April 23rd: Presentation and Portfolio Workshop

Announcements

• Third Annual Center for Global Public Relations Research Conference--Register Here
  Friday, April 26 @ 8:30 AM
• UFC 159: Saturday, 4/27/2013 @ 10 PM

Plan of Attack

• Final Exam: Dr. Morgan said she'll be done at 6:30 on Tues., May 7th...what should we do?
• Portfolio Presentations
• Teaching evaluations
• Persona Research is DUE today
• User Doc #3 highlights
• Pay attention to the syllabus and due dates

Portfolio Presentations

Each one of you will do a presentation describing your conception of audience and purpose for your User Documents. I want all students to practice public speaking, so I try to have each class I teach do a presentation. The guidelines for this presentation are on the Assignments Page, so let's review some things.

If you're doing a Powerpoint presentation (or other presentation), you should save your presentation to your 'H' drive, and create a link to it on your webpage. It's time consuming to have you plug in your flash drives or check your e-mail to access your files. If you don't know how to do that, ask now. I'll repeat this again next week.

Remember, Tiffini did hers the right way:

Tiffini's PowerPoint

Final Exam Preview (5/07--Tuesday, 6:30-9:15)

Your final exam will be based on the reading assigned and activities/discussions we've had since the original midterm exam date (2/26). 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.

Portfolios Due in two Weeks (4/30)

Your portfolios are due in two weeks. Take a fresh look at the Assignments Page for details about what to include. The most important thing is the reflective cover letter. That is where you demonstrate that the revision choices you made reflect your understanding of the audience(s) and purpose(s) for the document.

When revising your individual documents, you can cut and paste from your original if you followed directions the first time around. If you didn't, revise both parts and make sure you include the following (in order would be nice):

Meta-analysis persona document

• Descriptions of the instruments (here and a version on the actual user doc)
• Ideal approach/location of the document
• Personas (example 1) (example 2)
  • Personas reflect the revision choices you make
  • Personas help you conceive of audience
  • Personas help you reflect on the purpose of your document
• Measurable (operationalized goals)
• Post-test questions (likert scales)
• Citations for borrowed images
• Citations for borrowed images
• Citations for borrowed images
• Citations for borrowed images
• Citations for borrowed images

Actual User Docs

• Have logical steps
• Screen shots/images that make sense
• Document location--printed or online--helps you consider the needs of your audience and should fit with the document's purpose
• Audience and purpose seem important in this reflective cover letter...

Returning User Doc #3

I made (yet) another valiant effort to finish commenting on your User Doc #3, but I fell short... sigh. I will turn back those I have, but I still have to review a few more.

I do, however, have some issues that you'll want to consider when revising.

If you didn't turn in a part of User Doc #3, for instance, the meta-analysis persona part, turn it in with your final portfolio. Not including the planning part of your assignments will affect your grade. If you haven't turned in a draft...what are you waiting for?

Some overall issues for User Doc #3:

• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• "Figure X: [Description]" and captions
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Circles, arrows, and callouts
  • Try using circles or boxes; they seem to look nicer than arrows
  • Legends work well
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Personas are not Scenarios (Cooper pp. 131-132 & 142-147)
  • Have pictures of your personas
  • Do not "stack the deck" in favor of your document
  • Have pictures of your personas
  • Highlight computer/technological literacies
  • Have pictures of your personas
  • Consider reading or education level for informational guides
  • Have pictures of your personas
  • Don't have more than one sentence about motivation to use the guide
  • Have pictures of your personas
  • Disposition, attitude, propensity, threshold to/toward/for technology is important:
    For instance, Cletus has little patience for figuring out computer-related issues.
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Don't repeat steps above
  • For instance, the following is goofy:
    Step 1: Cut a hole in the box...
    Step 2: After you cut a hole in the box, place the cardboard tube in the box at a 45-degree angle...
    Step 3: After you place the cardboard tube in the box at a 45-degree angle, place hamster pellets in the tube...
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Show how to refine searches to expand your user documents (assuming this is relevant to your topic)
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Be more efficient in your prose
  • Get right to the search/results/character types 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"
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• Use screen shots
  • Clear, good-sized screen shots
  • Entire screen captures aren't effective
    {Unless, as we discussed, the user is doing something on their computer for the first time, e.g., starting up their new laptop or desktop prior to customizing it.}
  • Too small of a screen capture is too little
  • Zoom in or Zoom out accordingly
• Anything you don't create yourself must be cited
• NEXT TIME: No software installation!
  Software tutorials, however, are good.

Before We Go...

Next week (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 30th: Final Presentations
              Portfoios Due
May 7th: Final Exam

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