Assignments

Course assignments consist of:

• Assignment 0: Introduction Slide
• Milestone 1: Project Proposal
• Milestone 2: Design Research
• Milestone 3: Getting the Right Design
• Milestone 4: Getting the Design Right
• Milestone 5: Communicating the Design

Clarity and Presentation

Ensure all submissions are appropriately clear and easy to read. This includes:

• Text should be clear and concise.
• Use section headings as appropriate.
• Include images in the body of the write-up, with figure numbers and captions as appropriate.
• Refer to the figures in the body of your text.
• Check for typos, spelling, and grammar errors.

Be sure your presentation looks good:

• Choose appropriate colors, fonts, and styles.
• Make appropriate and liberal use of whitespace.
• Ensure images are high-quality.

Images do not count against page limits, and are therefore effectively free. You should embed images throughout your PDF, keeping them near the text that references them. Page limits apply to the approximate amount of text you would have if all images were removed.

Contribution Statements

Together with each milestone report, group members will individually submit a contribution statement.

A contribution statement should be less than one page and include three components:

1. Percentage Contribution Estimates

   List the name of each member of your group (i.e., including yourself). Indicate an estimated percentage of effort each member contributed across all activities in the milestone.

   Each contribution statement must include a percentage contribution estimates.

2. Group Check-In

   We understand, and expect that you will understand, that different group members will have different constraints throughout the course. We do not expect all group members to contribute equally to each assignment, but do generally expect contributions will "even out" across the larger timeframe of each milestone. If this does not happen, it is important to understand whether there is an issue in group dynamics (e.g., so your group can engage and address any issue, so your group can engage staff about the issue if appropriate).

   If you indicated any group members contributed notably more or less than others across a milestone, briefly describe your perspective on that. This might be praise for a perceived strong contribution, or it might be your perspective on a dynamics around perceived low contribution.

   Additionally, if there are any challenges with group dynamics such that you would like staff to be aware or to consider engaging, you can also share that here.

   If there is nothing notable to share, you can simply indicate you feel things are going as expected.

3. Individual Check-In

   If you would like the staff to be aware of any factors that impacted your individual contribution during this milestone, we encourage you to share them here. Additional context, such as your expectation of confidentiality and whether your group members are aware of any situation, is also useful for helping the course staff support all group members.

   If there is nothing notable to share, you can simply indicate you feel things are going as expected.

An example contribution statement therefore might be:

Group Name, Milestone Name

Your Name

Percentage Contribution Estimates

• Your Name: 25%
• Name: 20%
• Name: 15%
• Name: 30%
• Name: 10%

Group Check-in

Overall this milestone went smoothly, Name really took the lead on coordinating our design research and did a great job with it! Other Name was less involved in conducting the design research, but they communicated this clearly and it was not a problem.

Individual Check-In

I was sick during the first week of the milestone, but communicated that to my group and then worked to catch up in the second.

If there is anything in your contribution statement that suggests a challenge in contribution (e.g., in your percentage contribution estimates, in your group check-in comments, in your individual check-in comments), or if there is anything that leads you to anticipate continued challenges in future milestones, we encourage you to reach out via email to the course staff. Contribution statements are intended to support your own reflection and to pro-actively gather everybody's perspective, but an email to the course staff will help ensure prompt engagement with this information.

The staff also understands that percentages are incomplete and subjective, so we gather them only as a summary indication and do not use them directly in any grade calculation.

In addition to contribution statements at each milestone, we will separately solicit overall project group feedback.