| Course Code | COMP4511 |
| Course Title | User Interface Design and Construction |
| Lecturer in Charge |
A/Prof Nadine Marcus |
| Admin |
Maliha Mian
m.mian@unsw.edu.au |
| Classes |
The lectures (Tuesday 4-6pm, and Wednesday 11am-1pm) are common for undergraduates and postgraduates. Lectures on Tuesday will focus on UX issues, and Wednesdays will be reserved for learning React Native. Each student should be enrolled in one of the designated 2-hour tutorial/laboratory time slots
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| Consultations | TBA |
| Units of Credit | 6 |
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Course Website
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Moodle |
| Handbook Entry | http://www.handbook.unsw.edu.au/undergraduate/courses/current/COMP4511.html |
COMP4511 is a hands-on project-based course designed to build and solidify the basic skills you acquired in COMP3511/9511. Students will be required to build their interface at least three times (remember the process is iterative!), once as a low fidelity prototype, moving to a higher fidelity electronic prototype and finishing with a beta version of the app. This semester, we will be using React to help us write the app. The course will provide you with a basic understanding and the building blocks required to create your app, and let you guide the design and development process.
The process doesn't start with coding, it starts with an understanding your users. You develop personas of your target audience and work through the design issues: What information are they going to be dealing with? What are the workflows? How are they going to interact with the application? What is the application going to look like?
As you learned in Human Computer Interaction, you have to conceptualise your design on paper and evaluate prototypes with users. Then you start on the design of your system, not focussing on just the code but also the object-oriented design. You will build the code implementation iterating through both your object-oriented design and your user interface design.
The real insights come when we usability test your application. Do your users really understand how to use your application? Does it work the way that they expect - not what you as a programmer expect. That's the challenge. What is the difference between a bug and a design flaw? Proper evaluation techniques will help you uncover both.
We teach a process that is relevant to industry. Preparing students for the real-world challenges of user interface design. And face it, user interfaces are everywhere.
The process is not just about putting buttons and text on screen. COMP3511 only touched the surface of what user interface design is all about. Are you up for the challenge of designing graphical user interfaces?
COMP3511 Human Computer Interaction is a pre-requisite and you need a mark of 70 or better (you are expected to start design, prototyping and designing usability tests in the first week). You should have completed COMP2911/COMP9021 which introduces you to object oriented techniques, UML and design patterns, with a mark of 65 or higher.
It is assumed knowledge for this course that you are already familiar with the basic concepts of user centred design cycle, heuristic and cognitive evaluations, paper prototyping, and usability evaluations. Additionally, you must be able to write a number of usability-based documents, including consent forms, questionnaires, usability test plans, etc. (learnt in COMP3511/9511). Students are also expected to be familiar and comfortable working with OO concepts (learnt in COMP2911/COMP9021). Because students come from a variety of backgrounds, with different knowledge bases, the assumed knowledge is not extensive. The course does, however, involve some reading that will be based on industry experience and standards.
This course is designed to further develop student understanding about the theories and principles behind user interface design. The students are expected to undertake a semester long project, where they will gain familiarity with both low- and high-fidelity prototyping techniques and will also be introduced to React Native to assist with the development of a functioning prototype or an app. At the completion of the course, students should be able to:
This course contributes to the development of the following graduate capabilities:
| Graduate Capability | Acquired in |
| Scholars capable of independent and collaborative enquiry, rigorous in their analysis, critique and reflection, and able to innovate by applying their knowledge and skills to the solution of novel as well as routine problems |
Lectures, tutorials/labs and assignments
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| Entrepreneurial leaders capable of initiating and embracing innovation and change, as well as engaging and enabling others to contribute to change |
Lectures
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| Professionals capable of ethical, self- directed practice and independent lifelong learning |
Labs and assignments
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| Global citizens who are culturally adept and capable of respecting diversity and acting in a socially just and responsible way | Lectures |
Every week, starting in Week 1 we will have lectures on Tuesday and starting in Week 2 also on a Wednesday. We will use the Tuesday lecture to explore UX and UI methods and gain further understanding of concepts within the space. On Wednesdays, we will focus on playing with React Native and putting together some example apps. The lectures will consist of lecture material, design diary and design exercises and activities. We expect all students to engage and participate with the content, ask questions and use this time to solidify understanding of material. Please remember that you will get a lot out of this course if you engage with the content and with us and ask lots of questions.
You will need to attend your enrolled tutorial in the mode for which it is allocated. The online tutorials will be run using a link via Blackboard, and the face-to-face tutorials will be held in the CHIL (Computer Human Interaction Laboratory) G13-K17, ground floor Mac lab. If you are feeling unwell or showing any symptoms and need stay at home: https://edtech.eng.unsw.edu.au/c19mess/comms.html . Please ensure you make contact with your tutor to make alternate tutorial attendance arrangements if you have selected face-to-face classes.
Some of the tutorial time will be dedicated to project work under the guidance of your tutor, with the rest of the time spent on React Native and usability exercises. The project will be extensive and will require your attention and hard work to get through. In Week 3 we include a small React Native deliverable to get you more familiar with the tool early on. In Week 4, 5, 7 and Week 10, you will have checkpoints for your project work, to make sure that you are on track to meet project deadlines and to continue with projected timelines. Late penalties will be applied if you have not adequately prepared for these checkpoints. This is also a great time to ask any question relating to the project or otherwise and receive feedback on your work.
Design Diaries will be an important assessable component of this course. You are welcome to either keep a digital design diary using OneNote on the Teams app, OR use a physical design diary and scan your pages in to upload to OneNote, OR convert content to a PDF using another tool. Design Diaries will be submitted in week 5 and week 10, as a PDF for consistency purposes. Your design diary will be used to assess and comment on your project progress and milestones. It will also include weekly lecture activities. You are encouraged to use your design diary creatively – feel free to doodle, write down ideas, sketch down ideas and use the design diary as you see fit – think of it as a graphical and textual timeline of your project development. Use it like a coding sandbox – to try new things and experiment with different ideas! Feel free to use the pen and paper method, and upload images to the digital diary space.
We will be moving through the lifecycle at a rapid pace and it is therefore important that you can keep up with all the deliverables and associated readings.
This course is evaluated each session using the myExperience system.
Lab-based feedback will be used to gather further feedback about the course. We take all feedback seriously and approach the design of this course using user centred design philosophies. Students are also encouraged to provide informal feedback during the session, and to let the lecturer in charge know of any problems, as soon as they arise. Suggestions will be listened to very openly, positively, constructively and thankfully, and every reasonable effort will be made to address them.
In the previous offering of this courses, some students noted that they struggled with only engaging properly with React Native too late in the course. We are thus introducing a mini React Native deliverable due in week 3, to help get you going with this sooner. We also plan to have a few React Native consultations later in the term to help support students with related issues.
There were also comments about the need to log into different sites for different things as well as the poor forum tools in WebCMS. We will thus be using Moodle as the main LMS with links to other tools and content as needed. I note that we conducted a mini user study of the pros and cons of the different LMSs and don’t believe there is a perfect solution as each system supports certain tasks better, but we are attempting to find a better solution based on previous year’s feedback.
And lastly, we will introduce a one-minute video submission of your group project ideas so that these can be viewed and shared amongst all the course teachers, so that everyone can get more feedback early in the project life cycle.
The Student Code of Conduct ( Information , Policy ) sets out what the University expects from students as members of the UNSW community. As well as the learning, teaching and research environment, the University aims to provide an environment that enables students to achieve their full potential and to provide an experience consistent with the University's values and guiding principles. A condition of enrolment is that students inform themselves of the University's rules and policies affecting them, and conduct themselves accordingly.
In particular, students have the responsibility to observe standards of equity and respect in dealing with every member of the University community. This applies to all activities on UNSW premises and all external activities related to study and research. This includes behaviour in person as well as behaviour on social media, for example Facebook groups set up for the purpose of discussing UNSW courses or course work. Behaviour that is considered in breach of the Student Code Policy as discriminatory, sexually inappropriate, bullying, harassing, invading another's privacy or causing any person to fear for their personal safety is serious misconduct and can lead to severe penalties, including suspension or exclusion from UNSW.
If you have any concerns, you may raise them with your lecturer, or approach the School Ethics Officer , Grievance Officer , or one of the student representatives.
Plagiarism is defined as using the words or ideas of others and presenting them as your own. UNSW and CSE treat plagiarism as academic misconduct, which means that it carries penalties as severe as being excluded from further study at UNSW. There are several on-line sources to help you understand what plagiarism is and how it is dealt with at UNSW:
Make sure that you read and understand these. Ignorance is not accepted as an excuse for plagiarism. In particular, you are also responsible that your assignment files are not accessible by anyone but you by setting the correct permissions in your CSE directory and code repository, if using. Note also that plagiarism includes paying or asking another person to do a piece of work for you and then submitting it as your own work.
UNSW has an ongoing commitment to fostering a culture of learning informed by academic integrity. All UNSW staff and students have a responsibility to adhere to this principle of academic integrity. Plagiarism undermines academic integrity and is not tolerated at UNSW. Plagiarism at UNSW is defined as using the words or ideas of others and passing them off as your own.
If you haven't done so yet, please take the time to read the full text of
The pages below describe the policies and procedures in more detail:
You should also read the following page which describes your rights and responsibilities in the CSE context:
If your work in this course is affected by unforeseen adverse circumstances, you should apply for Special Consideration through myUNSW, including documentation on how you have been affected. If your request is reasonable and your work has clearly been impacted, then
All students will complete a semester long project, which will involve designing, implementing and evaluating a user interface. To get an industry like experience which requires collaborative work we will be doing this in groups of 3-4 students. Remember that user interface design is an iterative process, your project will involve AT LEAST three iterations – starting as a low fidelity prototype, a higher fidelity prototype and finally with a beta version of an app, using React Native. Because iterations take time, we need to get started as soon as possible on the project. There will be formal checkpoints in your tutorial/studio time (in Week 4, 5, 7 and Week 10) to assess your progress with the project and provide you with feedback. Online Moodle submission links will be available for these deliverables. The purpose of these is to make sure you remain on track to finish the project and to provide feedback through the various stages of the design and development process. The project specification will be available in Moodle and will be discussed in the early lectures.
| Item | Due | Marks |
| React Native Deliverable | Week 3 | 2% |
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Design Diary
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Weeks 5 and 10 | 24% |
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Assignment 1 Individual Research and Presentation
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Week 8 | 24% |
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Group Project
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See spec for details | 50% |
This is the intended course schedule. Subject to changes. Moodle will contain the up-to-date schedule.
Texts and recommended readings:
Other resources (e.g. links to on-line documentation) will be provided linked from the lecture slides.
Resource created Saturday 25 June 2022, 08:42:32 PM, last modified Saturday 24 September 2022, 10:36:14 AM.