| Time | Every Mon and Wed, 2:30–3:45pm |
| Place | Pamplin 1002 |
| Schedule | Available here |
| Instructor | Dr. Kurt Luther |
| kluther at vt | |
| Office Hours |
Mon 10–11am Wed 11am–noon Torgersen 3160S or by appointment |
| Teaching Assistant | None |
Advanced, project-based course in Human-Computer Interaction. Team-based, end-to-end, integrative interface design project drawn from areas of expertise in the department, e.g., virtual reality, augmented reality, embodied cognition, visualization, semiotic engineering, game design, personal information management, mobile computing, design tools, educational technology, and digital democracy.
The theme of the course this semester is creative social computing. Through readings, discussions, and especially our projects, we will unpack the meanings behind creative computing, social computing, and the combination of the two, and why they are important to the future of the computing field and society more broadly.
A grade of C or better in CS3724 (Intro to HCI) and CS3744 (Intro to GUI Programming and Graphics), or special permission of the instructor.
The textbook for the course is The UX Book (2012) by Hartson and Pyla, available online through VT. Readings will also be provided as links or handouts.
Some readings for the course will be available through the ACM Digital Library or other paywalls. Unless you have an ACM membership, you'll have to access these readings through Virginia Tech Libraries, which means either being on campus or connecting to the VT network through a VPN.
We'll use several online sites to support this class:
If you want to discuss the class on Twitter, our hashtag is #vtcs4784.
Attending class is necessary to successfully complete the course. Because we only meet twice a week, each class meeting contains a substantial amount of information. You are expected to attend every class, unless you have a good excuse.
Participation in class is also essential to success. We'll often have in-class exercises and activities, and it's expected that you will participate.
Readings will be assigned periodically, and these should be read before the next class, so that you can contribute to the discussion. Simply attending lectures will not be sufficient to fully understand the material.
Participation is 10% of your grade in this class. If you are skipping classes, ignoring the readings, and/or failing to participate in class discussions, your participation grade will suffer.
You may miss one class for any reason; no excuse is necessary. Please notify me before class via email that you will be absent. (Any presentation requirements, assignment deadlines, etc. remain in effect for you.) For any additional absences, you must notify me before class, provide an explanation, and receive permission, or you will lose participation points.
All assignments must be submitted before the start of class on the day they're due. In general, late work will not be accepted. This means any assignments turned in late will generally receive a zero.
There are two exceptions to this policy. First, if you are ill, you can have an extension, generally for the amount of time you were sick. This requires medical documentation that you weren't able to work during that time.
The second exception is some kind of very unusual situation; for example, you have a job interview the same day as a project presentation. If you forsee one of these situations, please talk to me immediately so we can work around it. Even if you have very good reasons, I will only provide this extension once.
Losing work due to hardware/software failures is not a valid excuse. Please don't procrastinate. Back up your work frequently using VT Google Drive (free) or a similar solution.
This is a group project-based course, and the majority of your grade focuses on successfully completing a single large group project. The project will allow you to apply your skills and knowledge from prior HCI courses as well as new skills and knowledge gained from this course. It will encompass requirements gathering, design, implementation, and evaluation.
Groups will be composed of 3 or 4 students each. Groups will be mostly self-organized, and the instructor may assist with forming groups as needed. The groups and their project will be consistent for the entire semester except in extentuating circumstances. Each group selects a leader who serves as the contact point for the class and instructor.
Groups may select their project. The instructor will provide multiple project ideas or the group may propose a new project idea. It is highly recommended that groups seek out an external sponsor for their project, and the instructor can facilitate this.
You must complete and turn in all milestones and project requirements in order to pass the course. If you do not turn one of them in, you will get an F in the course. This is to prevent students from being "satisfied" with a lower grade and skipping some of the milestones. You have to do them all and turn them in by the last day of classes before 5pm (even if you get a 0 for being late).
A large portion of the course grade (40%) involves completing project milestones. These will be announced in advance and a deadline will be provided. For example, each group is required to write up a weekly update to share with the rest of the class and the instructor. As another example, each group must propose their project plan with an in-class presentation. The goals of milestones are to help groups stay on track to complete their projects by the deadline, to provide frequent opportunities for outside feedback, and to help groups reflect on their own processes and progresss. All group members receive the same grade for each milestone.
A large part of the course grade (30%) is also determined by the quality of the final project itself. Specific criteria will be provided later, but in general the grade will focus on the creativity of the idea, thoughtfulness of the design, quality of implementation, thoroughness of evaluation, etc.
Each group will write a paper describing their process and final product, to be turned in at the end of the semester. The purpose is to document your process and product so it can survive beyond this semester. It is worth 5% of the course grade. Milestones will be used to ensure the group makes steady progress on the paper draft.
Each group will present their project in a final presentation near the end of the semester, summarizing their process and final project. This presentation is worth 5% of the course grade. All group members must speak at some point during the presentation. Grading criteria include presentation skills, content, and accuracy.
Although equal contribution among group members is ideal, often times some members contribute more, and others less. To account for this, the final project grade (including project, paper, and presentation) will be weighted by an individual grade reflecting each member's contribution. That weighting will be determined by a private evaluation survey in which students describe the contributions of their group members (including themselves) as some percentage out of 100%.
Part of the final project grade will be influenced by its real-world (outside of class) value, to increase the authenticity of the work in this course. This is in addition to the project's formal evaluation. For groups with a sponsor, the sponsor's feedback will be considered in the final grade. In the absence of a sponsor, groups will be required to provide some other evidence of real-world value, such as social media attention, press coverage, a crowdfunding campaign, a critical mass of beta testers, etc.
There will be a final exam worth 10% of your course grade. It will be cumulative, based on all material discussed in class up to that point and your experiences with the projects. Exams are to be done individually.
More information will be made available closer to the exam. Currently, I have scheduled a review day prior to the final exam, but this may be truncated as the semester progresses.
The final exam is currently scheduled for May 13, 2015 from 10:05am–12:05pm.
| Participation | Individual | 10% |
| Project milestones | Group | 40% |
| Final project | Group | 30% |
| Final paper | Group | 5% |
| Final presentation | Group | 5% |
| Final exam | Individual | 10% |
| Total | 100% |
There will be no curve applied to your scores, so be sure to study and work hard for every assignment and exam.
Final grades will be set according to the usual 100-point scale using A, B, C, D and F. I reserve the right use the extended scale described here (A, A-, B+, etc.).
A histogram of final course grades for Spring 2015 can be viewed here.
The Virginia Tech Undergraduate Honor System is in effect for all work, whether performed individually or in teams. Be particularly careful to avoid plagiarism, which essentially means using materials (ideas, code, designs, text, etc.) that you did not create without giving appropriate credit to the creator (using quotation marks, citations, comments in the code, link to URL, etc.). Students are encouraged to consult with one another about project design and evaluation issues, as the sharing of ideas here will lead to better work. The final exam is entirely individual. Any suspected violations of the honor code will be promptly reported to the honor system, as required by university policy.
Please let me know privately if you have any special needs, and we'll do our best to accommodate them.
