Objectives

The goal of this course is to provide students with basic techniques and expertise to create and evaluate the design of interactive digital products, environments, systems, and services. The course is designed for professionals planning to join the IT department of a large corporation or for those who might want to launch a startup.

The course will combine two parallel tracks: interaction design and user experience research. Through the first track, students will learn fundamental theories and principles of interaction design. They will look at existing products and services through the lens of these principles to evaluate the user experience. Through the second track, students will learn research methods that allow them to collect data to inform and guide the design of novel interactive systems or the redesign of existing services.

A core element of this course is the capstone project. Students will develop a novel interactive system or evaluate an existing one and design possible improvements to it. They will work in small groups through several iterative steps of research and design.

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course students should be able to:

1. Evaluate when a design of the interactive system fails the most common interaction design principles by conducting user tests (or by applying heuristics)

2. Conduct formative research to assess pain points and bright spots of user experience with the aim of synthesizing use cases and requirements

3. Build prototypes that might improve the user experience

4. Communicate design effectively to influence peers

Course structure

This course is a studio/seminar. Time of the course will be devoted to lecture, discussion, practice activities, design work sessions, and criticism of student work (i.e., peer feedback).

Students will work in groups to complete a capstone project to deliver at the end of the course. The capstone project will be the research and design of an original interactive system. The students will have to demonstrate knowledge of basic design and research methodologies learned during the course.

Each week part of the class time will be devoted to critique the readings assigned the previous week and to present progress of the capstone project to the class.

At the end of the course, there will be a final written exam consisting of a multiple-response quiz and open-ended questions.

COVID-19: Due to the coronavirus situation, this year the course will be taught in modality hi-flex: students will be able to choose between attending in person, attending remotely via Zoom, and following the course asynchronously. The theoretical content comes via short video recordings. Time of class will be devoted to presentations, Q&A, exercises, and group activities. Classes can be attended physically or via Zoom. Because of the health evolution related to COVID-19, the study plans may be adapted during the semester.

Contents

All the content is available on the web site of the class (Moodle) and on the Ubicast channel of the course (rec.unil.ch).

References

All the supporting material will be available on the website of the class (Moodle).

The class will loosely follow the following book:

Rogers, Y; Sharp, H.; Preece, J (2015). Interaction Design: Beyond Human-computer Interaction. Wiley, 4th edition (ISBN-10: 1119020751)

Several copies of this book are available at the library.

During the course we will use different software for training and to animate the class work.

Students are expected to bring their laptop to the class.

Pre-requisites

Students need to have basic knowledge of Statistics (cf. Bachelor course "Statistics").

Evaluation

First attempt

Exam:

Written 2h00 hours

Documentation:

Not allowed

Calculator:

Not allowed

Evaluation:

The evaluation is based on two elements:
- Evaluation of the capstone project (50%)
- Written exam: Multiple-responses questionnaire (25%) and open-ended questions (25%)

Active participation in classroom/Zoom activities will entitle the student to a 0.5 point bonus on the final note. Active participation means making concrete contributions to classroom work (e.g, present result of group activity, provide detailed answers to a question).

Specific regulations:

• A minimum grade of 3.0 in the written exam is required for other activities to count towards the final grade. If the grade achieved in the written exam is less than this, other elements (i.e., active participation bonus, or capstone project) will not be part of final grade consideration.
• The written exam is a "closed book" examination. Only dictionaries are allowed.
• If a student enrols in the course but does not participate in the team's work, then s/he will be asked to conduct the research and design activities by himself/herself. Evaluation of this work occurs in the same way as the other teams before the written exam, and the assigned grade will be an average, including the other elements. This exception is granted on a case by case basis. Students must discuss attendance problems promptly with the instructor.

Retake

Exam:

Oral 0h20 minutes

Documentation:

Not allowed

Calculator:

Not allowed

Evaluation:

Students will be given the option to go for an oral exam instead of a written exam. If one of the students in the retake session prefers the written exam, then all students in the retake session will have to take the written exam, like for the first exam session.

Exam: Oral 0h20 minutes exam plus 0h20 minutes preparation.

The grade of the oral examination will replace the grade obtained during the final written exam. The other gradings (capstone project, active participation bonus) will remain unchanged and are part of the computing for the final grade. A minimum grade of 3.0 in the oral exam is required for the group activities to count towards the final grade (same rules apply as for the first exam session).

The exam will take place onsite.