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IAT402,403-3a-2010.pdf
Credit Hours: 3
Instructors:
Lyn Bartram, Robert Woodbury, Andres Wanner
Location: SFU Surrey, Room 2600
Semester: Fall 2010
Course Description:
This course focuses on the design, implementation and communication of a human-centered technology product or experience and is the senior capstone project for SIAT students. IAT 402-3 is the first semester of a two-semester long project. Projects focus on technology for people and are conceived and implemented by interdisciplinary student teams across the SIAT streams of design, media arts and informatics. Students can choose to work with cultural, research or industry mentors. Weekly events including lectures, presentations, readings, discussions, board critiques and design exercises support teams in conceiving and implementing their projects.
We emphasize product over process, prototypes over plans and engaging with people over imagining users. Our aim is that student teams conceive, design, prototype, evaluate, present and communicate an innovative and exciting project.
Major course milestones will reflect the “normal” arc of a design project and include concept, low-fidelity prototype, user studies, implementation, presentation and communication. We recognize that design iterates and will adjust (within limits) milestones for teams as need arises.
Course Objectives:
Project Focil:
Teams develop their own project with the broad theme of technology for people. Example topics include:
- Mobile devices
- Wearable or tangible devices
- Play: games and toys
- Video games
- Work: aids for people and their groups
- Home: especially for family groups
- Interactive art installation (includes performance art)
- Understanding and achieving sustainability
- Information visualization
- Information appliances
Workshops:
In class time, we will conduct a series of workshops, with individual, not team attendance taken. Topics will be areas in which students need assistance: sketching, prototyping, writing,... Students will sign up for a specified number of these. There will be a penalty for not attending.
Team Size and Composition:
Students will form their own teams with minimal involvement of the course faculty. Team size is either 4 or 5 - neither smaller, nor larger. This is non-negotiable and for good reasons. This will give 9-10 teams per section. We will move students between sections so that all team members are formally enrolled in a section.
Board Critiques:
Demonstrating and discussing work help its progress. In this course, we use board critiques (or board crits) to engage teams with their work. In a board crit, teams present their work in conversation with reviewers and a small audience (other teams, see below). The aim is to identify strengths on which to build, weaknesses to address, opportunities to engage and threats to counter. Board crits are the core of the design studio process. Attendance is required.
Team Clusters:
Teams will be grouped into clusters of 2-3 teams. All teams, in a cluster, are expected to attend all board critiques for their cluster. There will be mark penalties for non-attendance.
Learning Outcomes:
Students who take the class should further develop their abilities and skills through the following:
- Use knowledge of design processes and teamwork to forge a productive team and design process
- Design a project that is realistic, innovative and human centered
- Implement the project through sketches and initial prototypes to produce a realistic final prototype
- Evaluate the project through repeated user studies
- Present the project in public
- Develop a comprehensive and professional design presentation including text, online and other media
- Prepare a succinct description of the project suitable for inclusion in a personal portfolio
Delivery Method:
Lecture (LEC) and Studio Lab (STL)
Learning Activities + Evaluation:
Evaluation:
We evaluate your project - not your design process. For very good reasons, SIAT teaches design and creative process as part of learning in media arts, design and informatics. In this course, we expect you to know and be able to use good teamwork and design process to produce your project. We, mostly, do not evaluate your process, and generally do not want to hear about it when we work with you. Why? It is simple – this course models projects in the world outside of SIAT. In this world, your process is largely private; your clients care about what you have done, not how you did it.
By the end of the first term, we require you to have accomplished the following. All material is to be documented on a team website.
Week 3 -- Sketch design and prototype. Teams work on one of a small set of problems we pose and produce as much as they can within the time allowed. Presented as a poster, a prototype and a 2-minute presentation.
Week 7 -- Concept design and prototype. Presented as a poster, a prototype and a 4-minute presentation.
Week 10 -- Low fidelity prototype. Presented within tutorial sections. Teams demonstrate their prototype to others on demand. Requirements include a design document in draft form, the prototype itself and an 8-minute presentation.
Week 13 -- User study. Presented as a document.
Week 14 -- Low fidelity prototype and user study presentation. As a public review to all members of the course. Requirements include a website (not the team website), a poster, a prototype and a design document.
Teams continuing to IAT 404-5 (and this is strongly encouraged) will incorporate design refinements and revisions for their final project in Spring 2011.
Grading:
We will evaluate to short rubrics, which we will hand out at the start of the term. We reserve the right to modify these rubrics up to the date on which a course segment starts. A rubric establishes the basis of discussion and helps make evaluation open and fair.
Sketch design and prototype: 5%
Concept design and prototype: 10%
Low fidelity prototype: 25%
User study: 25%
Term presentation and documents: 35%
The final prototype must receive a mark of at least 60% (21/35) to receive a passing grade in this course.
Mark Penalties (applied to marks earned above):
- Board crit attendance - 1 mark per missed crit (individually assessed)
- Workshop attendance - 5 marks per workshop attendance below a threshold (individually assessed) i.e. If we require three workshops and a student attends only one, there will be a 10 mark penalty
Texts, Resources + Materials:
We encourage, indeed require, teams to read widely and to discover ideas and exemplars for their work. The aim is to build upon existing foundations whenever possible and to avoid “re-inventing wheels” others have already found. For a course such as this, with diverse teams each developing their own project, there can be no common canon, no master reading list. However, the following texts are useful, general sources.
Recommended Texts:
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction” (2007) by Helen Sharp, Yvonne Rogers and Jenny Preece; John Wiley and Sons; ISBN-13 9780470018668
Designing Interactions (2007) by Bill Moggridge; 1st Edition; MIT Press; ISBN-13 9780262134743
Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies) (2007) by Bill Buxton; Morgan Kaufmann; ISBN-13 9780123740373
About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design (2007) by Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann and David Cronin; 3rd Edition; Wiley Publishing; ISBN-13 9780470084113
Design Research: Methods and Perspectives (2003) by Brenda Laurel and Peter Lunenfeld; MIT Press; ISBN-13 9780262122634
The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm (2001) by Tom Kelley, Jonathan Littman and Tom Peters; Doubleday Business; ISBN-13 9781861975836
Readings in information visualization: using vision to think (1999) by Stuart K Card. Jock D. Mackinlay, and Ben Shneiderman. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc. ISBN 1558605339.
The design of everday things, (2002) by Donald Norman, Basic Books, Perseus.; ISBN-13 9780465067107
Prerequisites:
For SIAT Majors - completion of 63 credits including upper division writing course and SIAT (402 - BSc, 403 - BA) lower division requirements plus nine upper division IAT credits; for SIAT Joint Majors – 63 credits including upper division writing course and specific lower division requirements plus nine upper division IAT credits; for non-SIAT Majors – special permission of the instructor. Students with credit for IAT 400, INTD 401, INTD 402, INTD 403, INTD 404, INTD 405 or INTD 406 cannot take this course for further credit. Recommended Course: IAT 404-5 in the subsequent semester.
Last Updated: June 21, 2010
These course outlines are drafts and are subject to change.
