By Kati London (January 19, 2009) ()

» Skip to: Midterm Requirements

Assignments, Midterm, Activities, and Final:

• Weekly Blog Posts: Post 1 paragraph in response to the weekly readings, and 1 paragraph in response to the weekly question – read your peers thoughts. Posts due the Sunday before every class.
• Readings/Presentations: Every student will facilitate 1, 45-minute in class discussions and presentations on weekly readings
• Activities: Some weeks you will be required to prepare activities in response to readings or class discussions.
• Midterm: 3 – 5 page concept document proposing your final project. Skip to description.
• Final: An interactive project engaging any of the class topics accompanied by a deployment plan.

Class Grading and Expectations

Grades will be assessed on the basis of:

• Attendance (20%)
• Project work, including presentation (30%)
• Weekly blog responses to Readings and Questions (20%)
• In-class participation in readings, discussions and critique (20%)
• Facilitate one in-class discussion (10%)

This class meets for one two-hour and thirty minute session per week.
No email or IM in class .

Assignment due dates are hard dates.
Unexcused absences on project due dates will constitute a failure of that assignment.

CLASS IS VERY SHORT, SO COME ON TIME. Lateness (more than 5 minutes) or early departure from class translates into one half absence.

An unexcused absence counts as one full grade demotion (i.e. A to A-)
Two unexcused absences will result in an academic warning.
Four absences are grounds for failure.

MIDTERM DESCRIPTION & REQUIREMENTS:

Begin thinking about your final projects and midterms:

Midterm: Identify a design goal in keeping with your interests, and implement a persuasive technology solution choosing any two or three items from the following list:

1) has a non-human data pov
2) employs an aspect of personality design
3) utilizes a human communication protocol
4) focuses on creating a simple, but strong, emotional response in the user
5) utilizes exposure or transparency
6) involves a reverse engineered persuasive technology

Create a 3 – 5 page concept document, and a short slideshow presentation, proposing your final project: you will be giving a 7-10 minute presentation of your proposal during our midterm class.

This Concept Document must include the following, and follow in order:

• A one sentence non-technical description of the concept, written for the point of view of a complete stranger
• Define the design challenge
• How the proposal/concept meets the challenge, and provide rationale for your solution
• Identify target audience and desired outcome
• Identify a specific emotional reaction [suggestions] you are most interested in achieving
• Three short and rough technical sketches of three different possible means of implementation. Include corresponding schedules or rough timelines.
• Recommendation of the single technical approach you would plan to pursue of the three above, and why you would choose it over the others.

When working with your concept document, read and consider the design and working rules here: [Design philosophy], [Law #13 of design efficiency].

• Please bring a printed copy of your midterm design document to class, and make sure to post it, along with your slideshow presentation, on the class blog. You can use googledocs slideshow, or powerpoint, to create the presentation.