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Calendar

Proposed Calendar

Future meetings: August 2, August 16, August 30 Room 14-400, 1:00-3:00

Auxilliary visual design meeting July 26, noon, room 14-700

Meeting Notes and Minutes

Meeting Notes

Models for SIAT's Undergrad Curriculum

What is SIAT?

What is a Curriculum?

What is a curriculum?

Models

Current Thoughts For Years 1 - 4

Year One

Year Two

Year Three

Year Four

Specialized UCRACK Meetings

Auxiliary ucrack: Visually-oriented classes

Curriculum Machine

Note: "the machine" enables anyone to change the number of classes, in order to see how that change affects the whole plan. (Thanks Rob!)

Diane will put the new and improved version here shortly.

Skills Inventory

INVENTORY OF SKILLS THAT UNDERGRADUATES NEED TO ACQUIRE

Critical and Creative Thinking

Critial & Creative Thinking (W) IAT 209

How do you know a good idea is a good idea?

Course covers methods of generating ideas, testing ideas and communicating them effectively in visual, textual and oral forms to persuade a target audience.

• Writing (several genresof academic/professional writing) relation between form & context

• Reflective practice: examine their credibility, signs of limited thinking

• Critical reading: relation between active reading and their critical writing

• Analysis: test ideas, evaluate arguments, id faulty reasoning

• Rhetorical practice: use of tone and voice in scientific/technical writing, art criticism, oral discourse

• Critique: measure objectivity/subjectivity of their critical voice

• Case study: compare & contrast usccessful & failed technologies (What is innovation?), id roles of opinion leaders & change agents

• Scenario/role-play: teams research a failed technology, assume role of prof. communicators through research, composition & design aimed at persuading

• Teamwork: midterm & final projects are collaborative, req. peer evaluation & ind. reflection

First Year Foundations

Everyone takes 1st year foundations: what are they? (see example, above)

• Critical thinking

• Team work

• Understanding both form and content of genres and styles

• Composition of one's own ideas in specific styles and genres

• Writing

• Speaking

others????

Knowing how to design

formal (composition, color, line, composition, form, proximity, hierarchy, contrast...)

Human-centred (perceptual, cognitive and social/communicative abilities, limitations, and preferences)

•• Culture

•• Psycholology

•• Perceptual science

•• Cognitive science

•• Kinesiology

•• Enaction (perception/cognition/action loops, e.g. sensemaking, gameplay "cognitive ludology")

Iterative design process: (Analyze context, design, prototype, test)

•• Evidence-based design: reflection on action

•• formulate questions from practice

•• seek information

•• ground in practice

•• implement in design

•• evaluate in context of use

Design methods

•• participatory design: engaging user in context as co-designers

•• design ethnography: participant/observation field work; interpretation

•• contextual design: analysis and design in context

•• speculative approaches: cultural probes, design games, seamful design

•• evaluation: empirical evaluation, criticism, qualitative/quantitative analysis

•• generative: informances, body-storming, future-workshops

•• user-centered design

Evaluation

• Formative and Summative evaluation methods

• Evaluation metrics-- measurement, reliability, validity

• Empirical methods-- experiment, quasi-experiment, observation

• Testing for design goals (e.g. games vs workplace)

Knowing how to represent designs

• Sketching

• Writing

• Photography [see "Media Skills" below]

• Basic videography for documentation/communication (a bit different in focus than storytelling per se) [see "Media Skills" below]

• CAD

• Solid modelling

• Parametric modelling

• Animation

• Software models,

Toolkit architectures

Media Skills

• still and video camera operation

• use of microphones and audio field recording

• introduction to post-production photo, sound, and video software

• production planning and storyboarding

• composition

• "seeing" and using light

• basic manipulation of image

• sequencing still and moving images

• processing and editing sound

• expressive use of sound

• combining and sequencing sound and image

Knowing the artifact -- the internal view of the artifact

• Software: Anchored in Problems and Applications germane to SIAT
  • Java, C++. Python, Flash, Max, other programming languages
  • Data structures: Arrays, Records, Objects,
    • Linked Lists, Queues, Stacks, Binary trees, B-Trees, red-black trees, Quadtrees, k-D trees
    • Heaps, Hash tables
  • Algorithms
    • Searching: Sequential Search, Binary Search, Radix Search
    • Sorting: Quicksort, Bubblesort, Heapsort
    • Strings: Recursion, Parsing, recursive descent
  • Object-Oriented Programming
    • Inheritance, encapsulation, interfaces and signatures, polymorphism
    • Templates, Standard Template Library,
  • Object-Oriented Design: Design Patterns
    • Singleton, Composite, Decorator, Iterator, Chain of Responsibility, Factory Method, Abstract Factory, etc
  • Computer Graphics
    • Frame buffer, pixels, RGBa, compositing,
    • Hidden-surface removal, z-buffer, depth sort
    • Polygon rendering, lighting, shading, texturing
    • Modeling: Polygons, curves, smooth surfaces
  • Database and Information Retrieval
    • Tables, Keys, Joins, SQL
    • Ontologies, metadata
    • Search, cosine similarity, n-Grams, indexing
    • Web Back-end techniques

• Text & Image

• Software tools for Prototyping interfaces

• Prototyping 3D objects (this is a composite skill that needs to be unpacked)

• Interactive animation (depending on the domain, may be a representational concern)

• Interface design

• Electronics

• Mechanics

• Statics

• Materials

• Manufacturing processes

• web design

• exhibition design

• designing for public spaces

• game design

Knowing how to work with others

• Teamwork

• Collaboration

Understanding designs in context -- the external view of the artifact

• design history

• Ethnography: the user in context of culture, practice, organization

• task analysis

• user testing

• Usability

• semiotics

• user

Other Aspects

• cultural and media studies

• Speculative design (combines cultural studies/critical theory with making; non-normative)

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Please see documentation on customizing the interface and the User's Guide for usage and configuration help.