590RPE
From GSLISWiki
LIS 590RPE / CS598RPE Rapid Prototyping and Evaluation
- Last Taught
- Fall 2005. Will be taught Spring 2008
- Instructor
- Professor Michael Twidale
- Time
- Tuesdays 1-3:50
- Location
- TBA
- Assessment
- A series of homeworks and short assignments and a final paper
Contents |
[edit] Course Overview
This course will explore high speed and low cost techniques for the rapid creation, prototyping, development and testing of research ideas. This involves the development and use of novel computational applications to help students to create demonstrators, proofs of concept and rapid analyses as they grapple with a research idea. This will allow students to practice techniques for initiating and exploring novel research ideas and quickly developing test cases that can be the basis of subsequent analysis. It draws on themes employed in the development of novel applications of mobile and ubiquitous computing and from the very successful approaches of the MIT Media Lab. The main technological focus will be in applications involving mobile or ubiquitous computing.
[edit] Some Key Questions the Course Will Explore
- How do we create novel computational applications and functionalities that can really help people?
- How can we explore a new design space by developing proofs of concept to help us think about what is possible?
- How can we start exploring new ways of analyzing the evolving interaction between people ever-changing technologies and the contexts in which they are used?
- How can we advance our chosen areas of research in the context of a flood of new technological possibilities affording by new hardware, software and infrastructures?
- Is it possible to apply rapid and agile methods not just to the development of products, but to the doing of research?
[edit] Core 590RPE Links
- 590RPE
- 590RPE Schedule
- 590RPE Category
- 590RPE Readings
- 590RPE Projects
- 590RPE Resources
- 590RPE Introductions
- 590RPE Questions
[edit] Aims
This course is intended to help research students work towards very rapidly exploring complex design spaces by constructing and analyzing proofs of concept in very short spaces of time. It will attempt to explore how to get around certain common pathologies in researchers and people involved in innovative systems development:
- Procrastination by excessive prior planning: Taking too long to get to the first prototype
- Powerful abstractions with no good applied exemplars: Building a fabulous toolkit or infrastructure, but having no ideas about uses or applications that can exploit, illustrate or challenge the abstract design
- In-box thinking: failure to exploit novel combinations of hardware, software, infrastructure, use context and user needs to create innovative applications that can also advance a research agenda
- Seeing only through our evaluation tools: failure to consider that giving people new technological possibilities means that not only may they do some things better (which is easy to measure), but that they may do completely different things, which is far more interesting but is inclined to be ignored in formal evaluation measures.
[edit] Who Is This Class Intended For?
This is a Doctoral Seminar offered jointly through the Graduate School of Library and Information Science and the Department of Computer Science. It is open to students from other departments.
It is chiefly intended for doctoral students to help them with the creation, extension and refinement of research ideas involving the development of novel computational technologies. Masters Students may enroll with permission of the instructor. It is suitable for Masters students intending to do a small scale research project, perhaps leading to a thesis or conference or journal publication, or a student intending to enter a doctoral program.
The class is aimed both at people who consider themselves as mostly a developer or as mostly an analyst.
The techniques to be covered have been developed and used in the context of interdisciplinary work and so likewise it is hoped that we will have students from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds. By working together on various short projects we will learn how to select and apply efficient methods to help enable innovation and effective exploration of a design spaces and the critical aspects of designing to fit actual needs and uses.
An incomplete list of possible backgrounds:
- Library and Information Science
- Computer Science
- Electrical and Computer Engineering (esp. novel applications of networks and image processing)
- Cognitive Psychology
- Sociology (esp. workplace studies or situated use of technologies)
- Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (esp. product design)
- Fine and applied Art (esp. computer graphics or information design)
- Architecture
- Urban Planning
- Education (esp. computers and learning)
- Management (esp. product innovation)
- Speech Communication (esp. technologies for social networking)
[edit] Topics
Issues covered will include:
- Scenario Based Design
- Paper prototyping
- Rapid prototyping in Smalltalk or other languages
- Techniques of appropriation
- Technological collage
- Extreme programming
- Extreme evaluation
- Extreme research
- Planning, running, evaluating and iterating high speed pilot studies
- The creation and use of public demos as research vehicles
- Exploiting concepts from reality TV for exploring public attitudes and uses of novel technologies
- Art pieces as research setting mechanisms
- The use of play and games to inspire inform and evaluate research
- Applying techniques from improv-theatre for exploration of novel application ideas
- Participatory Design
- Cultural probes
- Ethnography and Systems design
- Affordance Analysis
- Applying creativity to problem-solving
- Exploring a design space
Resources: Readings, Websites and Case Studies
Evolving Bibliography
Classroom and assignment activities will include:
- Discussing research papers
- Team brainstorming and creativity exercises
- Short micro-studies
- Limited time design challenges
- A final term paper applying the techniques to your own research topic
- The scrapheap challenge as a way to developing creative design ideas by bricolage
- A final term paper on a design/evaluation research challenge of your choosing. It should be in the format of a submission to an appropriate conference, and include in the text or in an appendix a narrative of the design iterations, evolving design ideas and experiences of applying the methods covered in the class to this particular challenge
[edit] Collaborative Course Design
Part of the approach of many agile methods involves access, speed, just-in-time working and empowerment. That should apply equally to the format of this course as the content: 590RPE Suggestions
