directly and reference your experience doing so in your response.

Then, imagine you’re an employee at OpenAI (or another company working on general-purpose chatbots). Imagine you’ve come up with an idea for a way to modify your platform to improve outcomes for users seeking therapy-like interactions. Keeping in mind the lessons from the Facebook experiment described in the videos, propose an experiment to test the effectiveness of this tool, and specifically, describe the specific recruitment and consent procedures you would put into place, including the specific recruitment message and consent message you would provide to potential participants. Describe how your recruitment and consent procedures would be compatible with ethical requirements, but also describe the biases that would be introduced by your chosen procedures.

Submission Instructions

Complete your assignment using JDF, then save your submission as a PDF. Assignments should be submitted to this page in Canvas. You should submit a single PDF for this  assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material.

This is an individual assignment. All work you submit should be your own. Make sure to cite any sources you reference, and use quotes and in-line citations to mark any direct quotes.

Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of such an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Your assignment will be graded on a 20-point scale coinciding with a rubric designed to mirror the question structure. Make sure to answer every question posted by the prompt. Pay special attention to bolded words and question marks in the question text.

The grading rubric will be finalized at least two weeks prior to the deadline, but you may assume it will follow the structure of the assignment description above and will not contain any information or details absent from this description.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas, and receive additional feedback on your own. All grades will come from the graders alone. See the course participation policy for full details about how points are awarded for completing peer reviews.

Homework 2

Homework 2

Answer the following questions in a maximum of 8 pages (excluding references) in JDF format. Any content beyond 8 pages will not be considered for a grade. 8 pages is a maximum, not a target; our recommended per-section lengths intentionally add to less than 8 pages to leave you room to decide where to delve into more detail. This length is intentionally set expecting that your submission will include diagrams, drawings, pictures, etc. These should be incorporated into the body of the paper unless specifically required to be included in an appendix.

If you would like to include additional information beyond the word limit, you may include it in clearly-marked appendices. These materials will not be used in grading your assignment, but they may help you get better feedback from your classmates and grader.

Question 1 (~1.5 pages)

Select a task (besides driving) that you do on a regular basis that has become invisible by learning; that is, an interface that you used to spend a lot of time thinking about, but now ignore in favor of focusing on the task. Feel free to choose a task you perform that does not currently have a computational interface (such as a cookbook and thermometer or hand-written spreadsheet).

First, describe the components of the interface you used to think about a lot. Then, describe your thought process now, and especially explain why you no longer have to spend as much time focusing on the interface. Finally, briefly describe how you might design or redesign the computational interface to get you to the point of invisibility more quickly.

Hint: This question is best-suited for an interface with which you are now an expert despite some early difficulty. Many video games demonstrate this type of learning curve, as do many pieces of software for complex tasks. You may also think outside the box: perhaps you used to struggle with cooking or budgeting, but have since gotten better.

Question 2 (~1.5 pages)

In the lectures, we discuss three types of human perception that are commonly used in user interface design (visual, auditory, haptic).

First, select one of the following five task domains:

• Using a nutrition-tracking application to track your nutritional needs
• Playing an exercise game that uses a phone’s gyroscope to track motion
• Vacuuming the rug, including emptying the vacuum at the end
• Using a smartphone to make video calls, including placing and receiving a call
• Plugging in an electric car to charge at a public charging station

Using your chosen task domain, describe how each of these three types of human perception are used to give the user feedback.

Then, for each type of these three types of human perception, design how that type of perception could be used to give feedback about something (within your chosen task domain) that does not currently use that modality. For example, what kind of haptic feedback might you give a player in an AR game? What kind of visual feedback might you give a person using a Bluetooth headset? Make sure to design features that you haven’t seen before, but don’t worry if the feature actually does exist on a device you haven’t seen before.

Finally, briefly name a different kind of human perception outside these three, and describe one way it is or could be used for feedback in your chosen task domain.

Hint: Here’s a list of other senses besides the five we recognize most commonly. Remember, you do not need to focus exclusively on feedback designed into the interface. You could instead discuss feedback that is inherent to the task: for example, if this question was about driving a car, the driver can feel the car itself turning in response to movements to the steering wheel.

Question 3 (~1.5 pages)

In the lecture, we give five suggestions for reducing cognitive load in interface design: using multiple modalities, letting the modalities complement each other, giving the user control of the pace, emphasizing essential content while minimizing clutter, and offloading tasks from the user onto the interface.

Select two of these tips. For each tip, select an interface from your everyday life that violates the suggestion. Briefly describe the interface, and then describe violation of the tip. Then, briefly redesign the interface to incorporate the tip into its design.

Hint: If you’re stuck, try thinking of an interface that currently follows the tip, and then try to brainstorm a similar interface that does not follow that tip. Be cautious with the fifth tip: if you aim to automate a significant part of the task, then you should focus on the interaction between the user and the interface that triggers the task and captures the user’s input rather than how the task is actually automated.

Question 4 (~1.5 pages)

From your everyday life, select an interface that is intolerant of errors the user commits. Describe the interface, and describe how it responds to user errors, highlighting how easy the error is to commit and the penalty associated with it.

Then, describe how constraints might be used to improve the interface to avoid errors in the first place. Then, describe how improved mappings could be used to avoid errors. Then, describe how improved affordances could be used to avoid errors.

These redesign options can be mutually exclusive (in other words, you can generate either three different redesigns, one for each principles, or one redesign that incorporates all three principles). However, all should target the error(s) you selected originally.

Hint: If you’re having trouble coming up with redesigns for all three principles, you may want to select a different interface. Interfaces embedded in the real world, like car stereo systems or ATMs, are often good places to think about how different principles can address the same task because the design is more complex (incorporating both digital and physical artifacts).

Submission Instructions

Complete your assignment using JDF, then save your submission as a PDF. Assignments should be submitted to this page in Canvas. You should submit a single PDF for this  assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material.

This is an individual assignment. All work you submit should be your own. Make sure to cite any sources you reference, and use quotes and in-line citations to mark any direct quotes.

Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of such an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Your assignment will be graded on a 20-point scale coinciding with a rubric designed to mirror the question structure. Make sure to answer every question posted by the prompt. Pay special attention to bolded words and question marks in the question text.

The grading rubric will be finalized at least two weeks prior to the deadline, but you may assume it will follow the structure of the assignment description above and will not contain any information or details absent from this description.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas, and receive additional feedback on your own. All grades will come from the graders alone. See the course participation policy for full details about how points are awarded for completing peer reviews.

Homework 3

Homework 3

Answer the following questions in a maximum of 8 pages (excluding references) in JDF format. Any content beyond 8 pages will not be considered for a grade. 8 pages is a maximum, not a target; our recommended per-section lengths intentionally add to less than 8 pages to leave you room to decide where to delve into more detail. This length is intentionally set expecting that your submission will include diagrams, drawings, pictures, etc. These should be incorporated into the body of the paper unless specifically required to be included in an appendix.

If you would like to include additional information beyond the word limit, you may include it in clearly-marked appendices. These materials will not be used in grading your assignment, but they may help you get better feedback from your classmates and grader.

Question 1 (~1.5 pages)

Games provide an interesting place to investigate slips, mistakes, and errors because they are one of the few places where we might not always want to make accomplishing the task easier.

Select one game with which you are familiar (besides Tetris); this could be a board game, a card game, a sport, a video game, or any other kind of game.

First, describe a slip that a player of the game might make. Remember, a slip generally occurs when the player knows what action they should take, but does something different instead. In Tetris, this might be a player wanting to move a piece to the right, but pressing the left button instead. Then, describe why the player might make that slip. Then, briefly suggest a way the interface could be changed to prevent that slip in the future.

Second, describe a mistake that a player of the game might make. Remember, a mistake generally occurs when the player knows what they want to accomplish, but doesn’t know how to actually make it happen. In Tetris, this might be a player wanting to rotate a piece clockwise, but pressing to rotate it counter-clockwise instead because they do not know which button rotates clockwise. Then, describe why the player might make that mistake. Then, briefly suggest a way the interface could be changed to prevent that mistake in the future.

Finally, describe something that makes the game challenging, but that is not a slip or a mistake. For example, in Tetris, there may be no obvious place for a piece to go, but that does not force the user to commit a slip or a mistake.

Hint: For slips, leveraging constraints and better mappings are often good tools for ensuring the user performs the action they know they want to perform. For mistakes, leveraging discoverability and better representations can help a user figure out the right action.

Question 2 (~1.5 pages)

From your everyday life, select an interface that you would argue uses a good representation of its underlying content. Describe the connections between the representation and the underlying content. Answer the question: in what ways does the representation exemplify at least two criteria of a good representation?

Then, select an interface that you would argue does not use a good representation of its underlying content. Describe the mismatch between the representation and the underlying content; in what ways does the representation violate at least two criteria of a good representation?

Hint: Good design tends to go unnoticed; that’s the point! If you’re having trouble thinking of an interface with a good representation, think of a bad one first; then, think of an interface in a similar domain that does not experience the same problems as the bad one. It’s likely that the better interface uses better representations.

Question 3 (~1.5 pages)

Create a thorough GOMS model for contacting a professor to ask for explanation of a grade. In doing so, make sure to (a) identify the initial situation, (b) describe the selection rules, (c) outline several methods, (d) identify the operators that comprise those methods (along with the estimated amount of time each operator takes to execute), and (e) describe the ultimate goal.

You are not required to use the visualization schema seen in the lectures: you could use a simple outline format instead. However, your GOMS model should stand on its own with no explanatory text: every part of your submission should be a part of the initial situation, selection rules, methods, operators, or the final goal.

Hint: Note that for screen real estate, the GOMS models shown in the lectures do not actually show selection rules or execution times for individual operators. For selection rules, you can phrase these as either boxes that precede the method (e.g. a box that says “Message is formal” prior to a method regarding email) or as a separate list of conditionals (e.g. “If the message is formal, choose the ’email’ method; if a back and forth conversation is expected, choose the ‘go in person’ method.”).

Question 4 (~1.5 pages)

Create a hierarchical task analysis of the task of submitting this assignment to Canvas and subsequently receiving one’s grade and feedback. We recommend creating this as plaintext outline instead of in a graphical form as shown in the lectures.

Your operators for this hierarchical task analysis should be very low-level: entering a URL, scrolling down, clicking a link, and selecting a file from the file browser would all be operators.

These operators should be grouped into larger tasks that will ultimately accomplish the goal. We would expect at least three levels of hierarchy above the operator level: the top level can be the task as a whole (“Complete an assignment”), further subdivided into sub-tasks and sub-sub-tasks before the operator level. You’re welcome to include more layers to the hierarchy if you feel they’re appropriate.

Your model should stand on its own; there should be no paragraphs of text supporting the answer to this question. However, text can be placed within the model to annotate, explain, or enhance the model’s contents if you’d like (but this is not required).

Hint: The semantics of hierarchical task analyses don’t need to be quite as specific as GOMS models. For example, you could include triggers for tasks (such as a task being triggered when an email is received) or waiting times (such as waiting a week before completing a follow-up task).

Submission Instructions

Complete your assignment using JDF, then save your submission as a PDF. Assignments should be submitted to this page in Canvas. You should submit a single PDF for this  assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material.

This is an individual assignment. All work you submit should be your own. Make sure to cite any sources you reference, and use quotes and in-line citations to mark any direct quotes.

Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of such an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Your assignment will be graded on a 20-point scale coinciding with a rubric designed to mirror the question structure. Make sure to answer every question posted by the prompt. Pay special attention to bolded words and question marks in the question text.

The grading rubric will be finalized at least two weeks prior to the deadline, but you may assume it will follow the structure of the assignment description above and will not contain any information or details absent from this description.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas, and receive additional feedback on your own. All grades will come from the graders alone. See the course participation policy for full details about how points are awarded for completing peer reviews.

Homework 4

Homework 4

Answer the following questions in a maximum of 8 pages (excluding references) in JDF format. Any content beyond 8 pages will not be considered for a grade. 8 pages is a maximum, not a target; our recommended per-section lengths intentionally add to less than 8 pages to leave you room to decide where to delve into more detail. This length is intentionally set expecting that your submission will include diagrams, drawings, pictures, etc. These should be incorporated into the body of the paper unless specifically required to be included in an appendix.

If you would like to include additional information beyond the word limit, you may include it in clearly-marked appendices. These materials will not be used in grading your assignment, but they may help you get better feedback from your classmates and grader.

Question 1 (~1.5 pages)

Distributed cognition is a lens through which we can view HCI.That said, historically the dominant cognitive role played by external interfaces has been in some way tied to memory. In How a cockpit remembers its speeds, for instance, most of the interfaces the paper describes serve to augment human memory. The speed cards augment long-term memory, while the speed bugs augment the short-term memory.

One of the strengths of generative AI tools like ChatGPT is that they appear to serve more cognitive roles than merely memory: but do they?

Using the chatbot tool of your choice (ChatGPT, Bing, Claude, Bard, etc.), engage in at least three conversations:

• In one, use the chatbot as a brainstorming assistant.
• In one, use the chatbot as a feedback tool to give you feedback on something.
• In one, use the chatbot for some other purpose you come up with.

Include the raw text of the conversation in an appendix at the end of your submission (that is, after all the other questions).

Then, analyze these conversations from the perspective of distributed cognition. What cognitive roles are the tools performing? To what extent are the tools serving purposes besides memory, and to what extent can the cognitive roles be viewed just as long-term memory equipped with more knowledge and more sophisticated search procedures?

Finally, remember that distributed cognition is a tool: describe what insights into the usefulness and role of generative AI may come from viewing it specifically as a part of a broader system playing certain cognitive roles rather than merely as a tool at the hands of the cognitive user.

Question 2 (~1.5 pages)

Identify an area you encounter regularly where political motivations are determining the design of technology. First, describe the area you’ve selected.

Then, describe the stakeholders in that area, including their motivations. Any interesting technology will likely have at least three groups of stakeholders.

Then, describe at least three ways those motivations are specifically affecting the design of the technology in that area. If you’re on the right track, you’ll likely find the motivations are in conflict.

Hint: Remember, political motivations do not necessarily have to be things like liberal and conservative; rather, they are places where the technology is designed to create some kind of societal change rather than to maximize usability. Note that also you may choose a technology where different stakeholders are attempting to design it in competing ways; however, this should be present in their actual designs rather than in things like legislation for which they lobby. If you are a Cybersecurity or Analytics student, this is a great opportunity to tie the course content to your specific field, such as how interfaces may be designed to improve security even at the expense of usability, or how visualizations may be used to promote certain agendas over others.

Question 3 (~1.5 pages)

Every year, ACM CHI is the world’s largest conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Select two papers (not extended abstracts and not papers already part of the Required Readings) from one of the most recent three CHI conferences (2023, 2022, 2021); if the PDF is not accessible directly from the Proceedings, either log into the ACM Digital Library with your Georgia Tech account (Sign In in the top right > With you Organization in the bottom left), or search Google Scholar for the paper. Usually you’ll find them on the author’s own web sites. If you can’t get access to a paper, pick a different one!

For each of the two papers, list the paper’s title and author list, provide a link to the paper in the proceedings (or directly to a PDF), and then very briefly summarize the paper. In summarizing, be careful not to restate the abstract: the abstract for the paper emphasizes the paper’s significance, but your summary should focus on describing the paper to someone unfamiliar with the contents at all.

Then, describe why you find this paper interesting or why you selected it for this assignment.

Finally, describe three specific connections between the paper you chose and some element of the course content. That could be as broad as the connections between the paper and an entire lesson (such as mental models as a whole), or to some specific portion of one lesson (such as a specific design principle). In describing these connections, identify the specific video(s) to which you are connecting the paper.

Make sure to complete all these steps for each of the two papers. They may come from the same or different years.

Hint: If you’re a Cybersecurity student, try Ctrl+F searching the abstract listings for “security”, “cybersecurity”, “exploit”, “breach”, and “phish” to find Cybersecurity-oriented papers. If you’re an Analytics student, try Ctrl+F searching for “analytic”, “visualization”, “data science” , or “data scientist” to find Analytics-oriented papers.

Question 4 (~1.5 pages)

Each year, there are several other more specialized conferences about HCI sponsored by ACM, IEEE, APA, and others. Below is a list of such conferences.

Select two different conferences from this list. Then, from each conference, select a paper. For each of the two papers, list the paper’s title and author list, provide a link to the paper in the proceedings (or directly to a PDF), and then very briefly summarize the paper. In summarizing, be careful not to restate the abstract: the abstract for the paper emphasizes the paper’s significance, but your summary should focus on describing the paper to someone unfamiliar with the contents at all.

Then, describe why you find this paper interesting or why you selected it for this assignment.

Finally, describe three specific connections between the paper you chose and some element of the course content. That could be as broad as the connections between the paper and an entire lesson (such as mental models as a whole), or to some specific portion of one lesson (such as a specific design principle). In describing these connections, identify the specific video(s) to which you are connecting the paper.

Make sure to complete all these steps for each of the two papers. They may come from the same or different years, but they must come from different conferences. The conferences you may choose from are:

• International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction
• International Conference on Tangible, Embedded, and Embodied Interaction
• International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces (Recommended for Cybersecurity students!)
• International Conference on Interactive Experiences for TV and Online Video
• Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization (Recommended for Analytics students!)
• Interaction Design and Children
• Collective Intelligence
• International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing
• Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (Recommended for Cybersecurity students!)
• Creativity and Cognition
• International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications
• International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services
• International Conference on Multimodal Interaction
• International Learning Analytics & Knowledge Conference (Recommended for Analytics students!)
• Symposium on Spatial User Interaction
• Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
• Computer Supported Cooperative Work
• International Conference on Educational Data Mining (Recommended for Analytics students!)
• Symposium on Virtual Reality Software and Technology
• International Conference on Conversational User Interfaces
• International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality

Submission Instructions

Complete your assignment using JDF, then save your submission as a PDF. Assignments should be submitted to this page in Canvas. You should submit a single PDF for this  assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material.

This is an individual assignment. All work you submit should be your own. Make sure to cite any sources you reference, and use quotes and in-line citations to mark any direct quotes.

Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of such an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Your assignment will be graded on a 20-point scale coinciding with a rubric designed to mirror the question structure. Make sure to answer every question posted by the prompt. Pay special attention to bolded words and question marks in the question text.

The grading rubric will be finalized at least two weeks prior to the deadline, but you may assume it will follow the structure of the assignment description above and will not contain any information or details absent from this description.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas, and receive additional feedback on your own. All grades will come from the graders alone. See the course participation policy for full details about how points are awarded for completing peer reviews.

Individual Project

Individual Project

Answer the following prompt in a maximum of 25 pages (excluding references and excluding personal reflections) in JDF format. Any content beyond 25 pages will not be considered for a grade. 25 pages is a maximum, not a target; our recommended per-section lengths intentionally add to less than 25 pages to leave you room to decide where to delve into more detail. This length is intentionally set expecting that your submission will include some diagrams, drawings, pictures, etc.

The individual project also includes several appendices. The appendices are generally not expected to represent much additional work: most will involve directly copying artifacts that you produced otherwise into the body of the appendix, such as survey questions, interview scripts, needfinding notes, brainstorming notes, complete prototype images, evaluation questions, and complete evaluation results. They should be provided to give a complete view of the work entailed by your project.

Project Overview

For the individual project, you’re going to individually go through a couple iterations of the design life cycle for a topic of your choosing. You’re going to perform some initial needfinding, brainstorm some designs, create three prototypes, evaluate them, reflect on that evaluation, brainstorm a higher-fidelity prototype, create it, and evaluate it. Looking forward, you’ll do the same thing for the team project with your team, but with more complete needfinding, higher-fidelity prototypes, and more comprehensive evaluation.

To use an analogy: if you were working in design at a company, the individual project was like the internal pitch you put together to secure resources to pursue your idea. The team project is what happens when the company agrees to pursue an idea, and assigns you to the team to pursue it.

Note, however, that the actual team project must be distinct from any individual project from your team members. As much as we would like to allow the team project to continue one of your individual ideas, we have historically found that too often that makes it too difficult to delineate where one project ends and the next begins for the purpose of grading. So, the team project must not continue any individual project by any of your team members. It may be acceptable for it to be in a similar domain (for example, different features for a streaming service or different functions inside a car), but they should be sufficiently different that any prototype from your team’s individual projects would not be suitable as a prototype for the team project.

A key part of this is selecting what task to investigate. To select a promising task that will lead to a strong project, we offer the following advice—these are not rules that are independently enforced, but rather suggestions based on successful projects we have seen in the past:

• Select tasks with large audiences. You’ll need to recruit participants to complete surveys or participate in interviews, and selecting tasks with extremely niche audiences will make this difficult, unless you have access to that audience.
• Select tasks with audiences you know you have accessible to you. While you can recruit classmates as participants and offer them participation credit, you may find it easier if you choose a task for which you know you have a handful of friends, family members, or coworkers who wouldn’t mind answering a few questions a couple times during the semester.
• Emphasize the task. When designing interfaces, we are actually designing tasks. In this project, you shouldn’t redesign entire web sites or entire apps; most web sites and mobile apps support multiple tasks. Instead, focus on a specific task to redesign, like the search function for Netflix or the password-entry part of using an ATM machine.
• Select a commonly-known task. After all, the graders and your peers need to evaluate and give feedback on your work; if they are completely unfamiliar with the task you’ve selected, they will have difficulty providing feedback.

For the individual project, you must select a task for which there is already an interface; your goal in this project is to improve an existing interface. The team project will give you the freedom to choose tasks for which no interface yet exists.

Project Check-Ins

There are four project check-ins during the semester. You may skip one of these check-ins; so, you must submit at least three project check-ins, and you may submit all four if you like. Skipping more than one check-in will incur a 10-point deduction from your final project grade for each extra check-in skipped (-10 points for skipping two, -20 for skipping three, -30 for skipping all four). Check-ins are not graded for content, but only for completion. You will not see a grade specifically for the check-in in the gradebook; any penalty for failing to submit will be deducted from the overall project score.

There are four goals of project-check-ins:

• To see how others are approaching the same sorts of tasks you are approaching and to learn from their ideas.
• To put yourself in the mindset of a critic, picking out strengths and weaknesses in other plans and reflecting on how those might inform your work.
• To get additional feedback from your classmates on your ideas and progress.
• To provide an avenue for recruiting potential participants to your needfinding and evaluation exercises. You are welcome to include instructions in your check-ins for your peers to complete your needfinding surveys or sign up for your evaluations.

Project Contents

For the individual project, you will generally go through two iterations of the design life cycle. Your project deliverable will contain documentation of the entire process, including separate sections wherein you describe your plan for certain stages and describe the results of executing those plans. It is acceptable that your execution may not always follow exactly according to plan—the project aims to assess both your ability to design a strong plan and to execute a plan to the best of your ability in the face of real constraints.

Percentages for the sections below indicate the percentage of the grade contributed by each portion of the project; page lengths are recommended, but not enforced at the per-section level.

Introduction (5%) (~1 page)

Begin your final deliverable with a brief summary of the overall project. What is the task for which you are developing? What are users trying to accomplish? Are their specific stories or vignettes that made you interested in this task domain?

Needfinding Plan (~1 page, plus details in appendices) (5%)

Develop your initial needfinding plan for the project. For the individual project, you should have at least two separate needfinding activities. One of these should involve actively interacting with potential users (e.g. surveys; interviews; think-aloud studies; apprenticeship); these may be classmates incentivized via course participation requirements, but you are also encouraged to seek input from real users outside the class.

Your target number of participants will differ based on your method for needfinding. Surveys would generally target ~20 participants each spending around 10 minutes; interviews would generally target ~5 each spending around 20 minutes; apprenticeship would target 1-2 each spending around an hour.

Lay out a clear plan for this needfinding process. Who will your participants be? How will you recruit them? What will they be asked to do? The body of your document should contain the plan description; you may include the full question text as an appendix at the end.

The second needfinding activity should be a heuristic evaluation of an existing interface for the task you have in mind—for this project, a heuristic evaluation. A heuristic evaluation is a way of identifying issues with an interface based on a number of pre-identified heuristics. For this heuristic evaluation, you should identify at least three heuristics to use when evaluating the interface. They may be derived from existing sources (Nielsen’s ten heuristics, Lesson 2.5’s fifteen principles if you’re working ahead, etc.), or you may propose heuristics based on the course material you have consumed so far (for example, you could propose your own heuristics based on the gulfs of execution and evaluation). Lay out a clear plan for this needfinding process as well: what interface will you evaluate, and what are your three heuristics?

Needfinding Results (~2 pages, plus details in appendices) (5%)

Describe the results of executing your needfinding plan. For the active needfinding activity, describe the extent to which you were able to follow the activity as planned, as well as the overall high-level results (such as the number of survey responses received, the number of people interviewed, etc.). For the heuristic evaluation activity, describe where you found the target interface to obey or violate the three (or more) heuristics that you chose.

Then, for needfinding as a whole, describe at least three insights you gained into the task for which you are designing based on this needfinding exercise. These should be observations you did not know for certain prior to needfinding; you may have suspected them, but the insights should be justified with specific results from the needfinding process.

In addition, include raw results as an appendix to your submission: these would include the raw (or directly summarized, e.g. graphs) results from surveys, notes from interviews or observations, etc.

Initial Brainstorming Plan (~0.5 page) (5%)

After completing your needfinding activities, plan out how you will approach brainstorming. Your brainstorming approach should reflect course content on designing strong brainstorming activities, although it will likely focus on individual brainstorming as this is an individual project (although if you want to brainstorm with a study group or classmates, each contributing to each other’s ideas, that’s encouraged!). You are welcome to brainstorm with AI assistance as well; AI support for brainstorming is a key strength of many of these emerging generative AI tools. If you choose to brainstorm with AI assistance, you should include the transcript of that interaction as an appendix. Explain the rationale of your plan, as well as how you will mitigate known biases that can affect the brainstorming process.

Brainstorming Results (~1.5 pages, plus details in an appendix) (5%)

Share the results of your brainstorming process by both summarizing the overall activity and by sharing the ideas that were generated. You may include raw notes on the ideas as an appendix; the body of this section may instead focus on the summarizing the ideas as a whole.

Select at least three design alternatives to move forward to the prototyping stage, and briefly explain why you selected each from the list of alternatives. Conclude the section by providing brief textual prototypes (~1 paragraph each) of these three design alternatives.

Initial Prototyping (~3 pages, plus details in an appendix) (10%)

For each of the three design alternatives you selected in the previous stage, create a low-fidelity prototype. For screen-based interfaces, a low-fidelity prototype would be at the level of a reasonably well-drawn paper or card prototype. For non-screen based interfaces, a low-fidelity prototype would mimic the level of evaluation possible from a paper prototypes. For auditory prototypes, that would include a general script of a couple sample interactions. For physical prototypes, that might include pretending some other physical device represents your planned prototype. For virtual or augmented reality, that might include a paper or card prototype attached to some description or picture of the background on which the interface is superimposed.

In the body of your deliverable, describe each prototype and include at least one image of that prototype. For each one, include some information about the rationale behind the design, rooted in concepts and principles described throughout this course. In the appendices, you may include more complete pictures of the various screens or views of the prototype, the detailed text of the script that defines the prototype, etc.

For more information on constructing these prototypes, see our dedicated page on recommended prototyping tools.

Evaluation Planning (~1 page, plus details in an appendix) (5%)

Design an evaluation plan for comparing the three prototypes, either solely against each other or against both each other and your preexisting interface. Your evaluation plan must involve participants.

Note that at this point in the class, you might not have covered Lesson 3.6 yet. That’s okay; because Lesson 3.6: Evaluation comes a bit later, we are not expecting your evaluation to be particularly sophisticated. Consider evaluation at this point to be sort of an extension of needfinding, with your ideas as the basis for the conversation. Feel free to preview Lesson 3.6 as well for some more evaluation ideas.

The evaluation plan should first cover the overall process of evaluation: who the participants will be, how they will be recruited and/or incentivized, and what they will be asked to do (e.g. fill out a survey, think aloud during interaction, preview the prototypes, etc.).

You may find it prudent to form evaluation groups, where each group member agrees to be an evaluator for the others in the group. These could be the same teammates you identified for the team project, or it could just be a random set of classmates. A group of 5-6 such classmates would be sufficient for each to evaluate the other’s prototypes.

The evaluation plan should then cover what specific questions will be asked or variables will be explored. The evaluation plan must involve both quantitative and qualitative elements. The plan must further include a plan for analyzing both the quantitative and qualitative results: for example, what statistical tests or descriptive statistics will be calculated on the quantitative results, and what might you be able to claim? How will the qualitative results be divided and summarized?

Note that quantitative in this context does not necessarily have to mean objective; not every prototype will support quantitative measurements of how long it takes users to perform certain tasks. Quantitative in this context means anything that can be evaluated numerically and used in a statistical test, which could include user-assigned preference ratings, counts of the number of steps to perform certain actions, counts of errors committed while attempting certain actions, etc. Additionally, note that at these sample sizes, actual statistically significant differences are unlikely; the requirement is to conduct the test, not to get a significant result.

Evaluation Results (~2 page, plus details in an appendix) (10%)

Execute the evaluation plan for comparing the three prototypes, then report the results. Start with the basics of the evaluation results: how many participants did you receive, how they were recruited, etc.

Then, perform the quantitative and qualitative analyses proposed above. For the quantitative analysis, perform the statistical tests that you set out, report their p-values or other statistics, and interpret the results. For the qualitative analysis, summarize the qualitative data and interpret the results.

In an appendix, you may include the raw data from the evaluation that you performed, including raw survey responses, interview notes, etc.

Second Iteration Planning (~2 pages) (5%)

Now that you have completed one iteration of the design life cycle for this task, pause and write a “re-introduction”. In this re-introduction, you will plan out the overall next phase of the design life cycle.

This process will play out differently depending on the results of your first iteration. For most projects, we expect that the evaluation results from the first iteration through the design life cycle will double as the needfinding for this second iteration: what results from the evaluation introduced new insights into user needs for the task that you have chosen? Are there new questions introduced by the evaluation that need to be explored by a new dedicated needfinding activity? If so, this is the place to propose and execute those—but we expect for most projects the evaluation will generate sufficient insights on its own.

Similarly, what do the results of the previous iteration through the design life cycle tell you about your designs? Are there needs that are not yet addressed by any of your prototypes for which you need to brainstorm designs? Is there a particular prototype that is the clear winner that should be enhanced for the final prototype, or will your final prototype be a combination of two or three of the design alternatives from the previous iteration?

Final Prototype (~3 pages, plus details in an appendix) (15%)

Based on the results of the previous evaluation, as well as the planning that happened in the previous section, construct a medium-fidelity prototype of the design alternative you have chosen. This may be more functional version of one of the specific prototypes outlined before, or it may be a medium-fidelity combination of multiple prototypes from the previous design life cycle.

Include in your document multiple pictures to get a sense for the overall status of your prototype. Your prototype should be shared at the level at which you could reasonably expect some feedback from classmates on improving its design. You should also include a justification of some of the design decisions made in the prototype using the concepts and principles covered so far in this course. If you need to include more complete pictures of the prototype, you may do so in an appendix, although we expect the video prototype to suffice for that.

For more information on constructing this prototypes, see our dedicated page on recommended prototyping tools.

Video Prototype (~0.5 page) (15%)

In addition to the description of the prototype present in the body of your deliverable, you should also create a video prototype. A video prototype in this context is a video of you presenting your medium-fidelity prototype in action. Your video prototype may be minimally edited: this is a video demonstration of your prototype, not a video presentation about your prototype. We would generally expect your video prototype to be about five minutes long (depending on how long an interaction with your interface takes), and to include a complete verbal walkthrough (in your own voice) of your prototype’s features. Your demonstration should include some descriptions of why certain decisions about your prototype were made; these need not be thorough, but some reference to the rationale behind certain design decisions should be present in the video.

Upload your video prototype to the video host of your choosing (you may use MediaSpace here at Georgia Tech if you wish, or you can use YouTube, Sharepoint, Google Drive, etc.), and include in your deliverable the link and instructions for accessing your video prototype. Check out the Video Prototype section of our recommended prototyping tools page as well for more information.

Final Evaluation Planning (~1 page, plus details in an appendix) (5%)

Plan a final evaluation of the prototype you have developed. This evaluation may involve the video prototype, the full prototype, or both. Your evaluation plan must involve participants (either classmates or others you recruit), and must involve both qualitative and quantitative elements. For most projects, we would expect the evaluation to be a request to watch a video prototype, followed by a small number of questions, some open-ended and some quantitative. If this is presented via survey, we would expect around 20 responses. If this is presented via interview or some more real-time mechanism, we would expect around 5 responses. The entire process should take around 10 minutes per participant.

As before, the evaluation plan should first cover the overall process of evaluation: who the participants will be, how they will be recruited and/or incentivized, and what they will be asked to do (e.g. fill out a survey, think aloud during interaction, preview the prototypes, etc.).

The evaluation plan should then cover what specific questions will be asked or variables will be explored. The evaluation plan must involve both quantitative and qualitative elements. The plan must further include a plan for analyzing both the quantitative and qualitative results: for example, what statistical tests will be run on the quantitative results? How will the qualitative results be divided and summarized? Note that as you may or may not have an alternate interface to compare against, your quantitative evaluation may be limited to descriptive statistics, such as user-generated ratings of usability, counts of errors, or measurements of time required to complete certain tasks; what is important is that you match you design a quantitative evaluation appropriate for the status of your final prototype.

Final Evaluation Results (~1.5 pages, plus details in an appendix) (10%)

Execute your evaluation plan and analyze the results. Start with the basics of the evaluation results: how many participants did you receive, how they were recruited, etc.

Then, perform the quantitative and qualitative analyses proposed above. For the quantitative analysis, perform whatever test or statistical summary you proposed and interpret the results. For the qualitative analysis, summarize the qualitative data and interpret the results.

In an appendix, you may include the raw data from the evaluation that you performed, including raw survey responses, interview notes, etc.

Submission Instructions

Complete your assignment using JDF, then save your submission as a PDF. Assignments should be submitted to this page in Canvas. You should submit a single PDF for this  assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material.

Note that in a small number of cases, we encounter students whose final deliverable is too large for the submission system to process. If you encounter an error in submitting, you may instead upload your final deliverable to Sharepoint, Google Drive, etc., then instead submit a PDF with a link to where the full deliverable can be found. You are responsible for ensuring sharing permissions are correctly set to allow anyone with the link to access the document. You may be asked to share the document in a way that allows the course team to verify it is unchanged since before the deadline, so make sure such a mechanism is available. This should only be used in the event of a submission error when trying to upload your project.

This is an individual assignment. All work you submit should be your own. Make sure to cite any sources you reference, and use quotes and in-line citations to mark any direct quotes.

Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of such an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Your assignment will be graded on a 100-point scale coinciding with a rubric designed to mirror the question structure. Make sure to answer every question posted by the prompt.

The grading rubric will be finalized at least two weeks prior to the deadline, but you may assume it will follow the structure of the assignment description above and will not contain any information or details absent from this description.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas, and receive additional feedback on your own. All grades will come from the graders alone. See the course participation policy for full details about how points are awarded for completing peer reviews.

Team Project

Team Project

Answer the following prompt in a maximum of 40 pages (excluding references and excluding personal reflections) in JDF format. Any content beyond 40 pages will not be considered for a grade. 40 pages is a maximum, not a target; our recommended per-section lengths intentionally add to less than 40 pages to leave you room to decide where to delve into more detail. This length is intentionally set expecting that your submission will include some diagrams, drawings, pictures, etc.

The team project also includes several appendices. The appendices are generally not expected to represent much additional work: most will involve directly copying artifacts that you produced otherwise into the body of the appendix, such as survey questions, interview scripts, needfinding notes, brainstorming notes, complete prototype images, evaluation questions, and complete evaluation results. They should be provided to give a complete view of the work entailed by your project.

Project Overview

Over the last few weeks, you’ve individually gone through a couple iterations of the design life cycle in your chosen area. For the final team project, you, together with your teammates, will go through the same process in a different domain. The steps associated with this process are identical to what you did in the individual process; however, by virtue of being a team project, the needfinding exercises are expected to be more robust, the prototypes higher fidelity, and the evaluation procedures more deliberate.

To use an analogy: if you were working in design at a company, the individual project was like the internal pitch you put together to secure resources to pursue your idea. The team project is what happens when the company agrees to pursue an idea, and assigns you to the team to pursue it.

Note, however, that the actual team project must be distinct from any individual project from your team members. As much as we would like to allow the team project to continue one of your individual ideas, we have historically found that too often that makes it too difficult to delineate where one project ends and the next begins for the purpose of grading. So, the team project must not continue any individual project by any of your team members. It may be acceptable for it to be in a similar domain (for example, different features for a streaming service or different functions inside a car), but they should be sufficiently different that any prototype from your team’s individual projects would not be suitable as a prototype for the team project.

A key part of this is selecting what task to investigate. To select a promising task that will lead to a strong project, we offer the following advice—these are not rules that are independently enforced, but rather suggestions based on successful projects we have seen in the past:

• Select a task with a large audience. You’ll need to recruit participants to complete surveys or participate in interviews, and selecting tasks with extremely niche audiences will make this difficult, unless you have access to that audience.
• Select tasks with audiences you know you have accessible to you. While you can recruit classmates as participants and offer them participation credit, you may find it easier if you choose a task for which you know you have a handful of friends, family members, or coworkers who wouldn’t mind answering a few questions a couple times during the semester.
• Emphasize the task. When designing interfaces, we are actually designing tasks. In this project, you shouldn’t redesign entire web sites or entire apps; most web sites and mobile apps support multiple tasks. Instead, focus on a specific task to redesign, like the search function for Netflix or the password-entry part of using an ATM machine.
• Select a commonly-known task. After all, the graders and your peers need to evaluate and give feedback on your work; if they are completely unfamiliar with the task you’ve selected, they will have difficulty providing feedback.

For the team project, you may select either a task that is well-covered by an existing interface that you think could be improved, or a task that does not yet have an interface to support it at all.

Project Team Formation

Project teams are formed through a three-stage process:

• Phase I: Ideation. Share ideas for team project domains, ideally in line with the advice from the previous section.
• Phase II: Polling. We will select a bunch of the project ideas (both those suggested in Phase I and those we think would be good ideas overall) and create a forum poll for the class to vote on the ideas you like best.
• Phase III: Selection. We will select the ~8 most popular ideas from the poll and let you complete an individual survey indicating which idea you want to work on. Then, we’ll form groups within each selected idea.

Note that at any point during this process, you may self-select your team. If you form a team of your own, then in Phase III, instead of selecting what project idea you want to work on, you will instead inform us of what team you joined. If you form your own team, you may pursue any idea you wish that meets project requirements; you do not have to select one of the ideas offered in Phase III.

Teams must have between three and five members. If you wish to form a team of more than five members, we recommend splitting into smaller teams of three which can pursue complementary, but standalone, projects. Note that if you are self-organizing your team, your team must have at least three members; you cannot request a specific partner and ask for an additional teammate to be assigned.

Teams are finalized after the class withdrawal deadline to prevent teams from losing members after formation. Once teams are finalized, you may not change team members. Students who fail to complete the survey in Phase III will be partnered with other students who also failed to complete the survey.

Project Check-Ins

There are four project check-ins during the semester. Each team may skip one of these check-ins; so, all teams must submit at least three project check-ins, and you may submit all four if you like. Skipping more than one check-in will incur a 10-point deduction from your final project grade for each extra check-in skipped (-10 points for skipping two, -20 for skipping three, -30 for skipping all four). Check-ins are not graded for content, but only for completion. You will not see a grade specifically for the check-in in the gradebook; any penalty for failing to submit will be deducted from the overall project score.

There are four goals of project-check-ins:

• To see how others are approaching the same sorts of tasks you are approaching and to learn from their ideas.
• To put yourself in the mindset of a critic, picking out strengths and weaknesses in other plans and reflecting on how those might inform your work.
• To get additional feedback from your classmates on your ideas and progress.
• To provide an avenue for recruiting potential participants to your needfinding and evaluation exercises. You are welcome to include instructions in your check-ins for your peers to complete your needfinding surveys or sign up for your evaluations.

Project Contents

For the team project, you will generally go through two iterations of the design life cycle. Your project deliverable will contain documentation of the entire process, including separate sections wherein you describe your plan for certain stages and describe the results of executing those plans. It is acceptable that your execution may not always follow exactly according to plan—the project aims to assess both your ability to design a strong plan and to execute a plan to the best of your ability in the face of real constraints.

Percentages for the sections below indicate the percentage of the grade contributed by each portion of the project; page lengths are recommended, but not enforced at the per-section level.

Introduction (5%) (~1 page)

Begin your final deliverable with a brief summary of the overall project. What is the task for which you are developing? What are users trying to accomplish? Are their specific stories or vignettes that made you interested in this task domain?

Needfinding Plan (~1.5 pages, plus details in appendices) (5%)

Develop your initial needfinding plan for the project. For the team project, you should have at least three separate needfinding activities; we expect for most teams, a different team member will perform each activity. At least one of these needfinding activities must involve interacting with potential users (e.g. surveys; interviews; think-aloud studies; apprenticeship); these may be classmates incentivized via course participation requirements, but you are also encouraged to seek input from real users outside the class. The other two needfinding activities may be more passive (e.g. heuristic evaluation of an existing interface; naturalistic observation; participant observation; heuristic evaluation of existing interfaces; analysis of product reviews; analysis of existing data logs; etc.).

Your target number of participants will differ based on your method for needfinding. Surveys would generally target ~20 participants each spending around 10 minutes; interviews would generally target ~5 each spending around 20 minutes; apprenticeship would target 1-2 each spending around an hour.

Lay out a clear plan for each needfinding activity your team will complete. The nature of the plan will differ based on the type of needfinding you select. For example, for your active needfinding plan(s), you will specify who your participants will be, how you will recruit them, and what they will be asked to do or answer. For more passive needfinding plans, you would describe how you will access the necessary materials or contexts (such as where naturalistic observation will occur or what your heuristics would be for a heuristic evaluation—note that we would expect more than three heuristics for such an evaluation on the team project) and the systematic process by which they will be evaluated.

For every needfinding activities, you should outline the potential biases that you may encounter. At the conclusion of the plan, you should outline how the different activities attempt to control for one another’s biases, as well as what biases remain even after designing all these separate activities.

The body of this section should focus on the plan; you should include specifics like the language of survey or interview questions in an appendix as appropriate.

Needfinding Results (~3 pages, plus details in appendices) (5%)

Describe the results of executing your needfinding plan. For each activity, describe the extent to which you were able to follow the activity as planned, as well as the overall high-level results (such as the number of survey responses received, the number of people interviewed, what existing interfaces were evaluated, etc.).

Then, for needfinding as a whole, describe at least three insights you gained into the task for which you are designing based on this needfinding exercise. These should be observations you did not know for certain prior to needfinding; you may have suspected them, but the insights should be justified with specific results from the needfinding process.

In addition, include raw results as an appendix to your submission: these would include the raw (or directly summarized, e.g. graphs) results from surveys, notes from interviews or observations, etc.

Initial Brainstorming Plan (~0.5 page) (5%)

After sharing the results of your needfinding with all team members, plan out how you will approach brainstorming. Your brainstorming approach should reflect course content on designing strong brainstorming activities, though it will likely be constrained by details of your team make-up (for example, a team distributed around the world may have difficulty meeting for synchronous group brainstorming). Explain the rationale of your plan, as well as how you will mitigate known biases that can affect the brainstorming process.

Brainstorming Results (~1.5 pages, plus details in an appendix) (5%)

Share the results of your brainstorming process by both summarizing the overall activity and by sharing the ideas that were generated. You may include raw notes on the ideas as an appendix; the body of this section may instead focus on the summarizing the ideas as a whole.

Select at least three design alternatives to move forward to the prototyping stage, and briefly explain why you selected each from the list of alternatives. Conclude the section by providing brief textual prototypes (~1 paragraph each) of these three design alternatives.

Initial Prototyping (~4 pages, plus details in an appendix) (10%)

For each of the three design alternatives you selected in the previous stage, create a medium-fidelity prototype. For screen-based interfaces, a medium-fidelity prototype would be at least at the level of a wireframe. For non-screen based interfaces, a medium-fidelity prototype would mimic the level of evaluation possible from a wireframe prototype. For auditory prototypes, that would include a detailed script of prompts and responses. For physical prototypes, that would include a reasonable facsimile of the interface along with a script for evaluation.

You are encouraged to get creative with your prototyping approach so long as your prototype reflects the same amount of effort that would likely be required to create a wireframe prototype!

In the body of your deliverable, describe each prototype and include at least one image of that prototype. For each one, include some information about the rationale behind the design, rooted in concepts and principles described throughout this course. In the appendices, you may include more complete pictures of the various screens or views of the prototype, the detailed text of the script that defines the prototype, etc.

For more information on constructing these prototypes, see our dedicated page on recommended prototyping tools.

Evaluation Planning (~1.5 pages, plus details in an appendix) (5%)

Design an evaluation plan for comparing the three prototypes, either solely against each other or against both each other and some preexisting interface. Your evaluation plan must involve participants; while you may perform a predictive evaluation of your prototypes as well, that is not sufficient for the evaluation stage of the team project.

You may find it prudent to pair up with another team or two, and have each member of that group serve as an evaluator for your team’s prototypes.

The evaluation plan should first cover the overall process of evaluation: who the participants will be, how they will be recruited and/or incentivized, and what they will be asked to do (e.g. fill out a survey, think aloud during interaction, preview the prototypes, etc.).

The evaluation plan should then cover what specific questions will be asked or variables will be explored. The evaluation plan must involve both quantitative and qualitative elements. The plan must further include a plan for analyzing both the quantitative and qualitative results: for example, what statistical tests will be run on the quantitative results? How will the qualitative results be divided and summarized?

Note that quantitative in this context does not necessarily have to mean objective; not every prototype will support quantitative measurements of how long it takes users to perform certain tasks. Quantitative in this context means anything that can be evaluated numerically and used in a statistical test, which could include user-assigned preference ratings, counts of the number of steps to perform certain actions, counts of errors committed while attempting certain actions, etc.

Evaluation Results (~3 pages, plus details in an appendix) (10%)

Execute the evaluation plan for comparing the three prototypes, then report the results. Start with the basics of the evaluation results: how many participants did you receive, how they were recruited, etc.

Then, perform the quantitative and qualitative analyses proposed above. For the quantitative analysis, perform the statistical tests that you set out, report their p-values, and interpret the results. For the qualitative analysis, summarize the qualitative data and interpret the results.

In an appendix, you may include the raw data from the evaluation that you performed, including raw survey responses, interview notes, etc.

Second Iteration Planning (~2.5 pages) (5%)

Now that you have completed one iteration of the design life cycle for this task, pause and write a “re-introduction”. In this re-introduction, you will plan out the overall next phase of the design life cycle.

This process will play out differently depending on the results of your first iteration. For most projects, we expect that the evaluation results from the first iteration through the design life cycle will double as the needfinding for this second iteration: what results from the evaluation introduced new insights into user needs for the task that you have chosen? Are there new questions introduced by the evaluation that need to be explored by a new dedicated needfinding activity? If so, this is the place to propose and execute those—but we expect for most projects the evaluation will generate sufficient insights on its own.

Similarly, what do the results of the previous iteration through the design life cycle tell you about your designs? Are there needs that are not yet addressed by any of your prototypes for which you need to brainstorm designs? Is there a particular prototype that is the clear winner that should be enhanced for the final prototype, or will your final prototype be a combination of two or three of the design alternatives from the previous iteration?

Final Prototype (~6 pages, plus details in an appendix) (15%)

Based on the results of the previous evaluation, as well as the planning that happened in the previous section, construct a high-fidelity prototype of the design alternative you have chosen. This may be more functional version of one of the specific prototypes outlined before, or it may be a high-fidelity combination of multiple prototypes from the previous design life cycle.

For most prototypes, we would expect this section to include instructions for accessing the prototype directly. For prototypes that are not so easily shareable (such as physical prototypes), complete pictures—combined with the video prototype in the next section—will suffice so long as they still reflect the same amount of effort that would go into a more shareable high-fidelity prototype.

In addition to those instructions, include multiple pictures of the prototype in the body of your submission, as well as a justification of some of the design decisions made in the prototype using the concepts and principles described throughout this course. If you need to include more complete pictures of the prototype, you may do so in an appendix, although we expect the video prototype to suffice for that.

For more information on constructing this prototype, see our dedicated page on recommended prototyping tools.

Video Prototype (~0.5 page) (15%)

In addition to the description of the prototype present in the body of your deliverable, you should also create a video prototype. A video prototype in this context is a video of you interacting with your high-fidelity prototype in action. Your video prototype may be minimally edited: this is a video demonstration of your prototype, not a video presentation about your prototype. We would generally expect your video prototype to be about five minutes long (depending on how long an interaction with your interface takes), and to include a complete verbal walkthrough (in your own voice) of your prototype’s features. Your demonstration should include some descriptions of why certain decisions about your prototype were made; these need not be thorough, but some reference to the rationale behind certain design decisions should be present in the video.

Upload your video prototype to the video host of your choosing (you may use MediaSpace here at Georgia Tech if you wish, or you can use YouTube, Sharepoint, Google Drive, etc.), and include in your deliverable the link and instructions for accessing your video prototype. Check out the Video Prototype section of our recommended prototyping tools page as well for more information.

Final Evaluation Planning (~2 pages, plus details in an appendix) (5%)

Plan a final evaluation of the prototype you have developed. This evaluation may involve the video prototype, the full prototype, or both. Your evaluation plan must involve participants (either classmates or others you recruit), and must involve both qualitative and quantitative elements. For most projects, we would expect the evaluation to be instructions on accessing and interacting with the prototype along with a script of steps to follow (or, if that is infeasible, a request to watch the video prototype), followed by a small number of questions, some open-ended and some quantitative. If this is presented via survey, we would expect around 20 responses. If this is presented via interview or some more real-time mechanism, we would expect around 5 responses. The entire process should take around 10 minutes per participant.

As before, the evaluation plan should first cover the overall process of evaluation: who the participants will be, how they will be recruited and/or incentivized, and what they will be asked to do (e.g. fill out a survey, think aloud during interaction, preview the prototypes, etc.).

The evaluation plan should then cover what specific questions will be asked or variables will be explored. The evaluation plan must involve both quantitative and qualitative elements. The plan must further include a plan for analyzing both the quantitative and qualitative results: for example, what statistical tests will be run on the quantitative results? How will the qualitative results be divided and summarized? Note that as you may or may not have an alternate interface to compare against, your quantitative evaluation may be limited to descriptive statistics, such as user-generated ratings of usability, counts of errors, or measurements of time required to complete certain tasks; what is important is that you match you design a quantitative evaluation appropriate for the status of your final prototype.

Final Evaluation Results (~3 pages, plus details in an appendix) (10%)

Execute your evaluation plan and analyze the results. Start with the basics of the evaluation results: how many participants did you receive, how they were recruited, etc.

Then, perform the quantitative and qualitative analyses proposed above. For the quantitative analysis, perform whatever test or statistical summary you proposed and interpret the results. For the qualitative analysis, summarize the qualitative data and interpret the results.

In an appendix, you may include the raw data from the evaluation that you performed, including raw survey responses, interview notes, etc.

Individual Reflections

At the end of the main project deliverable but before the appendices, each member of the group should write a one-page individual reflection. This one-page reflection does not count against the page limit. Each member’s individual reflection should cover the following three things:

• What you individually contributed to the project.
• What each of your teammates contributed to the project.
• Your overall reflections on how the project progressed: what worked well, what could have worked better, and what you wish you had known prior to the start of the project.

Each team member’s individual reflection should start on a new page and contain the authoring team member’s name as the title of the page.

Note that the individual reflections are appended to the project deliverable itself; you should thus expect your teammates to review your statement of your contribution, and you should expect to review your teammates’ statements. The goal of this exercise is to come up with a fair representation of individual contributions that all participants can agree with; if no such agreement can be reached, however, individual reflections may differ.

Individual reflections will not be graded specifically; instead, they will be used to assess whether all group members deserve the same final grade. Generally speak, we do not assume that all group members will necessarily contribute equally, but rather that all group members will contribute substantively and enough to ensure success on the final project. If there is evidence that one or more group members are significantly lacking in their contribution, their grade may be reduced. Failure to include an individual reflection may be penalized by a multiplier as low as 0 (meaning a grade of 0 on the project).

Submission Instructions

Complete your assignment using JDF, then save your submission as a PDF. Assignments should be submitted to this page in Canvas. You should submit a single PDF for this  assignment. This PDF will be ported over to Peer Feedback for peer review by your classmates. If your assignment involves things (like videos, working prototypes, etc.) that cannot be provided in PDF, you should provide them separately (through OneDrive, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc.) and submit a PDF that links to or otherwise describes how to access that material.

Note that in a small number of cases, we encounter students whose final deliverable is too large for the submission system to process. If you encounter an error in submitting, you may instead upload your final deliverable to Sharepoint, Google Drive, etc., then instead submit a PDF with a link to where the full deliverable can be found. You are responsible for ensuring sharing permissions are correctly set to allow anyone with the link to access the document. You may be asked to share the document in a way that allows the course team to verify it is unchanged since before the deadline, so make sure such a mechanism is available. This should only be used in the event of a submission error when trying to upload your project.

This is a group assignment. Only one person from your group needs to submit. Please make sure to list your group number in the assignment body. Make sure to cite any sources you reference, and use quotes and in-line citations to mark any direct quotes.

Late work is not accepted without advanced agreement except in cases of medical or family emergencies. In the case of such an emergency, please contact the Dean of Students.

Grading Information

Your assignment will be graded on a 100-point scale coinciding with a rubric designed to mirror the question structure. Make sure to answer every question posted by the prompt.

The grading rubric will be finalized at least two weeks prior to the deadline, but you may assume it will follow the structure of the assignment description above and will not contain any information or details absent from this description.

Peer Review

After submission, your assignment will be ported to Peer Feedback for review by your classmates. Grading is not the primary function of this peer review process; the primary function is simply to give you the opportunity to read and comment on your classmates’ ideas, and receive additional feedback on your own. All grades will come from the graders alone. See the course participation policy for full details about how points are awarded for completing peer reviews.

Class Participation

Class Participation

HCI is a deeply collaborative field, and there is no better way to learn than to interact with your peers, to participate in one another’s usability studies, and to see the variety of approaches taken by your classmates to the class’s assignments. Thus, participation is required. However, we understand that requiring participation has a tendency to incite inauthentic participation. Our goal with the participation policy is to give students enough ways to fulfill their participation credit in the way that is most natural and useful to them.

There are a number of different ways to earn participation points. Our goal is for the participation policy to be “invisible” to most students, in that organic participation is sufficient to fulfill these requirements. If you are active on the forum (e.g. posting high-quality topics or comments a couple times a week) and complete your peer review tasks, you shouldn’t ever need to worry about the participation policy. We expect that for the majority of students, you’ll earn your participation points without really trying.

The following are the ways you may earn participation credit.

• 0.5 to 1.5 points: Provide a classmate a peer review. You will be assigned three peer reviews per assignment by default, and you may request to give up to three additional peer reviews. Reviews submitted within 4 days of the original assignment deadline are worth 1.5 points; within 7 days of the original assignment deadline are worth 1.0 points; and beyond 7 days are worth 0.5 points.
• 0.1 to 3.0 points each: Post a high-quality contribution on the forum (actual point value varies by post; make sure your Georgia Tech email is attached to your forum account). (Maximum 40 points.)
• 0.5 point each: Complete a classmate’s request for assignment or project participation.
• 0.5 point each: Submit a candidate exam question to the form on Canvas. (Maximum 10 points.)
• 2.0 point each: Submit an annotated bibliography entry to the form on Canvas. (Maximum 20 points.)
• 1.0 point each: Complete one of the four course surveys (start-of-course, quarter-course, mid-course, and end-of-course), or other surveys indicated as eligible for participation points on the Quizzes page on Canvas.
• 1.0 points Complete this page’s secret survey before week 2 to indicate you read the entire syllabus; to access it, click the word ‘secret’ earlier in this sentence.
• Additional points: Additional points may be awarded based on other things that come up (for example, completing a student spotlight or bringing in a guest for a Q&A).

For all participation exercises, the participation must be substantive. Non-substantive peer reviews, token forum participation, fake survey responses, or other attempts to earn points without earnest participation will not be awarded points. Make sure to check your score after the updates to ensure your score is what you expect; if you are earning fewer points than you anticipated it is likely because your participation is insufficiently substantive.

Grading Information

Your number of participation points will be averaged out of 100 possible points and included as 10% of your final average. Earning 100 points or above will give 100% of the possible participation credit. To help you track your progress, we will post participation updates at least three times during the semester (around weeks 6, 12, and 17). Participation grades will be finalized on Friday of Week 17, so you should complete all participation activities by Thursday of Week 17.

It’s possible to complete your participation credit through peer review alone if you request additional peer reviews each week: there are fourteen assignments this semester for peer review, so if you give five peer reviews by the early deadline each week, you’ll reach the maximum. In most cases, we expect students to earn their participation credit by completing three peer reviews early per week, plus participating a couple dozen classmates’ requests for participation in both the individual and team projects.

There is no mid-semester deadline on participation; you can take entire weeks off if necessary as long as you earn your points at some point during the semester. Most participation categories are reasonably objective (peer reviews, participation tokens, surveys, and library contributions), so you should be able to self-monitor between updates. Note that no one category is required; we assign three peer reviews per student per assignment just to encourage you to participate in that process, but if you prefer to earn participation points in other ways instead, you may.

Course FAQ

The following are answers to frequently-asked questions from previous semesters of the course. You’re responsible for knowing any content on this page on the first day of the course; we also may add to this page as the semester goes along, but you aren’t responsible for knowing anything added after day 1.

Will I be penalized for failing to adhere to JDF on my submissions?

Yes and no. The primary purpose of JDF is standardize a document format in a way that lets us give useful expectations about assignment submission lengths that include both text and figures. So, there will be major deductions if you deviate from JDF in a way that breaks that purpose, such as deviations from the prescribed margin size, text size, typeface, and line spacing.

That said, the secondary purpose of JDF is to make your submissions look clean and professional, and to prepare you for the potential world of academic writing where you’re expected to adhere to document formats. So, if there are any cosmetic deviations from JDF that jump out immediately, they may be subject to small deductions. That would include things like: the formatting of section headers, paragraph spacing, and caption formatting.

We won’t be going through your document with a ruler ensuring that your spacing is exactly 1.26 instead of 1.25 or anything like that, though. If deviations can’t be identified during the normal course of viewing the document, you’ll be fine.

If I previously enrolled in this class and withdrew/failed, can I reuse my work?

First and foremost: note that there is no guarantee that the assignment instructions, rubrics, grading standards, etc. have not changed semester to semester. So, even if you are retaking the class, you should not assume that your assignments from the last time you took it still adhere to this semester’s instructions—and even if they do, you should not assume you will receive the same grade. Similarly, if there is any plagiarized content in your assignment, you should not assume it will not be caught this time just because it was not caught last time; our mechanisms and standards for detecting plagiarism have gotten changed over time, and occasionally we catch misconduct the second time around that we overlooked the first time.

All that said: we do not penalize self-plagiarism in this course as a misconduct issue. If you’ve taken this course before and completed assignments, you can resubmit those assignments without worrying about self-plagiarism.

Each semester, TAs receive numerous queries about self-plagiarism, even with this FAQ in place. To clarify, tools like Turnitin will flag resubmitted assignments as plagiarism. This is expected and not a cause for concern. Rest assured, this is just standard procedure, and there’s no cause for alarm. Our TAs manually review such instances to ensure everything is appropriate. Importantly, there is no need to notify the instructional team in advance of using previous semester’s work.

Who grades my assignments?

For each homework, project, and quiz, you’re randomly assigned to one of our graders. After they evaluate and input their results, we implement measures to ensure consistent grading across all graders. This process might lead to adjustments in individual grades. Once finalized, grades are then posted. You may see a name listed on the grade you receive, but this is not the sole person who entered your grades; Canvas automatically labels the last person to adjust your grade as the author of your grade, but that adjustment could be anything from grading your entire assignment to fixing a typo in your feedback before release.

The grading team does not consider peer feedback when assessing your assignments. Peer reviews only factor into your participation grades.

The syllabus states that the deadline is 11:59PM UTC-12 on Sundays, but Canvas reflects a later deadline. Which is correct?

We add some extra time in Canvas for two reasons: one to account for daylight savings shifts (since if we went strictly by 11:59PM UTC-12, it would mean deadlines would shift back and forth an hour by most of our time zones) and two to allow a grace period around the submission window in case Canvas is momentarily slow, your internet goes out right at the deadline, etc. Canvas’s deadline is always later than 11:59PM UTC-12, so as long as you aim for that deadline you’ll be fine; you will not be penalized as long as you submit before Canvas’s deadline, though.

Note that we do not encourage trying to submit right against the deadline; the reason we use UTC-12 as our time zone is to make deadline-tracking simpler. You know that as long as it’s before midnight wherever you are, you’re still eligible to submit.

I have a follow-up question about my assignment feedback, or I feel my assignment was graded incorrectly. What should I do?

First and foremost: you should take a day to internalize the feedback you received on their assignment, as well as compare your assignment to the exemplary submissions posted on Canvas. They are provided to communicate the bar for exemplary submissions and to support implicit feedback as you compare your submissions to them and find where the exemplary submissions appear stronger. This is an excellent learning opportunity, and we recommend everyone take advantage of it. To truly benefit from this opportunity, we suggest focusing on learning from the strengths of multiple papers rather than fixating on identifying a subpar section in a single paper to use as a basis for arguing against deductions for your own work. It’s important to note that such comparisons would not be valid, as not every section of every outstanding submission received full credit.

Just as dedicating a few minutes to reading documentation (or forum posts) can save hours of code debugging, taking a few minutes to analyze the collective best attributes of exemplary papers can potentially save you hours of writing regrade requests—and help create a blueprint for achieving higher grades.

If even after taking a day to internalize feedback and compare to exemplary submissions you still have follow-up questions, you may post privately to the forum within one week of receiving your assignment grade. In posting, you should make clear whether you are seeking clarification on the feedback you received or are hoping to have your grade actually changed.

Is there a way to use JDF without using LaTex?

Georgia Tech students get free professional license to OverLeaf, an online browser based LaTeX editor: https://www.overleaf.com/edu/gatech

It works much like an online IDE/interpreter and you don’t need to install anything locally—you can just import the JDF LaTeX template and compile directly in the browser window and see the results. There is a GitHub integration that lets you push directly from the page and PDF export as well.

If you don’t want to use LaTeX, there is also a word template (.docx) and a Google Doc template here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1xDYIomn9e9FxbIeFcsclSbXHTtHROD1j

You can export a Word doc to PDF in both MS Word and OpenOffice. Google Doc has export to PDF as well. Our recommendation if you don’t want to use LaTeX is that you make a copy of the template and enter your content directly.

We recommend keeping a copy of whichever template you want to use and simply modifying it directly to create each assignment.

Can I form a study group?

Sure, and please do! Just make sure that when it comes time to actually write up designs and assignments that you’re doing work individually, of course. Part of our plagiarism-checking workflow checks students’ work against each other, so make sure to collaborate at the level of ideas, not at the level of designs or text.

Are forum posts considered course content that should be cited?

If someone points out a resource on the forum you don’t need to cite that the forum was the place where you found out the resource exists. If someone’s forum post is actually the source itself, though, you’d be expected to cite that. Otherwise, you should generally cite videos, articles, journals, or other intellectual works.

Can I cite Wikipedia?

Generally speaking, citing Wikipedia for an academic paper is not a good idea, and Wikipedia even agrees. If you are citing work that was original to academic literature, you should reference the original work and use your own prose. After all, Wikipedia is a conglomeration of prose from others’ interpretations of the sources referenced for a given subject matter. it is an abstraction and summary of secondary sources. Those interpretations may be inaccurate and paraphrasing them again in your own words might be a complete deviation from the original work.

It is always a good idea to cite the original work, interpret it yourself, and use your own prose to describe it. If you’re citing Wikipedia because Wikipedia is quoting an original work, then you would still want to cite the original work, which is typically cited at the bottom of the Wikipedia article (and if it isn’t, it’s even less likely that you want to cite the claim as it appears on Wikipedia).

Wikipedia actually has good information on Academic Use.

Can I use AI-based assistance?

We treat AI-based assistance, such as ChatGPT and Github Copilot, the same way we treat collaboration with other people: you are welcome to talk about your ideas and work with other people, both inside and outside the class, as well as with AI-based assistants. However, all work you submit must be your own. You should never include in your assignment anything that was not written directly by you without proper citation (including quotation marks and in-line citation for direct quotes). Including anything you did not write in your assignment without proper citation will be treated as an academic misconduct case.

If you are unsure where the line is between collaborating with AI and copying from AI, we recommend the following heuristics:

• Never hit “Copy” within your conversation with an AI assistant. You can copy your own work into your conversation, but do not copy anything from the conversation back into your assignment. Instead, use your interaction with the AI assistant as a learning experience, then let your assignment reflect your improved understanding.
• Do not have your assignment and the AI agent itself open on your device at the same time. Similar to above, use your conversation with the AI as a learning experience, then close the interaction down, open your assignment, and let your assignment reflect your revised knowledge. This heuristic includes avoiding using AI assistants that are directly integrated into your composition environment: just as you should not let a classmate write content or code directly into your submission, so also you should avoid using tools that directly add content to your submission.

Deviating from these heuristics does not automatically qualify as academic misconduct; however, following these heuristics essentially guarantees your collaboration will not cross the line into misconduct.

Should I cite sources on [assignment]?

There are two answers to this. One: the expectation in this class is that you’ll cite sources on some assignments, not others. You’ll especially cite sources to justify your statements in the P assignments, and potentially to justify your selection of methodology in the M assignments. That said, Assignment P5 is the only assignment where we would say everyone should cite sources (for obvious reasons).

Two: to gauge whether you should cite a particular source, there are a number of times when you should always cite a source, both in-line and in your references section. I’ll use this paper as an example.

First, most obviously, if you’re writing about a paper, you would cite it:

One paper in this field looked at the interactions between motivation and student demographics among TA applicants (Joyner 2017).

If you are directly quoting or near-paraphrase another source, you should always cite in-line. If you are directly quoting, you would put quotation marks around the quoted material as well. For example:

Joyner writes that “scaling expert feedback while preserving affordability is possible.” (Joyner 2017)

When you are providing the source for an objective fact that is not common knowledge and that you did not discover yourself, you would cite in-line as well. For example, you would cite the following statement, as it is not common knowledge nor discovered by you:

58% of online TAs cite intrinsic motivations for wanting to be teaching assistants (Joyner 2017).

You do not need to cite common knowledge. For example, you would not do this:

The earth goes around the sun (Copernicus 1514).

Finally, if you are summarizing or using as foundation the higher-level ideas, methods, or structure of another source, you would cite that. This is a little fuzzier to describe, but you’ll probably know when you’ll use it. These are times when you want the reader to know there is precedent for your ideas, methods, or structure. For example:

One key challenge with scaling online education is keeping access to expert feedback in larger class sizes (Joyner 2017).

Regardless, for all of these examples, you would have the full citation at the bottom of the paper:

Joyner, D. A. (2017). Scaling Expert Feedback: Two Case Studies. In Proceedings of the Fourth Annual ACM Conference on Learning at Scale. Cambridge, Massachusetts. ACM Press.

For more, check out Yale University’s excellent Warning: When You Must Cite.