The class is designed to give students reading resources to introduce techniques and perspectives that explain and illustrate how user experience can be understood and designed for. The teaching team attempts to assign readings that are particularly useful for the kind of work that the teams will be doing the week of or following the reading. The Reading Kickoff Presentations are given by subgroups of two different Project Teams before the entire class completes the readings. One of the points of having a group of students introduce a set of topical readings is to motivate all students to find connections in the reading to their class projects or external work, as the presenters have. Ideally, each kickoff illustrates how the assigned readings can inform different projects and people in diverse ways.
In order to have kickoffs occur when the readings are assigned to the class, members of the kickoff team are instructed to start the set of readings one or two class sessions before the kickoff is scheduled. The presentations that the kickoff groups give happen at the start of the class session. The format of the kickoff will vary depending upon whether presenters want to cover a reading by themselves or to have multiple presenters introduce different perspectives of the same reading. One way to orchestrate the timing of the kickoff to include all of the necessary components is as follows:
The time slots are 15 minutes (max) to present the total set of readings. The rule of thumb is that everyone who pre-read about the topic presents. People can pair up to present one paper or article if so desired.
The readings include material that should not be shared outside of this educational setting. In order to avoid violating educational fair use policies, we are making the readings available via our access-controlled Canvas site.
If you see the assignment in Canvas, then it is your turn. Each student is slated to present twice. Each presentation accounts for 2 points of your grade. Full credit goes to students who demonstrate that they have prepared comments connected to the readings. Half credit is awarded to students who summarize the readings without introducing insights or personal reactions. No credit is given to students who do not present during their assigned kickoff presentations.
kick-off presentation Tue 9/17
all students complete readings by Friday 9/20