Attendance Policy: You are encouraged to attend all of the lectures and a weekly discussion section. While most of these are optional, there are several required lectures and sections such as the the midterm, the group brainstorming, group interactive prototype presentations, final critique, etc. We will call out the required attendance dates for these and others in advance. Please plan accordingly and do not miss these classes. Missing any of these will affect your class participation. Due to the size of the class, we won't be "catching up" students on missed assignments or details. It is your responsibility to obtain that information from fellow classmates.
Late Policy: Group project assignments may not be turned in late. No exceptions. Students will have two 24 hour slip days that can be applied to individual programming and design assignments. If they are used they must be in day (24 hour) discrete blocks. No additional extensions will be given nor late assignments accepted outside of these slip day usage. To be clear if you hand in an assignment one minute late that will mean you need to apply one of your two 24 hour slip days. We will not break them down into smaller units. They are 24-hour day blocks and you have exactly two for the entire semester. This does not apply to reading responses; there is a zero-tolerance for late reading responses.
Regrading Policy: If you want an assignment regraded, you must submit a hardcopy of your assignment and a written description of why you believe the grade was unsatisfactory no sooner than two days but within two weeks after receiving the grade. Submit the regrade request to Professor Paulos office. Staff will regrade the entire assignment; this means that your grade may potentially drop.
Section Attendance: Section attendance is strongly encouraged and is considered in calculating your class participation grade. You are not required to attend sections but your group must be present for design review sections later on in the semester. This date will be announced and you are required to check the syllabus for that date.
Note: This is largely a design class. Unlike most other CS classes there is not always a single “correct” design solution. Usually there are many possible designs with different advantages and disadvantages. In this class you will learn to both design new interfaces and evaluate the pros and cons of the interfaces you design. As you complete the assignments for this class you should try to point out both the pros and the cons of the interfaces and applications you design.
Design is typically evaluated in a qualitative manner. As a result a significant portion of the grading in this class will be qualitative, including assessments of the end user experience of the system and the quality of your designs, evaluations, and prototypes.
