Project (80%)
For this course, you would be working as a team on a project. The project will focus on a
high-level theme, i.e., “(Gen) AI and society”. The goal of the project is to provide you with the
required hands-on experience in human-centered design.
The course project must have three components, aligning with three common phases in the
human-centered design process:
1. A formative component, in which you must understand the needs of the people you are
designing for.
2. A design component, in which you must design a prototype to meet those needs.
3. An evaluative component, in which you must evaluate that prototype.
We expect most students will do projects in groups of five or six. Working in groups is a
necessary part of both research and practice, and is also important for the logistics of this course
(it will give me fewer reports to grade). :)
Early Feedback
As a course faculty, I will provide early feedback as desired. Meeting is optional. You can also
email to request feedback or inquire about arranging another time to meet, or even about the
project. Please use the following email address: novia@[Link]. Please add your project
title as the subject while writing an email to me.
Project Deliverables
Project deliverables are defined in terms of a proposal, a milestone, a final poster, and a final
report. These are due the night before class (9.00 am) on the following dates:
● Project Proposal: August 12 (Tuesday)
● Formative Component: August 30 (Saturday)
● Design Component: September 20 (Saturday)
● Evaluative Component: October 4 (Saturday)
● Final Poster: October 11 (Saturday)
● Final Report: October 18 (Saturday)
Project Proposal (10%)
Your proposal will define your initial plan for this project. You can and should update this plan
based on feedback, progress, and findings. But the proposal needs to demonstrate a robust
initial plan for your project.
Projects must have a formative, design, and evaluative component. It might be helpful to read the
subsequent sections (Formative Component, Design Component, Evaluative Component) to get a
sense of whether your project idea will fit the course's requirements.
Document Preparation
Prepare a roughly 1-page document addressing the following points:
● Your team members
● The problem: What is the pain point you're looking to solve in your design? Who is the
target audience, and why are they using it?
● Formative component: How do you plan to understand the needs of your target
audience? How do you plan to recruit them? Do you have any method(s) in mind?
● Design component: What fidelity do you plan to design at? What screens or features are
necessary for the design, and what can be left out?
● Evaluative component: How do you plan to determine the usability of your design? Who
do you plan ask to help evaluate? Do you have any method(s) in mind?
Presentation
Prepare a roughly 5-minute presentation. Be sure to highlight the problem you are planning to
tackle and how you are planning to approach each component, to the extent that you know.
This presentation can be fairly informal. The primary goal of this presentation is to gather
feedback from the faculty as well as your classmates, and it is understood that you may not yet
know how you are approaching each component. Please be appropriately candid, thoughtful, and
engaged.
Submission
Due Tuesday, August 12, 2025, at 9.00 am.
Submit your proposal document in PDF format to the drive folder. Please use the following
format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title
Submit your proposal presentation in PDF, PPTX, or KEY format to the drive folder. Please use
the following format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title_proposal
presentation
Formative Component (15%)
In the formative component, you must apply research methods to understand the needs of the
people you are designing for. Since the choice of formative methods depends on the research
questions, access, and population needs, we are not requiring one specific method. Some
example methods include:
● Surveys
● Contextual Inquiry
● Interviews
● Focus Groups
● Diary study
I would be happy to discuss and offer guidance in selecting an appropriate formative method. As
you will need to evaluate your design with your target population, we encourage methods
that involve directly engaging with potential users. However, formative methods sometimes
take the form of observing people's discussions via public records (e.g., social media activity,
forum discussions, product and app reviews). These methods may be used if they are more
appropriate to understand the pain point outlined in the project proposal.
The formative assessment does not need to be at the rigor required for a research publication, but
must be enough to start to suggest some design directions. For example, it may be sufficient to
survey 15-30 people (publications often survey hundreds), conduct inquiries or interviews with
5-10 people (15-30 is typical), or conduct a single focus group with 3-4 people (5 or more small
groups are common).
Document
Prepare a roughly 2-page document addressing the following points:
● Re-state the pain point you are looking to understand and address.
● Describe the target population broadly and the sample of people you studied in this stage.
● Explain your method and why you selected that method.
● Describe what you learned from your formative assessment and how that will impact
your design approach. Aim for at least three/four takeaways.
Please include any materials relevant to your progress as an appendix (e.g., does not count
toward the 2-page limit). Example materials include an interview or survey protocol, field notes
from a contextual inquiry, or exemplar participant quotes.
Presentation
Prepare a roughly 5-minute presentation. Be sure your presentation reintroduces the problem,
describes your target population and method, explains what you learned from your formative
assessment, and articulates how that will impact your design approach.
Submission
Due Saturday, August 30, 2025, at 9.00 am.
Submit your formative document in PDF format to the drive folder. Please use the following
format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title
Submit your formative presentation in PDF, PPTX, or KEY format to the drive folder. Please use
the following format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title_formative
presentation
Design Component (15%)
In the design component, you must develop some sort of prototype of your design. Your
prototype must be digital (e.g., an app, a website, a virtual reality experience). Prototypes need
not be feature-complete, but should support at least three tasks (beyond log in /account set up)
motivated by the formative assessments.
First, define the three (or more) tasks your design will support. Aim to align the task with
real-world actions (e.g., "schedule a meeting from noon to 3pm") rather than interface actions
(e.g., "use the date selections to pick 1pm and 3pm as the start and end times and push the
'schedule meeting' button"). The description should clarify what constitutes successful
completion of the task.
In prototyping, you must first prototype on paper, showing at least a few sketches for screens in
support of the three tasks. You must then translate your design to a higher-fidelity (e.g.,
wireframe, mockup, clickable/interactive, implemented) and incorporate feedback from your
evaluation. In general, we recommend lower-fidelity designs to enable feedback to better match
the design, but we acknowledge that in-progress projects may have mockup or implementation
work already underway. You may find it useful to conduct a heuristic evaluation or usability test
of your low-fidelity prototype, but neither is required at this stage. We will not require any
specific tools for prototyping, but some recommendations include:
● Balsamiq
● Axure
● Sketch
● Adobe XD
● Figma
We acknowledge that these tools vary in price, but some are free (Adobe XD) and many have
trial editions to allow for exploration.
Document
Prepare a roughly 4-page document addressing the following points:
● Re-state the pain point you are looking to address and the design takeaways from your
formative work.
● State the two (or more) tasks you are supporting, given the formative assessment.
● Include a few sketches from the paper prototypes for each of these features, describing
how a person might interact with them.
● Describe insights from your peer evaluation of paper prototypes.
● Include a few sketches from the higher-fidelity prototypes, describing any changes made
in response to the peer evaluation.
● Include which member is responsible for which part of the study
The page limit for this stage is intentionally higher to accomodate screenshot inclusion, but
please use it as an estimate. Please include any other sketches in an appendix. Similarly, if
clickable or implemented prototypes are developed and publicly available, feel free to include a
link.
Presentation
This presentation should describe your tasks and highlight the designs you created. It can be
shorter (2-3 minutes) to provide enough time for design critique.
Since this presentation is focused on critiques of in-progress design, it can again be fairly
informal.
Submission
Due Saturday, September 23, 2025, at 9.00 am.
Submit your formative document in PDF format to the drive folder. Please use the following
format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title
Submit your formative presentation in PDF, PPTX, or KEY format to the drive folder. Please use
the following format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title_design presentation
Evaluative Component (15%)
In the evaluative component, you must take your design (the one you have completed for the
design evaluation assignment) back to your target population for feedback. You must first make
any changes to your prototype in response to the peer evaluation of your hi-fi prototype. Make
these changes prior to starting evaluation; otherwise, you may get redundant feedback!
Like in the formative component, we will not specify an evaluative method. Pick an appropriate
method based on the state of the prototype and what feedback would be most useful. We strongly
encourage methods that allow for conversation (e.g., interviews) over methods that only allow
for one-directional feedback (e.g., surveys). Evaluations may focus only on usability (e.g.,
heuristic evaluation) or a mixture of usability and utility.
Similar to the formative component, the evaluative assessment does not need to be at the rigor
required for a research publication. For example, it is sufficient to interview with 3-7 people.
Document
Prepare a roughly 3-page document addressing the following points:
● Re-state the pain point you are looking to address and include a few screenshots of your
prototype.
● Describe any changes you made to your design in response to the critique or further
reflection.
● Explain your evaluation method and why you selected that method. Describe your
population sample.
● Describe what you learned from your evaluative assessment and how it could impact
another phase of design or implementation (show the updated hi-fi based on user
evaluation). Aim for at least three takeaways.
● Include which member is responsible for which part of the study
Feel free to include any materials relevant to your progress as an appendix (e.g., does not count
toward the 3-page limit). Example materials include an interview protocol or notes from
interviews.
Presentation
This presentation can be shorter (2-3 minutes).
Submission
Due Saturday, October 11, 2025, at 9.00 am.
Submit your formative document in PDF format to the drive folder. Please use the following
format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title
Submit your formative presentation in PDF, PPTX, or KEY format to the drive folder. Please use
the following format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title_evalaution
presentation
Final Poster (10%)
Submission
Due Saturday, October 18, 2025, at 9.00 am.
Submit your poster in PDF format to the drive folder. Please use the following format while
naming the file: groupname_section_project title
Final Report (15%)
Prepare a final report that is 4 to 10 pages in length, excluding references.
Your final report should describe:
● Introduction and motivation
● Overview of the design process
● Description of methods at each stage
● Presentation of results at each stage
● Any changes you made to your problem or design between stages
● Opportunities for future work
● Include which member is responsible for which part of the study and report (provide
thisinformation in the acknowledgement section)
Your prior reports should provide a good starting point for preparing this report. Write according
to the content you have. Be appropriate, thorough, and precise in your presentation, but do not
needlessly pad your text.
Use the SIGCHI Proceedings Format (1-column):
[Link]
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Additional guidance regarding effective paper writing can be found in:
Jacob O. Wobbrock. Catchy Titles Are Good: But Avoid Being Cute. Writing Advice, White
Paper, 2015.
Submission
Due Tuesday, October 21, 2025, at 11.59 pm.
Submit your formative document in PDF format to the drive folder. Please use the following
format while naming the file: groupname_section_project title