Assignment 3: Individual reflection: Short blog post
Important dates:
- Assigned: Thursday, April 18
- Due: Wednesday, May 1
Overview
For this assignment, you’ll write a short blog post on any topic related to the class. You may choose to:
- read a research paper from an HCI conference or journal (e.g., CHI, DIS, CSCW) and write a response to it
- consider two lists of design guidelines (e.g., Nielsen’s 10 Usability Heuristics and Microsoft’s Human-AI Interaction Guidelines): compare and contrast them, discuss what you would add, etc.
- discuss what you learned from working with a team on a design project
- elaborate on the literature that sets the stage for what you’re developing for your project
- describe and develop a project idea that you pitched to your team, but that your team didn’t ultimately pursue
You can choose something that doesn’t fall into a category from this list, but if you do, please be sure that it follows the guidelines below.
The goal of a blog post is to share your unique perspective on the topic. That perspective should incorporate the expertise you’ve developed in the class, but should also be rooted in your personal opinions and lived experience. You should feel free to draw on outside knowledge, tell stories from your life, discuss your own research, etc. The tone should be informal and conversational.
This is an individual assignment. Even if you write about the topic of your final project, the ideas and opinions in the blog post need to be things you think of on your own.
I plan to create some web materials to showcase what’s going on in the world of HCI at UML, so, with your permission, your post may be published on a future website for this class (you are of course not required to give permission for your work to be published on the website). If you publish your blog post online yourself (e.g., on Medium, on your personal website, etc.), you may download the online version as a PDF and submit that – but please do submit a PDF or Word doc to Blackboard, not just a url (as per the Guidelines below).
Guidelines and grading
Please submit your response as a Word document or PDF via Blackboard. Include your name at the top of the document. Your submission should be between 1 and 2 pages, single-spaced. Your blog post should reflect on a specific topic that relates to the course, not be a general description of your experience in the course or your opinions about the course. There’s a fair amount of flexibility in this assignment, so there are a lot of ways to earn full credit.
Points will be deducted for:
- submissions that are too long
- submissions that are not in .doc/.docx/.pdf format or are otherwise not readable
- submissions that do not reflect on a specific topic from the class, and/or that are so generic that they do not reflect your personal experience or perspective
- submissions that do not cite their sources
Resources
I recommend looking over the following:
- “Writing Academic Blog Posts” from the University of Waterloo
- Interaction Design topic on Medium (if you scroll through, you’ll see many examples of blog posts on topics relevant to this class)