NM2213 - Introduction to User Experience Design Review

NM2213

Taken in: AY21/22 Semester 1
Lecturer: Dr Alex Mitchell
Tutor: Dr Alex Mitchell

Grading:

• 10% - Participation
• 20% - 10% x 2 Essay Assignment (1000 words each)
• 20% - Midterm Quiz
  
• 20% - Final Quiz
• 30% - Group Project comprising of:
  
• 20% Weekly Presentations (7 Presentations, 3min each)
  
• 5% Final Proposal
• 5% Individual Reflection (500 words)

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NM2213 is one of the more fun and "hands-on" modules in CNM. It dives into the basics of UX design, which if you've taken NM1101E, was briefly introduced in the interaction design segment (Recall the Don Norman reading). This is basically your gateway to the interactive media design (IMD) branch of CNM.

This module covers the theory of interaction design in the first half of the semester. During tutorials, you will discuss and apply the theory concepts to real-life examples. The short essay assignments are similar, and you can use the same examples brought up in tutorial.

After recess week, lectures will cover more practical knowledge like data collection and prototyping. Your group project will also begin and follow along these lecture topics. So, on the week where you learn about prototyping, you'll also be tasked to make a prototype for your group project.

I recommend taking this module; the content is interesting and tutorials are super chill. The profs that teach this module (Dr Alex Mitchell or Dr Dennis Ang) are pretty good too. The module is also organized very transparently, where you can find all the documents, briefs, instructions in the lesson flow.

Some comments about workload: The project isn't very heavy, but you have to work on it weekly, and give a 3-minute presentation during tutorial on that week's deliverables. That's a presentation every week. The good thing is, once you're done presenting that's about it for the tutorial and you can chill.
The two tests (Midterm and Final) were open book, but you shouldn't go in empty-handed as there's barely enough time given for the questions so you can't afford to refer to notes too much.

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Detailed Breakdown

Theory segment (Weeks 1-6)

The first 5 weeks cover theories of interaction design, which are also covered in the textbook. These include the basic principles like affordances, feedback, mapping, but also more topics that weren't covered in NM1101E such as cognitive design, social, emotional interaction. Tutorials are super lightweight and require little to no preparation. You break out into groups and discuss interactive systems that make use of the week's lecture topic. If the lecture taught about emotional design, you had to think of a system that embodies that. Then, each group presents one chosen system to the rest of the tutorial. These tutorial presentations are relevant to your two written assignments, which also ask for real-life examples that use those design concepts. Your examples can be the same as the ones presented in tutorial. Previous semesters had 4 weekly assignments instead of 2 biweekly ones, and this may change too.

Note that the group you'll be discussing with is also your group for the project.

Practical Segment (Weeks 7-13)

After recess week, the lecture content shifts towards the design process (Data gathering, prototyping, evaluation, etc) and the group project begins. The previous and current semester had us designing a videoconferencing system for a target user group. Some groups chose musicians, fitness instructors, online tuition. The prompt may change in the future. The group project runs you through a typical design process for the interactive system you are designing.

Each tutorial, your group (Not everyone has to present) will give a 3-minute presentation on the current progress of their project, followed by QnA. There are milestones laid out for you each week, and you'll need to prepare 3 slides with specific information on each slide. Other than that, there's not much else happening in tutorial so you can stay back and discuss or leave. Each week's (7-12) tutorial presentation is worth 2.5% and week 13's presentation is worth 5%. You will have to prepare the slides based on the milestone for each week, and groups have to do some external work like data gathering, prototyping, evaluation (with real subjects) for some weeks.

You can have 1 different person present each week, or have multiple presenting (But it's just a 3 min presentation). Doing this over zoom was fun. If I wasn't presenting, I would just lie in bed.

As the group project milestones are done each week, the expectation is not very high. At most, you only have to come up with a low-fidelity prototype of your system, and don't have to interview too many people (1 per group member). We just interviewed friends and family. I called this a "practical" segment, but it doesn't compare to the kind of projects you might do in poly. The final proposal is a collation of all your weekly presentations into a cohesive document. This is submitted along with an individual reflection on the project, and peer evaluation.

The midterm test in week 6 covers the theory taught in weeks 1-5. For the past few semesters, it was on Examplify, and consisted of a mix of MCQ and Short answer questions. As I mentioned above, there's barely enough time to do the questions so even if it's open book, you won't have much time to refer to your notes.
The final test focuses more on the topics of weeks 7 onwards, and I mean it, so make sure to pay attention to lecture even if it can be a bit dry. Regrettably, I zoned out during those lectures.

Final Note

I suggest you take this module in Y1S2 (Which I didn't). Reason being it's a prerequisite for NM3221 which is another interaction design module. It's only offered in semester 1, so by doing this you can take NM3221 in Y2S1 (As you might have internship in Y3S1). If not, that leaves Y4S1.
Also, Prof Alex makes the grade distribution visible for all graded components, so my expected grade is based on that information.

Expected grade: B+ or A-

Actual grade: A-

Reviewed by: ZH