Syllabus
Welcome to the course site for RPW 375 Usability Studies. This course is designed to explore in depth the concepts, strategies, principals, and practices associated with the study of user experiences of information and technology.
My goal is to offer you a set of experiences with design that will help you develop and hone your researcher insights and design instincts. By semester's end, you should have had plenty of opportunity to explore strategies for framing research questions and then devising studies to engage those questions.
Course Description
The SVSU Course Catalog frames Usability Studies around examination of user-centered design:
- Exploration of user-centered, accessible, and inclusive design through their connections with usability studies, and of issues of identity and ethics for usability practitioners. Focus on understanding research ethics, standards, methods and technologies, and on designing, administering, and reporting significant research projects. May include examination of methods such as card sorting, think-aloud protocols, journeymapping, and heuristic analysis.
Course Objectives
All of my course descriptions present some variation on the following objectives.
- Explore strategies and practices of effective, context-appropriate, audience-aware information design. Effective information design demonstrates awareness of and respect for the needs, knowledge, expectations, and work habits of audiences, and takes advantage of the most appropriate and contextually effective media for expression. All information is designed in some manner. Some is crafted carefully and well to fit the context in which it is offered and encountered. Some falls short of audience needs and expectations in one or more ways. We study design with a critical eye because we want to do it well.
- Examine cultural, professional, and disciplinary standards for communication. Quality communication is created to meet or exceed a spectrum of standards for excellence. Many professions have adopted their own particular standards to guide their members. Accessibility and inclusivity drive design in a variety of ways. Industries and economic unions maintain their own as well. It is thus important to explore what standards apply to each kind of communication we create.
- Examine links among communication, professional authority, and ethical responsibility. Professional and disciplinary credentials carry with them both the authority to communicate and the expectation that you will do so responsibly. Ethical action demands that professionals examine the ways power knowingly and inadvertently influences the effectiveness and impact of design thinking, design action, and professional conduct more generally. Because technical communicators work within, and thus perpetuate, the language(s) of social, political, and economic power active in and beyond professional spaces in the United States, they must seek understanding of how to do so consciously, critically, and inclusively.
- Demonstrate the ability to execute effective communication in the context of the other objectives. Professionals and scholars earn privileges and opportunities with their credentials and certifications. Observation of cultural practices in a variety of contexts consistently reinforce that the most respected and enduring professionals communicate effectively. Such success does not come easily, even to those who possess seemingly natural gifts and abilities for communication. Whether you are an accomplished communicator, or someone who struggles to succeed in this endeavor, my baseline goal is to help you become more aware, better prepared, and more effective as a communicator than you are when you enter the course.
Textbooks
This course requires the following textbooks.
- Bruce Hanington & Bella Martin, Universal Methods of Design.
- Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link, & Larry Leifer, Design Thinking Toolbox.
In addition, I will assign readings, listenings, and viewings from a variety of other sources. I will provide or direct you to materials for these assignments through our course space in SVSU Canvas.
Other Course Materials
To support your work here this semester, you will use the following services, tools, and technologies.
- Well-equipped Computer. To complete this course, you will need to have regular access to a well-equipped computer. Students have recently attempted a few of my courses with tablets or even smartphones. Do not follow their unwise example. It is just not possible to do well in this course without access to a computer. There are very few assignments that you can manage from other devices. The design work required to prepare a proper document goes beyond the capabilities of tablets, smartphones, and even Chromebooks.
Read on here in this section for some of the details of what I mean for a computer to be fully equipped. If you do not have access to the design software I list below, you'll need to either acquire what you need (SVSU supports student use of some, but not all of the packages it provides through labs), or you'll need to plan to work in SVSU computing facilities. As I said a moment ago, even a Chromebook will fall short of your needs this semester here. These under-powered computers do not support the use of professional-grade design packages.
- SVSU Canvas. I post supporting materials (e.g., articles, sample documents, documents for workshops) to Canvas Files. I typically use the Announcement page to facilitate communication with the whole class. Although I create assignments in Canvas, it is only so I can use the Grades page. (No detail about workshops or projects appears on the Assignments page in Canvas. All descriptions are posted here on this course site.) You will post most of your workshop submissions through the Discussion page.
- SVSU Vmail. Use campus Vmail (aka Outlook Mail) or Canvas Mail for all correspondence with me. Note, however, that I typically only check Vmail, and Canvas Mail is sometimes remarkably slow at forwarding messages to the campus Outlook Mail servers. I may not see a message posted to Canvas in a timely manner.
- Dropbox.com. You will create and manage a shared folder on this service. All of the file exchanges between you and me for course projects (e.g., your submissions, my feedback and project evaluations) will happen through Dropbox.com. Dropbox offers a free service option. That will be all you need for this course. (Do not sign up for a paid business or pro account.)
Note. I strongly recommend that you install Dropbox on your computer if you have one. The service is much more easily navigated from a computer desktop than it is from a browser window. If you try to do anything other than view documents from a tablet or smartphone, you will likely be rather frustrated.
- Document design software. All projects and workshops for this course require you to design documents. Use appropriate, professionally relevant tools, such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe Premier, Adobe Audition, and Techsmith Camtasia for this work. Although you might be tempted to rely exclusively on less powerful packages, such as Google Document, it does not meet the minimum design requirements for this course. I use it too, but only for developing draft versions of written projects. I do all final writing & design work in professional-grade software packages.
- Screencasting software. I use screencasts to deliver content for most courses. You will create screencasts to facilitate some of your work, including at least one workshop and one project. There are many free tools available to you for creating screencasts. I often recommend Techsmith Capture for quick work, but steer people toward Techsmith Camtasia for significant projects such as those you might take on during this course. However, there are now many options for creating and recording screencast videos.
- Screencast.com. We will use Screencast.com to share and stream the video content that you generate, because even a short video can result in a large file. Screencast.com offers a free service option. That will be all you need for this course.
Although you will use several communication tools and technologies during your work this semester, all of these things are either available through SVSU, or are available to you for free. If you have questions about such details, please follow up with me. Among the most important priorities in your professional development should be identifying successful strategies for acquiring and refining technological knowledge, and finding comfort in learning new tools and processes. If technology intimidates you in any way, then emphasize achieving this professional goal this semester.
Some of the work you do might be made more convenient or easy if you have access to the following additional materials.
- Portable storage device. Always carry a portable storage device (e.g., flash drive, external hard drive) with you to store project and workshop files, or anything else you might need for your work in this course. Although SVSU provides you space on the Microsoft OneDrive system, I recommend that you use it as a only, rather than as your primary work space.
- Scanner or scanning app for your phone/tablet. You will at times integrate visual content that you draw from source material into your work. Although you can use a camera to accomplish this task, the results are typically unprofessional. Scanners and scanning apps allow you to digitize such content at a much higher level of professionalism. Several apps are available for free or at little cost. I strongly recommend that you acquire one and learn to use it.
- Headphones. Because you will use audio and video for some of your learning and design work, and because we use both media in class from time to time, headphones are a convenient item to have on hand.
- Microphone. Because you will record screencasts this semester, a microphone (even an inexpensive one) is a useful addition to your toolkit. It will raise the quality and professionalism of your audio. If you have access to a headset for your phone or for gaming, you should be able to make use of it for your work here. Note that although many computers now have built-in microphones, this is not universally true. Check your machine to see if it does or does not.
Because I serve as the Director of the RPW Audio and Video Production Studio, I am able to loan out audio and video equipment when assignments demand it. However, we do have limited resources, so you may want to consider purchasing your own equipment at some point. If you do so, please consider consulting with me when selecting equipment.