CS 5714: Usability Engineering

Hi

Just a short reminder for tomorrow's presentations. We will begin shortly after 5pm. A few reminders (please read the full message).

0. Presentations are at 5pm tomorrow in KWII 1110.

1. You must bring a laptop or other device to be connected to the VGA to make your presentation. You cannot use my laptop.

2. The order of presentations will be selected randomly at 5pm. So all should be ready to be the first presentation.

3. The presentation times are: 20 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for Q&A.

Finally, I will have pizza delivered to the room, but I need a headcount of how many of you will be present. I know there are 2 or 3 students away at CHI.  So, please answer poll (next message) if you are coming and what type of pizza you want.

See you tomorrow night.

This wednesday, Aug 30, I will have office hours at a different time.  The office hours will be at 8:30-10:00am in KWII.  Sorry for the change, but I have a dept meeting at 10:30 that I couldn't move.

Apparently there is still confusion on project 6. Here is one more explanation of it.

Me, Manuel, and Manny are all part of group 10.  We have been building a fantastic new device that allows sending messages via brain waves.  We have a concept statement, we have interviewed users, and have a cool design for our project (looks like a baseball cap, but don't call it that cause we would be offended). We call it the "Thinking Cap"...

We have our design and are ready to have our product evaluated.  Another team, comes in to evaluate our product.  They decide they want to do a wizard of oz type of evaluation where they bring a user to a lab, he puts on the cap, and they send him messages. The user then responds using the "brain wave cool thingy". At the end, they measure the accuracy of the communication.  Did the message go through, etc.

My team (Me, Manuel and Manny) decide that Manuel will be the representative in the evaluation.  Manuel and the other go away, recruit participants, run the study, analyze the data. A few days later, we get a report with the results of the study.

Now, my team (Me, Manuel and Manny) sits down over coffee and discuss the report given to us and the results in it and what to do about it.  We prepare our Project 6 deliverable:

The project 6 deliverable has:
1. Concept statement
2. Description of wizard of oz technique used (by the other team), the participants, where we collected data, etc.
3. Key tasks used in the evaluation (person receiving a message, responding, etc.)
4. list of UX problems found by the other team (cap was too tight, it used the colors of that team in the west that participant hated, etc.)
5. list of a dozen or so UX problems selected for the cost-importance analysis (all of them but the color of the cap)
6. cost-importance table and explain the values.
7. We write a discussion of the conclusions made in the cost-importance table (we decided to fix all but the color of the cap)
8. We add a statement saying something intelligent about the process (we learned a lot because we didn't realize that when people talk with their mind, etc.. etc.. etc..)

Now, in the Appendix we include "the other piece".... While Manuel was running a study with the other group Manny and I went to meet a third group and ran an evaluation for them.  In that evaluation, we performed data collection etc.  We (Manny and I) prepared a report with the results of our evaluation. We sent that to them.

Appendix:
* include a copy of the report that we (Manny and I) prepared for the other group.

This should be old news to most of you, but a few of you are new students...

Dear Colleagues,

The Student Perceptions of Teaching (SPOT) questionnaire will open tomorrow, Friday, April 25, to begin collecting student feedback on classes offered during the spring term.  The questionnaire will remain open until Thursday, May 8.  All students log in athttps://eval.scholar.vt.edu

Please talk about the SPOT process with your students. We have found that instructors’ reinforcement of the importance and use of student feedback is critical in getting useful input. Instructors who talk to their students about the SPOT process tend to achieve higher response rates and receive more useful and constructive feedback.

Some suggestions for what you can do to increase the quality of student feedback:

•         Share specific examples of modifications you have made to class content or instruction methods based on student feedback.
•         Plan to provide class time for SPOT. Ask students to bring their laptops to class and offer ten minutes for them to complete the questionnaire.
•         Explain the multiple ways SPOT results are used:  To improve teaching and class content, for faculty development, and for promotion and tenure decisions.
•         Teach students what it means to provide constructive feedback (e.g., keep comments narrowly focused and include suggestions to improve future classes) and remind them of the Virginia Tech Principles of Community which support “open expression within a climate of civility, sensitivity, and mutual respect.”
•         Assure confidentiality. No identifying information is associated with responses when they are shared with instructors. Knowing this may help students to be more comfortable with responding.

For more information about the SPOT process visit:

http://www.undergraduate.vt.edu/faculty/SPOT-index.html

To see an example SPOT questionnaire visit:

http://www.undergraduate.vt.edu/faculty/ExampleSPOTquestionnaire.pdf

Thu Apr 23 - lecture on design guidelines

Sun Apr 27 - Project 6 Due

Tue Apr 29 - No class, use time to prepare for presentation

Wed Apr 30 - 5:00pm-9:00pm Final Presentations (Project 7)

Thu May 1 - Normal lecture day

Tue May 6 - Homework Design due, Reports and Videos from Design Homework discussed in class, last day of classes

Wed May 7 - Project 8 - Final Report

Summer!

Mark your calendars, Wednesday April 30th 5:00pm - 9:00pm final presentations.

KWII 1110

More details later this week.

Hello

I have computed grades up till project 3. This includes also the adjustment for your individual grades based on the total effort as indicated by your peers.  Up till this point, I feel that the individual evaluations have been fair.  Though, I am sure that now that I have updated grades, some of you will try to influence the grade in the self evaluations... but we will adjust and continue moving forward.

Here is what I have done:

a) computed a weighted average of effort for each group member based on the team member evaluations

b) looked at the differences between the members of the group and adjusted grades accordingly.

If the difference is:

a) one student much higher than the other two (and the other two are similar), then I increase the grade of that one student

b) one student much lower than the other two (and the other two are similar), then I decrease the grade of that one student

c) in other cases that the difference is small, I might have adjusted everybody.

Amount of grade up or down is based on difference between the "outlier" and the other two.  If the difference is 10 percentage points, I adjust the grade about 5 pts.

I'll get you the scores tomorrow so you know where you are.