(section 090)
April 20th: HAL Presentations and Portfolio/Presentation Workshop

Announcements

• Oceans: New Disney movie about guess what?
  Opens 4/22/2010 in theaters
• Earth Day is Thursday 4/22
  Do something nice for the planet
• WEC-Aldo vs. Faber
  Sat., April 24 ppv
  

Plan for this evening

• Presentation Discussion
• HAL Presentations from 5181 students
• Teaching Evaluations (volunteers?)
• Presentation and Portfolio Workshop
• Pass back User Doc #2
• Persona Research--issues from the other class
• Pay attention to the syllabus and due dates
• Collect User Doc #3
• Collect Bibliographic Essays--ENGL 5181 students

HAL Presentations

Let's move on to the HAL presentations from our 5181 friends. Please be respectful and pay attention to the speakers. These presentations are 4-5 minutes. After the presentation, you may ask relevant, thoughtful questions, but please wait until after the presentation is finished.

The presenters should end before asking for questions.

Final Exam Preview (5/11--Tuesday)

Your final exam will be based on the reading assigned and activities/discussions we've had since the original midterm exam date (2/23). The exam will be on Moodle (unless something peculiar happens) and will consist of multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, short-answer, and True/False questions.

Topics to pay attention to for the final exam:

Assignment Features

• Personas
• Likert scales and appropriate questions
• Measurable (operationalized goals)
• Screen captures

Degani's Taming HAL Ch. 1-10. While the entire reading is fair game, there are places you ought to pay particularly close attention to.

• Non-determinism and technologies
• Abstractions
• Events, states, and transitions
• User models and machine models
• Concurrency, hierarchy, and synchronization
• Population Stereotypes vs. universal stereotypes
• Initialization (initial mode)
• Mode
• Reference Values
• History Settings
• Default Settings
• Sophisticated interfaces
• A few details from our 5181 students' presentations

Of course, the above is not exhaustive. If you've read carefully (don't skip over the word "carefully"), this should be a breeze.

Returning User Doc #2

I'm going to pass back your second User Documents during the workshop Some were very good and some were ok. Overall, these were much better than the first user docs (Imagine that). Having Dr. Morgan's class edit these was a good idea. Of course, there's always more that can be done. No writing is finished until its published. In fact, it might not be finished then either if you think about digital publishing...and some of you will next semester.

Please keep all portfolio work that I've commented on. You will turn these originals (User Doc #1, #2,and #3) in with your final portfolio. Not including these drafts will affect your grade.

Please remember that your assignments have two parts--a proposal or planning document and the actual user document. You must have both.

Some overall issues:

• "Figure X" and captions
• Circles, arrows, and callouts
  • Try using circles or boxes; they seem to look nicer than arrows
  • Legends work well
• "Results may very"--search results change
• Set buttons, menus, keys, etc. apart from instructional text
• Show how to refine searches to expand your user documents
• Be more efficient in your prose
  • Get right to the search then discuss alternatives
  • Give commands
    • Don't tell the user "If you want to..."; tell them to do it!
    • Avoid redundancy, so you aren't being redundant (get it?):
      "This document called Transferring Pictures to Your Desktop from a Digital Camera describes how to transfer images taken with a digital camera to a desktop."
• Be realistic about where, how, or if these will be used
  • Printed out
  • Online
• Use screen shots
  • Clear, good-sized screen shots
  • Entire screen captures aren't effective
  • Too small of a screen capture is too little
• Personas (Cooper pp. 131-132 & 142-147)
  • Discuss technological literacy instead of motive to use the document or scenarios that set up why the document will benefit personas
  • Have pictures of your personas
• NEXT TIME: No software installation!
  Software tutorials, however, are good.

Persona Research Issues

The Wednesday night class got some leniency because they have one fewer class meeting and had to turn this assignment in earlier. I mentioned some of these issues to them, so I'm providing them to you as well. Because you have three extra weeks, you shouldn't expect the same amount of leniency. Unfortunately, we don't have time for revisions. This is a one and done assignment.

This assignment is a research assignment that requires you to do two types of research for your discussion--personal observations and traditional research. If you have no sources, that's a problem. I can easily guess what were your personal observations, but, without in-text citations or referring to outside sources, I have no clue if you did research. Your "References" or "Works Cited" sections are supposed to have citations for research you did--like in a library or using a library database or using another search engine. This is a 4000/5000-level class--you're expected to know how to do traditional research. You don't need a ton of sources, but having one per persona is a bare minimum. Again, you are required to be able to do research in 4000/5000 level courses.

Below is a list of other things to think about when finishing this assignment:

• Personas with no names is a major red flag.
• Personas with no pictures: another red flag.
• Figure X: Image of [Persona's Name]
  You should also cite where the images come from.
• Using 'I' is ok to describe your personal observations.
• Using 'I' is ok to describe your personal observations.
• Using 'I' is ok to describe your personal observations.
• Specifics not ranges: your personas aren't an age range; they are a specific age.

Cooper has examples for you to start with, but, remember, we're expanding his discussion. Page 123 begins the discussion of personas, and page 131 has examples.

This assignment in one fourth of your Major Assignments grade, which is 45% of your overall grade. Also, an assignment loses 10% for each class it's late.

Before We Go...

Only two more classes left. I'll turn back your User Doc #3 next week (4/27), and you'll be free to workshop on your final portfolios and presentations. Also, your persona research is due next week. We're just about done with the semester.

..