Assignments

CSCI376: Human-Computer Interaction

Assignment: Design Manifesto

  • DUE: Submitted as a page on your personal website, and a link to the appropriate Slack channel by December 1 at 11:59pm.

You will create a page on your Github User Page that synthesizes and reflects on all of the work you have accomplished throughout the semester in a Medium-style blog post. This webpage will be a Design Manifesto which reflects on the semester as a whole and outputs how it has impacted your design philosophy. The definition of manifesto is "A public declaration of principles, policies, or intentions, especially of a political nature", and this document should work as a list of the 5+ most important points of your design philosophy learned in this class, why those points are important (evidence!), and specifics for how you might apply these concepts in the future.

By the end of this assignment, your Github User Page should contain:

    • A main page with a bit (or more) of personalized context.
    • One/Two pages for your Good Design / Bad Design Assignment.
    • One page for your Individual Project Proposal
    • One page for your Research Paper report
    • A prominent link to your Project Website.
    • One page containing your Design Manifesto.

Your Design Manifesto

You should do this individually.

Before you begin writing your design manifesto/philosophy, think carefully about the following questions:

    • How did the design process impact the decisions you made? What were the most valuable pieces? Were there limitations to the design process that you encountered?
    • How did this differ across different modalities? For example, maybe user testing with your prototypes was more illuminating in one modality than another.
    • When did expectations not meet reality?
    • Were there some methods that were more challenging than others? What did you learn from this process?

Design is rarely divorced from our personal lens - our experiences, our expertise, our beliefs. These aspects all mold the applications of technology that you find exciting

Together, these questions should guide you to at least 5 main points that define your design process. At least one of these points should include a personal code of ethics (perhaps with sub-points), and another point should encompass your approach to accessibility in design. To do this, imagine you must translate the processes/skills you gathered in this course to an entirely new scenario (let’s say Augmented Reality, or Information Visualization). How would you apply this manifesto premise to this new context? Why would you want to?

Your takeaways should be evidence-driven. That means that when you discuss these topics, you should frequently reference (and show examples of!) the project that you completed or cite relevant readings and figures.

At least one of your main points should include your personal code of ethics and specific approach to incorporating accessibility for designing technological solutions. The remaining 3 or more guiding principles of your manifesto are up to you.

Requirements

  • Length: Roughly 1,500-2,300 words (3-5 pages).
  • Narrative: Your manifesto should be cohesive in quality. There should be an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Does it read like 5 scattered ideas or do they come together to form a central thesis? Tell a convincing story! Sub-headings will make your narrative clearer. Think beyond just "Design Research is Important" to why it's important, or a more generalized statement for applying it in the future.
  • Evidence-Driven: You should have a rich store of multimedia from your semester - videos, photos, etc. Each of your takeaways should be informed by the experiences from your project, so include visual references and/or videos (from the class) to what you are talking about. Your manifesto should also be supported by real design principles and ideas that you encountered throughout the readings this semester. Link to those pieces when you discuss them!

Examples

No HCI-course examples available, but think of this assignment like a Medium-style post.

Submission

Post as a link to your Individual Course Webpage on the appropriate Slack channel.

Grading

This assignment will be graded on a scale of 14 points:

  1. Clarity & Narrative
  2. Persuasive Manifests
  3. Evidence Support
  4. Personal Website Content/Design