Sean Munson
smunson at uw dot edu
Office hours: by appointment
Brook Sattler
brooks2 at uw dot edu
Office hours: by appointment
HCDE 517 will introduce you to usability testing and to usability research as a user-centered design strategy. The course takes a process approach; you will learn how to define your audiences and issues, create investigative procedures that answer your questions, administer the procedures, analyze the results, and report your findings effectively.
Though we use primarily examples of computational systems in this course, many of the methods, strategies, and approaches apply to products in various media (software, hardware, or services). You are encouraged to bring a variety of examples into the class.
It is important that you keep up with the assignments and that you seek help — from the teaching team, your teammates, or your classmates — if you are struggling.
At the end of HCDE 517, you should be able to:
Unless otherwise announced, papers will be posted on the Canvas site and/or linked to from this syllabus.
There are two required textbooks:
Both should be available in the UW Bookstore.
If you have something of a private nature that you don't want to share with the other students, feel free to send a message to one of us individually.
This quarter, you will be asked to contribute to the success of your colleagues' projects by providing them with feedback on their works-in-progress. Your participation in workshop activities will be graded for the quality, usefulness, and insightfulness of your comments. You will also be collaborating with colleagues on assignments.
If you receive assistance on an individual assignment, please indicate the nature and the amount of assistance you received. If you have more experience with some of the material and are willing to help other students, please feel free to do so. Just remember that your goal is to help teach the material to the classmate receiving the help.
The essence of academic life revolves around respect not only for the ideas of others, but also their rights to those ideas and their circulation. It is essential to take the utmost care that the ideas and expressions of ideas of other people always be appropriately attributed, and, where necessary, cited. For writing assignments and anywhere in print, when ideas or materials of others are used, they must be cited. Any direct quotes must be cited. In any situation, if you have a question, please ask. Such attention to ideas and acknowledgment of their sources is central not only to academic life, but life in general.
Course conduct is governed by the University of Washington Student Conduct Code and the College of Engineering Academic Misconduct Policy. You should also acquaint yourself with the HCDE Plagiarism Policy. Failure to properly cite or attribute an idea will result in a zero on that assignment and a report to the College of Engineering; severe or repetitive instances may result in more severe consequences.
To reiterate, the collaboration policy is as follows. Collaboration in the class is encouraged — you can get help from anyone as long as it is clearly acknowledged. Use of work — yours or others', from this course or similar courses — from previous quarters is not allowed. The authorship of any assignments must be in your own style and done by you, even if you get help. Any significant help must be acknowledged in writing; any use of others' words or ideas must be cited and attributed appropriately.
I like a relaxed classroom where everyone feels comfortable. You are welcome to bring drinks or snacks to class (assuming it is allowed in the room we are in). You can bring your laptop to class. I would rather have you come to class and listen with one ear than not come to class at all. As a courtesy to others, be sure to put your phone on silence/vibrate. Coming late to and/or leaving early from class is okay, as long as you don't disturb your classmates. Ask questions at any time, and if you have some expertise in a particular topic, please to raise you hand and share it with the class. If you aren't comfortable doing so, you should also feel free to post it to the Slack workspace!
Our primary purpose in the classroom is to interact and learn from each other. While non-participation (sleeping; checking email) is permitted, we urge you to consider its impact on your fellow students. Class is a lot more fun when everyone is engaged; a few visibly disengaged people can suck the energy out of a room. We reserve the right to ask you a question to try to reengage you if you seem to have checked out, but will try not to do this in an embarrassing way.
Our prefered method of contact (for quick questions, to let us know you will miss class, to schedule a meeting, etc.) is email. I (Sean) don't check my voicemail or Canvas messages regularly. When emailing:
I want to emphasize that your feedback is welcome. I may adjust the course based on what you say, I may save your comments for next year, or I may disagree, but in any case, your thoughts are appreciated.
If you think you need an accommodation for a disability, please let us know at your earliest convenience. Some aspects of this course, the assignments, the in-class activities, and the way we teach may be modified to facilitate your participation and progress. To request accommodations due to a disability, please contact the Disability Student Services Office at 206.543.6450 (voice), 206.543.6452 (TTY), 206.685.7264 (fax), or email at dso@u.washington.edu. If you have a letter from the DSS office indicating that you have a disability that requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me so we can discuss the accommodations that you might need in this class.
Please read the HCDE statement on student rights.
Each assignment is designed to test your achievement against one or more of the learning objectives. Different assignments emphasize different learning objectives. Please note that some grading will be subjective in nature.
There are three categories of assignments:In addition, you will complete a final self and team evaluation report, reflecting on your learning and participation across the quarter.
It your responsibility to make sure that each assignment has been turned in on time. Except by prior arrangement, we do not grade late assignments, though we will return them with feedback. For personal emergencies, we will work out an alternative plan with you and your team if you contact us before the due date.
All written assignments for this class must be of high quality: thoroughly proofread, well organized, and stylistically appropriate for the context. If in doubt, err on the more formal, polished, professional side. Writing quality will be a graded component of every written assignment, presentation clarity and engagement will affect your grades on all presentation assignments. In the workplace, if your results or ideas are of high quality but your communication is not, no one will be able to benefit from the work you do.
The graded work in the course will be weighted roughly as follows to determine a final percentage grade.
| Reading presentation & discussion | 10% |
| P1. Preliminary proposal | Credit/No credit |
| P2. Interaction map | 10% |
| P3. Usability study plan | 15% |
| P4. Usability study kit | 15% |
| P5. Study results (divided among presentation & report) | 35% |
| Self + Team-evaluation Report | 10% |
| Class participation | ± 5%* |
* possibly more for particularly constructive participation. Attendance is not graded, but it is a lot easier to participate if you are here.
Also see the HCDE grading policy.
In this course, we will cover usability studies, including their role in the design process, what questions they can answer, and some of the different evaluations and tests you might peform. We will discuss how to plan and conduct usability tests, and how to report results from usability studies. To practice these skills, we will use in-class workshops and an accompanying, quarter-long project.
From my prior experience teaching HCDE 517, the most common places students run into trouble are: (1) not starting soon enough, (2) letting team issues fester, and (3) not negotiating a clear and reasonable scope with clients at the start.
The most common pitfall is not starting on any portion of the project soon enough. You'll be working with participants and (possibly) real world clients, and with technology that may have issues. Recruiting almost always takes longer than you think, people may not show up, or there may be a chance snow storm. The website you are studying might go down for maintenance. The app you are evaluting might auto-update to a new version, ruining the script for your evaluation. If you start early, you'll have time to manage these setbacks. If you don't, you won't.
Additionally, as relative newcomers to this material, you tend to need some time with your data (especially any qualitative data) to draw out a strong analysis and good discussion. Doing a study at last minute and then rushing your writeup and analysis tends to have poor outcomes.
Second, you'll be working in teams and it is important to attend to team dynamics. Early in the quarter, you should have a discussion in your team in which you review and negotiate communication expectations and your goals for the course and project. As the quarter progresses, check in, see how things are going, and adjust as necessary.
Good luck and welcome aboard!
| Week | Dates | Topic | Readings | Assignments due |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 4 January |
Course overview
|
Required
|
|
| 2 | 11 January |
Planning & considerations for usability testing
Choose teams + Projects Workshop: Brainstorming usability concerns |
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend topic: Heuristic evals for specific settings
|
Read project descriptions Sign up for reading presentation |
| 3 | 18 January |
Planning for a usability study, cont.
|
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend topic: Accessibility |
|
| 4 | 25 January |
Forming an initial test plan
|
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend topic: Usability, children, and aging
Extend topic: Usability and automation |
P2. Interaction map
|
| 5 | 1 February |
Preparing a test with measurable results
Workshop: Study plans |
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend topic: The Hamburger Icon |
|
| 6 | 8 February |
Conducting a usability study
Workshop: Study kits |
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend topic: Additional Techniques
|
|
| 7 | 15 February |
Data analysis & reporting
Workshop: Data analysis |
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend Topic: Invisible OSs, Recognition, and Recall
|
|
| 8 | 22 February |
Presenting your findings
Usability experiences in sociotechnical systems, can things be “too” usable? (& other dilemmas) |
From the books (required)
Required
Optional
Extend topic: Website size and other infrastructure issues
|
|
| 9 | 1 March |
Guest lecture: (Tentative - TBD) Reporting Examples (Brook) Usability in the field, and moving forward
|
Required
Extend topic: Biometrics
|
|
| 10 | 8 March |
Course wrap up & Presentations |
Optional
|
In this version of HCDE517, I extensively draw from and/on materials developed by Rebecca Destello, Andy Davidson, and Judy Ramey.