Experimental Design in Practice (Summer University) (Spring 2020)
Official course description:
Course info
Programme
Staff
Course semester
Exam
Abstract
In this course, students will plan, implement, evaluate and report on a design experiment in which interaction with connected technology is in focus. The programming language JavaScript will be used to for controlling and manipulating the mobile phone hardware components, which will serve as the infrastructure for experimentation.Description
The course allows the students to move away from a pre-defined or functional design agenda to explore digital and interactive design from other perspectives. This enables the students to re-think, hence re-evaluate, and deepen their understanding of their existing competences and digital design methods and tools while acquiring specific new knowledge (both theoretical and applied) on Experimental Design processes and projects.
The course and project will have a dominant technical part where the students will design interactions with networked devices, in order to expose the students to critical reflections on elements of interaction and resulting user experiences.
Formal prerequisites
This course builds extensively upon the course Prototyping Interactive Technologies and students should have taken this course.Intended learning outcomes
After the course, the student should be able to:
- Plan, implement, evaluate, and report on, a design experiment in which (networked) interaction is in focus
- Develop and analyse digital research prototypes with JavaScript by using appropriate methods and techniques
- Critically reflect on research design, experiment execution, data analysis and conclusion, and issues and principles underlying conducting design experiments
Learning activities
The course focuses on the practical skills required to set up and conduct a design experiment within connected technology. The course consists of lectures on experimental design and the execution of a design experiment (its focus, designing a digital research prototype, setting up and conducting an experiment, dealing with the data); and on JavaScript as programming language and using the networked phone as platform for experimentation (reading input, activating output, establishing a network, and designing interactions). The exercise sessions are closely linked to the lectures, and ask the students to execute related tasks individually or in groups.
Please note: Teaching happens in week 28 (starting July 6), week
30, and week 31. Week 29 is reserved for self-directed learning (exercises and
reading).
Course literature
The course literature is published in the course page in LearnIT.
Ordinary exam
Exam type:C: Submission of written work, External (7-point scale)
Exam variation:
CG: Submission exam for groups.
The written work consists of a group report of 10-12 pages, which documents the design experiment. Furthermore, each student writes a 2-page individual reflection.
Group and individual
- 4-6 students in a group