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Projects
User-centered design necessitates looking closely at people, their
activities, and the communities of practice in which they participate. Thus a
primary project requirement is access to a community of users.
There are many advantages to focusing on users within the UCSD community.
You need to ensure that your project is of a scale that can be finished
within a quarter. In addition, in order for the class to function well we need
to impose some restrictions. The following constraints will aid us in
coordinating class projects:
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We would like to minimize the number of general topic areas for projects. By general topic area we refer to collections of projects
that are similar in the background information and support they require. The purpose of focusing in a few areas is
to allow us to bring in appropriate readings and cover topics in class that
are relevant to your projects.
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We definitely want multiple project groups in each general topic area. Ideally there will be between three and five groups in each of the topic areas. This can be quite useful since groups can share data and other information they collect.
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We need to limit the total number of groups to make the class
manageable. This will ensure we have sufficient time to provide consulting
and other support services to the groups.
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Limiting the total number of groups means each group should have
at least six members. While there are certain parts of the project such as
collecting data from your user community that everyone should participate in,
there will be other activities in which it will be wise to form subgroups.
There are many issues to consider when deciding on a project. An important one is that you find the project of interest. If you really invest time in
understanding users and their tasks by collecting real data, you will find that virtually any project can be interesting. In formulating your project and
focusing it so it is doable within the quarter there are a variety of other
issues you should be especially concerned with are:
- Access to user community
- Access to users with time and willingness to interact with your project team
- Your understanding of tasks involved
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Ability to do multiple iterations of contextual design: gathering user data, seeing work, seeing the context of work,
innovation from data,
system design,
and prototyping.
One of the most important decisions you will make is in limiting and focusing
your project. Groups typically try to take on a project that is too
large. That makes it very difficult to get experience with multiple iterations
of contextual design.
Another surprisingly crucial decision is arranging a weekly meeting for
your project team. You will likely need to meet more than once a week. We require that one weekly meeting be on campus during the day. This will allow the TAs and IAs to serve as consultants to your project. One of the absolute requirements for the formation of a group is mutual agreement of a weekly
time to meet. This meeting time and location should be set in stone and not altered. Groups will also
need to meet at other times but it is extremely important to have a set weekly
time that everyone attends. |
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