Overall objectives:

1 - This course is intended to make students effective, professional system designers and analysts. This course builds upon students' backgrounds in a few specific ways: - Work from da ta. Many of us have good intuitions about design, but we all need to ground our work on the real needs of users and the obstacles they perceive in achieving their goals. - Work in teams. What ever our skills are, we will need the skills of others to be effective. - Communication. Even when we know what should be done, many contexts demand that we convince others using numbers, pictures, or stories.

Syllabus:

1 - Usabilty Asp ect Reports: A way to communicate system issues.
2 - Heuristic evaluation in which an expert evaluator identifies likely problems in a product or service.
3 - Think aloud protocols to evaluate how people are using a product or service.
4 - Interviews to hear about goals, problems and opinions in the users' own words.
5 - Survey design and analysis to summarize beliefs about user needs or product judgments from a large group of potential users.
6 - Web analytics and log analysis to understand how people are using a website or an instrumented application.
7 - Experimentation and A/B testing to identify which version of a design works better.
8 - Competitive analysis of existing products and services.
9 - Contextual Design (CD).
10 - Observing Users.
11 - Interpreting Observations into Notes and Models.
12 - Organizing Notes into Affinity Diagrams.
13 - Consolidating Models.
14 - Creating Visions.
15 - Presenting Designs.
16 - Communication Technology.

Literature/Sources:

Goodman, E., Kuniavsky , M., & Moed, A. , 2012 , Observing the User Experience , Waltham, MA: Morgan Kaufman
Beyer, H. & Holtzblatt, K. , 1998 , Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems , Morgan Kaufmann
Holtzblatt, K., Wendell, J. B., & Wood, S. , 2005 , Rapid Contextual Design: A How-To-Guide to Key Techniques for User-Centered Design , Elsevier

Assesssment methods and criteria:

Classification Type: Quantitativa (0-20)

Evaluation Methodology:
Teaching is theoretical-practical. The theoretical part is based on the bibliography for the course, and the practical part is based on related real-life cases. There are 8 assignments (approximately one per two content topics) and a final project, developed in a group. Students are also evaluated by their participation in class. The evaluation percentages are: 1) participation in class: 10%; 2) assignments (7.5% x 8): 60%; 3) final project: 30%