Grading

Students are evaluated on the quality of their participation, assignments, a presentation, and a major group project.

There are three main grading components: Preparation, Design, and Product, broken down as follows:

1a. Ethics Training

The “TCPS 2: CORE-2022 (Course on Research Ethics)”, also known as the TCPS2 tutorial, is mandatory for all researchers who intend to engage in research with human participants. In this course, you will be interviewing target end users. Before contacting users and conducting interviews, you are required to complete the ethics tutorial. Each student needs to complete the ethics tutorial individually. If you have taken this tutorial previously in other courses or activities, you do not need to take it again.

From the Welcome Page, click on the “Login to Core / Create Account” button on the right. Click “Create new account here” and fill in the required fields; you must register using your uwaterloo.ca email address. A confirmation email will be sent to the email address that you provide (check spam if you do not see it in your mailbox. Click on the activation link only once to activate your account. Once your account is activated, you can log in and begin the tutorial. It can take up to 3 hours take to complete CORE, depending on how many examples and activities you explore. You can go through the modules at your own pace; your progress is automatically saved, and you can log out and in again to resume your session. If you experience any difficulties, refer to TCPS 2: CORE Frequently Asked Questions.

No grade is assigned for this sub-component, but all students must complete this requirement (if you have not done this before); otherwise, you cannot continue in the course. Submit the certificate of completion with your name on it to the corresponding LEARN Dropbox.

1b. Team Formation

Students will work in teams throughout the term. Teams must be formed at the beginning of the term and are expected to stay the same during the term. All project deliverables are submitted per team and marked accordingly.

Project Team Information and Project Selection

Find teammates during the first class or on MS Teams after. There must be 4-5 students in your project team. After forming a team, conduct a team meeting to finalize your team information. This includes a short and meaningful team name a list of team member names/emails.

As a team, you must also rank your preferred project topics from this suggested project list. If your team wants to work on a different project topic not in that list, the instructor must approve it.

Once your team is formed and projects ranked, designate one person to submit the finalized team information using this online Project Team Information form. No grade is assigned for this sub-component, but all teams must complete this to move forward.

After submission, course staff will assign one of the topics in your ranked list. We will do our best to accommodate your preference ranking while also ideally having each group working on a different project topic. When necessary, we will do a random draw. Once your form is submitted, course staff will also create your team’s design document (see below).

Team Contract

During your initial team meeting, develop a contract using this Team Contract template by answering a set of questions about how your team will function this term. Later, you’ll submit your team contract by pasting a link in the designated area of the design document (see below).

Team Peer Evaluation

At the end of the term, students are required to complete a Team Peer Evaluation form to provide individual perspectives on teamwork and teammates. The responses may be used for adjusting individual marks based on the final team marks.

1c. Reading Reflections

For weeks 2 to 11, each student will individually select one starred (*) item and one other item to read (or watch) from the weekly reading list on the Schedule page. For each item you chose, make notes about what you learned and how it can be applied in a specific way to your group project. Your thoughts and ideas must be personal, original, and unique (i.e., does not duplicate other teammates’ comments).

The reading reflection for each item must be exactly two sentences in bullet form. The first bullet sentence describes at least one thing you learned and the second bullet sentence describes how that thing (or possibly something else in the reading) can be applied to your project. Do not include preamble like “The one thing I learned is …”, just directly answer the two points.

Your TA will grade your weekly reading reflections out of 2 as follows:

At the beginning of the course, create your own Google Doc using this Reading Reflection template, and share it with all your team members as well as the TAs and the instructor. Add a link to it at the top of your team’s design document (see below).

2a. Design Document

Every week, there will be several design activities that your team will work on together. Each team must document the discussion points of their meeting and the results of the design activities. Some design activities will be completed in class while some will require time outside of class. Your project’s lead TA and the instructor will drop in on your team discussion in the studio portion of classes to help with any questions or to provide design advice or directions. Make use of the TA and instructor’s experience and expertise! Ask questions, solicit feedback, engage them in testing out your ideas.

Your team will maintain a standardized document to record your weekly design process with two main items: weekly discussion, and design activities. After you form your team, course staff will create a Design Document for your team as a standardized Google Doc (view the template as a PDF). This document will be shared with all your team members, as well as the TAs and the instructor. You will update the document with the corresponding new content every week.

Your lead TA will grade your design document each week out of 5:

Your TA may leave comments in the document to explain their grade and provide feedback to improve. They may also comment about the level of participation of each team member based on their observations in that week’s studio and the contribution statements in the document. This includes acknowledging team members that made high quality contributions, as well as noting members who did not contribute at the same level of quality or effort.

NOTE: individual team members who did not contribute or were absent from a design studio meeting without justification will receive 0 marks for that week’s activity. Students must attend every weekly team meeting, and attendance is reported on the design document. Special consideration can be made for a few exceptions (e.g., academic travel, illnesses, and family emergencies). However, you must discuss your anticipated absence with your TA or instructor, and you may be asked to provide necessary documentation to the instructor.

2b. Midterm Report

Each team must write a midterm report to consolidate their activities done in the first half of the project, spanning the following key design stages: empathize, define, and ideate (partially). The midterm report describes the rationale, reasoning, insights, and outcomes you have in those stages, as well as the solid logical connections between these stages: e.g., how the outcomes of a previous stage influence the next stage.

Your final report will be based upon this midterm report. Contents in the design document could be re-used only with sufficient refinement (instead of direct copying-and-pasting). A design report is a well-presented, coherent, and logical article rather than a collection of fragmented descriptions. The upper limit of the length is roughly 1,800 words, and you are expected to use pictures or illustrations to accompany the text. Your work will be judged based on quality rather than length. Specifically, the main aspects that should be included in the midterm report are listed below.

• Background: your pre-design research into popular press articles, academic literature, relevant theories, and prior solutions/products to understand the background and status quo of your design context.
• Context Study: your inquiries into the context using methods from the stage of Empathize (such as value proposition, personas, empathy maps, and user interviews, include examples of these artifacts) to establish in-depth understandings about the needs, pain points, or desires of the target users (or other relevant stakeholders).
• Design Framing: your framing of the problem and design opportunities that resulted when you applied methods from the stage of Define (such as affinity diagrams, task analysis, and user tasks).
• Initial Solution: your initial design solution illustrated by tools from the stage of Ideate (such as storyboards and user stories, include examples of these artifacts). You should also detail how you select the solution from multiple design ideas and how you make decisions about important design features.

You can use this midterm report starter template if you want.

The midterm report is graded out of 10 as follows:

Midterm Report Submission

You must generate a PDF with a filename like this: {project topic name (e.g., A4)}-{team_name}.pdf. One team member should submit that PDF to the Midterm Report dropbox on the course LEARN site. Once all reports are submitted, we’ll post them to a folder in MS Teams so the whole class can see all reports.

2c. Design Critiques

Teams are expected to provide each other with concrete suggestions for their midterm reports. Each team will be assigned to a critique team. The critique teams must give at least 5 actionable recommendations after reviewing the midterm reports of the receiving teams.

The following week, the receiving teams must respond to these recommendations on how to incorporate them in the future. For the recommendations that you think are not reasonable and/or impossible to address, provide rationales in your responses.

The design critiques (that you give) and responses (to the critiques you address) are graded out of 5 as follows:

For the critique, you must generate a PDF with a filename like this: {critiqued project topic name (e.g., A4)}-{critiqued_team_name}-critique-{your_team_name}.pdf. Submit a PDF of the critique to the Design Critique dropbox on the course LEARN site. Once all critiques are submitted, we’ll post them to a folder in MS Teams so the whole class can see all critiques and you can see the report from your assigned team. For the response, you must generate a PDF with that same file name but add -response.pdf and submit it to the the Critique Response dropbox on the course LEARN site.

3a. Project Presentation

Each team must present their project at the end of the course. You’ll introduce what you are doing and why, then show a brief demo video of your prototype, then describe key surprises or learned lessons that arose in your design process, and finally reflect on the future. Every team member should be involved in the presentation (not necessarily all presenting, 1 person might run the demo, create the slides, etc.). The recommended length is 5 minutes, and we may stop your presentation if it goes beyond 7 minutes.

The project presentation is graded out of 10 with the following grading scheme:

Submit a PDF of your presentation slides before 1:30 PM on the day of the presentation to the MS Teams “Project Presentations” folder (associated with the #general channel, see “Files” tab at top). You must name your slides {project topic name (e.g., A4)}-{team_name}-slides.pdf. The project presentation slides are publicly available to the whole class.

3b. Demo Video

Each team must create a 2 minute video (3 minutes max) demonstrating their high-fidelity prototype. You should have a voice narration or subtitles to explain what is being shown. You can also include other artifacts from your design process if it makes sense and if time allows (for example, your low-fidelity prototypes to show the progression of the design). Use a clean, simple, and professional style with quality screencaptures or filming (if shooting real video, use a tripod with no “shaky camera” and adjust lighting as necessary), appropriate pace of edits, simple transitions (i.e. cross fade or dip to black), legible and clear typography, clear audio (or clear subtitles), etc.

The demo video is graded out of 10 as follows:

Submit your demo video to the online Demo Videos folder associated with the #General channel on MS Teams, named as {project topic name (e.g., A4)}-{team_name}-demo.mp4. The demo videos are publicly available to the whole class.

3c. Final Report

Each team must write an online final report in a format of a blog post that documents your entire process. This is a polished, concise, and integrated article drawing from your midterm report, design document, and prototypes. You could partially re-use some text from midterm report, but likely only after modifications in light of new developments or refinements in your project and feedback you received after your midterm report was marked and critiqued.

Do not simply copy and paste the content from your design document, either. The report should not be a collection of fragmented notes and descriptions. Rather, the report should present a compelling, compact story about your whole design exploration, with logical connections between different stages and activities in the UX process. Think from the reader’s point-of-view. You should embed some images from your design process to illustrate key stages or findings, and embedding your video is highly recommended. The report should be roughly 2,700 words and must include the following aspects:

• Introduction, a concise and engaging overview description of:
  • the context/topic of your project and your value proposition (including the timeliness, and societal relevance)
  • the problem(s) you seek to solve and related goals to achieve, making clear what the benefits are for solving this problem(s)
  • (very briefly) a high level summary of your solution (what your system do and how it solves the problem)
  • (very briefly) a high level summary of your findings (the most striking results/insights from your evaluation of the prototype)
• Background, a summary of existing knowledge and products:
  • any related articles, studies/theories that justify your exploration and design, and how you build upon them.
  • any related existing solutions such as current products that solve similar problems or relate to the same kind of users. Explain how your solution is unique or advantageous (in at least some respect).
• Context, the activities and results from the Empathize stage:
  • profiling users (or stakeholders): persona and empathy maps
  • exploratory study process: user observation and interviews
  • exploratory study results: affinity diagrams and user tasks (make clear how the results shape your design considerations)
• Design, the activities and results from Define and Design stages:
  • design alternatives: storyboards, sketches, and user flows (make clear how you select from the alternatives and why)
  • design justification and early iteration: how you developed the idea, team actions taken, and your decisions about important design features
  • final design: a compelling and concise presentation of the final high-resolution prototype as a design solution (together with your video figure and illustrations)
• Test a summary of results from your prototype tests from the Test stages:
  • low-fidelity prototypes and evaluation
  • high-fidelity prototype heuristic evaluation
  • resulting design iteration due to evaluations
• Conclusion:
  • a reflection on the design process, make explicit the key insights you learned during the UX process, and how they could help designers/developers in the future when solving similar problems
  • a short discussion of current limitations and a (hypothetical) future plan if you were to continue working on this product

The final report is graded out of 40 as follows:

For consistency, Medium is used for writing and hosting the blog posts. Submit a link to the live Medium blog post and a PDF of the post (just in case) to the “Final Report” LEARN Dropbox. Name the PDF like {project topic name (e.g., A4)}-{team_name}-finalreport.pdf.

Note: The links to these blog posts may be shared publicly on an aggregated article on Medium or on social media.

Research Proposal (CS649 Only)

Students who enroll in CS649 must write a 4 - 6 page research proposal in addition to the above deliverables. See this detailed guide for how to find a topic and related HCI papers, how to structure your proposal, and what format to use for the document . The Resources page has links to general tips and guides on academic writing.

The research proposal is graded individually out of 10 with the following grading scheme:

Submit your research proposal as a PDF to the corresponding LEARN Dropbox.

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