From: cnquinn@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Clark Quinn)
Subject: Project guidelines in SIGCHI Curricula?
Reply-To: cnquinn@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Clark Quinn)
Organization: none
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 01:33:51 GMT

I have need of a quick answer to a question about the newly-released
SIGCHI proposed HCI Curricula: what, if any, specifications are there
about assigned projects and, in particular, the evaluation of those
projects?

I have tried to locate the curricula here, but our library, which
carries the bulletin, doesn't have them, nor does my head of school
(dept chair).  He's a member, but sometimes mail here takes months and
he may not have received it yet.  I asked for membership papers to
get my own, but the office sent membership info *without* the
application.  Sigh.

I teach HCI here and have found that the big project usually doesn't get
evaluated until the end of the session, yet we preach that the design
process should include evaluation.  Gary Perlman's Interface Module from
SEI/CMU mentions a project getting subject evaluation on student projects, 
but the logistics seemed overwhelming and they only had 13 students.  I
limited the enrollment to 40 last year, but can't do that again.  Unless
someone knows of such a project already, I'm planning on building a
HyperCard stack to test HyperCard stacks.  

The plan is that students will submit their project and a test script
several weeks before the end of session (semester), the stack will test
the stacks via the scripts and (I hope) to also make several errors of
the type Don Norman's error work poses for typical users.  I also hope
to add in several of the heuristic tests I use when I test stacks.  The
notion is that students will get the feedback and have a week or two to
revise their stacks.  As Perlman's project noted and my experience
attests, student projects, even at the end the class when I've been
haranguing them about how their intuitions are wrong, are naive.  I
think this gives students a more concrete practice situation, a
valuable lesson in naive assumptions in interface design and
exemplifies the value of formal models of the user when user testing
may be out for a number of reasons.  I think that even if they write to 
the program, that approach to design is better than their usual approach.

I should mention that if this comes off, I plan to make the stack
available freely for distribution, via on-line archives, email, or
SnailMail, etc.

I'm writing a grant proposal to get a programmer for the project, and
thought I hadn't had time for this request, but I got a couple of days
extension so I thought I'd see what was known.  Any help?  Suggestions
or comments welcome.

Thanks, -- Clark

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