April 9th: More on the Inner
Workings of HAL:
Modes, Defaults, and Reference Values

Announcements

• University of Louisville Women's Basketball Championship
  Tonight @ 8:30 on ESPN
• UFC 159: Saturday 4/27/2013 @ 10 PM

Plan of Attack

• Reading Quiz #5--HAL Ch. 8, 9, & 10 (released at 6:30pm)
• HAL Ch. 8, 9, & 10 Discussion
• Persona Research is DUE on 4/23
• Pay attention to the syllabus and due dates

Turn in User Doc #3 tonight, and make sure I hand back your User Doc #2 if I haven't already.

The Wonderful World of Machines

This is our last discussion on HAL. As I said earlier this semester, HAL and The Inmates aren't technical communication textbooks. This course was traditionally a usability course, but I'm moving it towards an anti-usability course (slowly). I want you to leave the course with questions to ask about finding out who your users might be. We've pointed out the artificial nature of this course's boundaries--we don't cover all of technical communication theory--but our focus has consistently been on trying to think as a user. Logon to Moodle and respond to the following prompt:

Assumptions about Users

What benefits, generalizations, and pitfalls (notice the "and") do you foresee when making assumptions about users or trying to think as they do?

These last 3 chapters (that we're covering) in Taming Hal: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001 discuss the hazards of not providing users with an overall understanding (or correct abstraction) of the interface. You'll have to make a judgment call about how much and how little information to give users regarding the structure of an interface. Certainly, giving too little information can be problematic for users, but providing too much information about an interface can be confusing for users. How so?

Let's head over to our Taming HAL page.

Persona Research Considerations

I do recognize that this is a new assignment and not the kind you're used to in technical communication classes. I will take that into consideration when grading, but I still have expectations. This assignment is a research assignment. You have to do two types of research for your discussion:

1) personal observations and
2) traditional research

You will need sources for this assignment. If you do not have sources, that is a problem. It's easy for me to guess what your personal observations are, but, without in-text citations or referring to outside sources, I will 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. 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 doing your assignment:

• Personas with no names: this is a 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 came from.
• Using 'I' is ok to describe your personal observations.
• Specifics not ranges: your personas aren't an age range; they are a specific age.

Anything that you borrow from other sources--words, images, etc.--need to be cited!

Unfortunately, we won't have time for revisions, so the above considerations are very important to consider when doing your persona research. If you're totally lost about them, it will make me think you need to read Cooper more thoroughly. As a direction, though, in Cooper's book, page 123 begins the discussion of personas, and page 131 has examples.

Those of you who have the tendency to turn stuff in late should remember that this assignment is one fourth (or fifth for 5181 students) of your Major Assignments grade, which is 40% of your overall grade. Also, an assignment loses 10% for each class it's late.

Before We Go...

We're just about done with the semester. Next week we have HAL presentations from the 5181 students (who also are turning in their Bibliographic Essays).

On April 23rd, we'll have a presentation discussion, and you'll have an entire class devoted to workshopping for your portfolios and final presentations.

Don't forget these important Due Dates:

April 23rd: Persona Research Due
April 30th: Final Presentations
              Portfoios Due
May 7th: Final Exam

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