Prerequisites

Though there is no official prerequisite, students are strongly encouraged to have previously taken CS374 or a similar introductory HCI class. The term project will require building web-based user interfaces, so some fluency in programming is needed.

Grading

Here’s a breakdown of how the grading will work:

  • Team Project: 40%
  • Final Exam: 30%
  • Reading Response: 10%
  • Class & Studio participation/attendance: 10%
  • Topic Presentation: 10%

Rubric-based grading: Most assignments and project milestones will be graded based on a set of rubrics, which are designed by course staff to best capture the learning objectives of an assignment. But please keep in mind that design work is inherently subjective.

Late policy: For each milestone deadline in the design project, all members of your team will lose 10% for each late day. Submissions for design project milestones will be accepted until three days after the deadline. After then you’ll get 0 on that assignment. Please note that late submissions for final presentations are not allowed and late reading response submissions will not be counted.

Academic Integrity and Collaboration

You may discuss assignments with others, but you should always give credit and be intellectually honest.

For programming work, you may use third-party libraries, but you should give proper attribution.

For teamwork, you should try your best to contribute to your team’s success and actively collaborate with your teammates. Making no or minimal contribution for any given milestone is problematic and can cause significant damage to your team. If that is the case, please report to the course staff and we will make appropriate adjustments to the team and grading, which might sometimes involve re-assignment of teams and individual grading.

Failure to adhere to these policies may lead to serious penalties, including an F in the course and reference to the departmental and university committee.

Design Project

A major part of the course is for you to design an interactive prototype that is carefully catered to your target users. This will be done in a team of 3-4 students.

How can I form a team?
While we want to give total freedom to students in team formation, (1) students tend to work with friends who are similar to them in terms of preferences and skillsets, and (2) students with no existing ties might find it difficult to find teammates. We will give you some freedom, but there might be some requirements enforced. More details will be announced once we have a final class roster, because we need to know the class size and composition for a smooth team formation process.

I’m worried my course grade will depend on my team members.
To some extent, yes. You’ll be doing fewer and fewer things alone in your career, and working in teams and managing team dynamics is something you’ll hopefully learn in this course.

Some members of my team are not contributing.
While we won’t be tracking detailed levels of contribution of each member, we will certainly penalize cases where some members made no or signficantly less contributions than the other teammates. See “Academic Integrity and Collaboration” for details.

Reading Responses

For each class you are responsible for reading at least one of the assigned readings. As a reading response, you are required to submit two interesting and relevant questions to the class Campuswire by 11:59PM the night before the class. Late reading responses won’t be counted.

One of these questions must be a short answer question, and the other must be a multiple choice question with four options (A, B, C, D).

The following are examples of questions you might submit:

  1. What are three "growing pains" a social network platform may experience during massive user growth? "
  2. What is correct about the “artisanal approach” to content moderation practices?
    1. It uses large groups of volunteer users to make policy decisions
    2. It frequently uses automation and algorithmic detection technologies
    3. It develops rules in a more formalized, static, and inflexible manner
    4. Content moderation is done primarily in-house on a case-by-case basis

Please make sure that the questions you submit are clearly answerable! A subset of the final exam questions will be chosen from these submitted questions, and you will receive bonus points if your questions are selected.

The questions will be graded based on their generalizability beyond the material, their completeness and clearness, and their answerability. A good question should focus on a useful principle that isn’t only relevant to the specific reading. Please also note that you will not get credit if your question (or an extremely similar question) has already been posted to the Campuswire by another student. Similarity will be up to the course staff to judge, so please make sure that the questions are clearly distinct.

FAQ

Will there be an attendance check?
Yes, there will be an attendance check in each class after the first week. Students who are not present by 10:40AM will be counted as absent for that class. Students may miss up to three lectures per semester without negative consequences for their grade.

I’m not a CS student. Can I take the course?
Yes, as long as you meet the prerequisites.

I’m a graduate student. Can I take the course?
Unfortunately, no. Please check out grad-level HCI courses.

Can I audit the course?
Please talk to Prof. Seering in person during the first week of class.

What’s the course load like?
This will be a course that will have reading / video materials for every class, regular milestones for your projects, and a few assignments throughout the semester. Please expect a continuous workload. On the positive side, since there are no big deadlines, you’re not likely to pull an all-nighter. Overall, we expect the total workload to be equivalent to other 3-unit courses.

The course seems to require active participation during class, but my English isn’t quite good. Maybe I shouldn’t take it?
We recognize that many students won’t be comfortable with speaking English. But active participation isn’t really about how good your English is. It’s more about your engagement with the class material. We will also try to lower the partipation barrier for students with low English fluency.

How do I learn more about HCI research happening on campus?
We have a wonderful on-campus community of HCI researchers called HCI@KAIST. It features 20+ labs across multiple departments. Please check out the website for more information.