Curriculum
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Descriptions
COMP_SCI 315, 415: Design, Technology, and Research


VIEW ALL COURSE TIMES AND SESSIONS

Prerequisites

Permission of Instructor

Description

Design, Technology, and Research (DTR) is an CS and Segal learning initiative that empowers students to drive cutting-edge research through the development of systems that shape new experiences with people and technology. Students participate in DTR through fast-paced, quarter-long programs (intended to be repeated). Students work with a mentor to identify a direction of research, explore and iterate over designs, prototype at varying fidelities, build working systems, conduct evaluative studies, and report findings through conference publications. As a cohort, each week students demo their prototypes, provide and receive feedback, and help each other resolve technical challenges. DTR adapts and extends agile development and design-based research practices with scrums, sprints, studio critique, design logs, and pair research. View course website

  • This course satisfies the project requirement, Interfaces Breadth requirement.

COURSE INSTRUCTOR: Prof. Haoqi Zhang (Fall, Winter & Spring)

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

Below is a rough schedule for the course. Students meet with the instructor weeks prior to signing up for the course to determine a research direction.

  • Weeks 1 & 2: Learn relevant web, mobile, and wearable technologies.
  • Weeks 1 to 5: Rapidly prototype at increasingly higher fidelities and go through numerous design iterations based on frequent user feedback and in-lab testing.
  • Weeks 6 to 8: Setting up and conducting user studies to test key hypotheses.
  • Weeks 8 to 10: Analyze collected data and report on their findings. Write academic papers for submission to leading publications as well as blog articles for the general audience.

PROJECTS: Undergraduates participate in DTR for one or more quarters. Each quarter is a well-scoped, self-contained research project that culminates in a working prototype, a user study or deployment, and an academic paper. The first time a student participates, the student meets with their mentor in the weeks before a session starts to brainstorm project ideas and research directions. They start with as many as 10-15 ideas, narrow down to a handful that the student’s most interested in, and then dive in to brainstorm and identify a specific project for the quarter. Once a project is identified, a student works individually or in a small group to drive the research.

COURSE GOALS: A first-time participant is expected to build a functioning prototype, conducting a small scale study (10-40 users), and write most of an academic paper (e.g., all sections with the exception of related work). A student continuing beyond a quarter will typically expand on their project by building a scalable, deployable system, conducting medium to large scale studies (100-1000+ users), and writing the entire research paper themselves. As students develop their design, technical, research, and communication skills, they are expected to mentor other DTR students, and to help others with both technical challenges and the research process.