CS295J/Assignments

Assignment 11 (out April 10, due April 17, 2009)

Part A (due Tuesday at noon)

First, revise any contribution that you added to the proposal to reflect our converging view of what we are proposing. Given the evolution of the proposal since the contributions were originally created, if you wish to start with a fresh set of contributions, you can propose them here

Own one or more of the possible tasks below (enough to spend 8-10 hours on). Edit this page to indicate your ownership and to describe enough details of what you'll do for the group to avoid duplication. It's ok, for exmaple, for two folks to try using or extending CPM-GOMS with different extensions or a different application; indicating what your extension/application is, though would be helpful. It's also fine to add tasks to the list.

Part B (due class time)

Revise any parts of the preliminary results that you have added. That may include adding things that you would like to do, taking out pieces that don't fit into our worldview any longer, or revising things. The "CPM-GOMS for gmail" project presented today, for example, should go into the preliminary work section to establish viability of CPM-GOMS in the context of a more modern application.

Complete owned task(s).

Possible Tasks (also consider those from last week -- add here if you pick one)

• Possible additions to the proposed research
  • Experiments with EEG to determine if they can inform modeling
  • Maybe similar experiments with muscle sensing or body motion
• Possible preliminary experiments
  • Try some EEG
  • Try some low-cost muscle tracking
  • Try to decode some captured events
  • Try to get some pupil-tracking thing going and sync'ed with other events
  • Try some light-weight JavaScript-based mouse tracking (will see how far I can get in 10 hours) (E J Kalafarski 15:16, 14 April 2009 (UTC))
• Other
  • Get "Human information processor model" concept into related work; ernestine is canonical example, but other more recent work too
  • Revise proposal introduction again, emphasis on our new converging view (E J Kalafarski 15:13, 14 April 2009 (UTC))
  • Will revise and expand "big world" significance and contributions, based on the output/architecture we discussed last week (E J Kalafarski 15:15, 14 April 2009 (UTC))
• CPM-GOMS
  • Extend the cognition element in the CPM-GOMS model to account for dual-process theories of reasoning. (OWNER - Gideon)
  • Extend the model by incorporating an 'Affect' output, instead of just relying on time as the only dependent variable. (SUGGESTED BY - Gideon; Ian (I like this idea))

Assignment 10 (out April 3, due April 10, 2009)

Part A (due Tuesday at noon)

Own one or more of the possible tasks below (enough to spend 8-10 hours on). Edit this page to indicate your ownership and to describe enough details of what you'll do for the group to avoid duplication. It's ok, for exmaple, for two folks to try using or extending CPM-GOMS with different extensions or a different application; indicating what your extension/application is, though would be helpful. It's also fine to add tasks to the list.

Part B (due class time)

Complete owned task(s).

Possible Tasks

• read CPM-GOMS and consider as theme (E J Kalafarski, Eric, Jon, Gideon, Trevor, Steven, Ian)
• converge proposal (ID weaknesses & fix or propose fixes)
  • make contributions and aims agree (Trevor)
  • make contributions and aims compelling and significant
    • intro acceptable (merge the two best) (E J Kalafarski: will rewrite intro, merging the two best "in progress" intros, with an emphasis on the project's interdisciplinary aspect)
    • improves world, lots of people, in big ways, long time (E J Kalafarski: will brainstorm and add to "big picture" contributions, but someone else should brainstorm this as well, Eric)
    • extends knowledge, increased productivity (designers and users) (Eric)
    • bg & significance section consistent with contribs/aims (Ian)
• try CPM-GOMS, maybe w/ 1 extension (Gideon, Steven)
• what's input and output (architecture)? (E J Kalafarski: will attempt to come up with an architecture that accommodates all seven proposed modules and presents a simple, useful final product, Jon: Will brainstorm b/c I've been wondering about this for a long time, Adam, Trevor)
• Gajos paper (E J Kalafarski: will read, consider architecture method, Adam, Trevor)

Assignment 9 (out March 20, due April 3, 2009)

Part A is what we talked about in class -- a revision of the introduction to re-evaluate the big picture. Part B is the original assignment. While I've asked for both below, it may not be realistic given the time available. Please make sure to finish A by class time and to do as much of B as you can.

Part A, due noon Tuesday March 31

Refine your introduction to be consistent with the theme of bringing knowledge of cognitive and perceptual modeling to bear in a principled way on human-computer interface design. Evaluate each of the suggested contributions for their impact, their relevance to the theme, and their cost. Triage as appropriate to achieve the best overall proposal given the 5 years with 5 people scope.

• Link to Intros
• Link to Triages

Part B, due at class time

Complete your 30 hour preliminary work project and writeup in the proposal. It should explicitly support the contributions of the proposal. Consider this a hard, externally imposed deadline, i.e., you have to have something as finished as possible that could be reviewed by an outside reviewer. Trim scope, if necessary, but finish!

Pick another gap in the proposal and plug it. Any section that you have "owned" should also be "final" and reviewable.

Gaps

• Significance (expand further with unified description of relatable components)
• Specific contributions > Multi-modal HCI (question marks, needs content)
• Background > Workflow analysis > Interface improvements (incomplete)
• Research plan (we may have to cut this section, it is woefully underdeveloped)

Read "must reads" -- add one if you want.

Assignment 8 (out March 13, due March 20, 2009)

Part A, due Tuesday noon

• Outline a coherent 250 word summary to a coherent proposal here
• Select a gap to own
  • Andrew Bragdon: Metawork Support Tool proposal; will examine integrating this into the main proposal vs. making a separate proposal.
  • EJ: "Significance/intellectual merit" section is currently bare, I can take a stab at that. I believe this can/needs to incorporate a gap Trevor identified, "mapping between individual contributions and centralized theme of the proposal;" I'll try to start to illustrate the relationships between our individual projects. E J Kalafarski 12:20, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Jon: The "models of perception" section needs to be revised and expanded. I've changed "Gibsonianism" to "The Ecological Approach to Perception" and I've added a section on "The Computational Approach to Perception"; I will update these for Friday.
  • Gideon: More up-to-date background section on distributed cognition. I know Jon is doing this for the other areas, but I feel that this is very important.
  • Trevor: I'll take a pass through the Specific Aims section, which currently lacks specificity. --- Trevor O'Brien 15:29, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
  • Eric: I'll flesh out the Workflow Analysis section. What's there could be cleaned up, and more could be added, particularly on learning from interaction histories.
  • Steven: There's currently no background (slash anything) on the topic of embodied models of cognition, I'll fill in some background on that.
• suggest 0.5 "must read" papers

Part B, due in class

• Finish writing the coherent 250 word summary to a coherent proposal still here
• Fill your gap
• read "must read"s for discussion w.r.t. proposal relevance
• get to another week's worth of results in your preliminary results -- make sure to be consistent with your summary!
• be prepared to tell us about those new results in class, tied to the intellectual claims

Assignment 7 (out March 6, due March 13, 2009)

Part A, due Tuesday noon

• review proposal for
  • intellectual contribution (1-2 paragraphs)
  • major gaps (bullet list) (don't duplicate gaps already listed)
  • review goes here
  • feel free to improve any part of the proposal rather than criticizing it, if you wish :-)
• suggest 0.5 "must read" papers

Part B, due in class

• read "must read"s for discussion w.r.t. proposal relevance
• get to another week's worth of results in your preliminary results
• be prepared to tell us about those new results in class, tied to the intellectual claims

Assignment 6 (out February 27, due March 6, 2009)

• If you are not familiar with NIH proposals, skim through this active proposal to get a sense of the sections. The guide to nih proposals may also be helpful.
• Create some preliminary results
  • Start the work you proposed in your poster for assignment 4
  • Start the work someone else proposed :-)
  • Create a more detailed critique-enabled workflow of a scientific user
  • Working in pairs is fine; preferably, pair members should have different backgrounds
• Write them up as a subsection of the preliminary results section of the proposal.
  • By Wednesday 9am have an outline of the section you will produce
    • This should be in past tense, as it will be when the work is done.
    • At the top level, it should state how the preliminary results enable the overall multi-year proposal or how they demonstrate feasibility of some questionable or risky part.
    • Check out the NIH proposal for examples, albeit in a different domain.
  • By class have as much filled in from that outline as possible
• Add any "must reads" to the CS295J/Literature to read for class 6 page. You are "expected" to add 1/2 of a reference.
• Read and be prepared to discuss the "must reads".
  • Put in fictional placeholders for parts that are not done by Friday.
• By Wednesday 5pm e-mail constructive comments about at least 1/2 of the outlines to the entire class
• Success criteria for this assignment
  1. Proposal section will demonstrate a feasibility or prerequisite for interesting research
  2. Results by class are complete and concrete enough that they are interesting, even though some parts may be missing

Assignment 5 (out February 20, due February 27, 2009)

1. Videotape a 15-20 minute interactive session with a user doing a visually challenging task for which they are at least an advanced beginner (ie, they don't have to look up what to do, but they have not yet internalized the operations and made them subconscious). Analyze the session and report your observations and conclusions.

Assignment 4 (out February 13, due February 20, 2009)

1. Be prepared to decide on a subset of applications to critique. Flesh out at least one potential application in CS295J/Application Critiques, including a specific workflow. Modify any others you want, particularly in terms of arguments for or against proceeding with them. These should be completed by Thursday noon.
   • Some possibilities: Google scholar, Mathematica, Tableau, Google notebook, Matlab, paper, media wiki, Ensight Gold, AVS, VisTrails. Note that a given piece of software could be represented more than once with a different workflow.
   • Possible criteria: main purpose is analysis, perhaps scientific; interative; scientific; amenable to cognition-driven improvemennts; interesting; fun
2. Bring your ranking of the subset of (application+workflow)s we should critique
3. Be prepared to decide on the CS295J/Model elements of cognition we will emulate to critique each application. Revise some part of this list so that it can be used as a concrete basis for evaluation.
4. Add any "must reads" to the CS295J/Literature to read for class 5 page. You are "expected" to add 1/3 of a reference.
5. Read the "must reads".

Assignment 3 (out February 6, due February 13)

• Flesh out and support a contribution within the proposal
  • Add any new references to the literature section.
  • Many of our readings date from 8+ years ago; check to make sure your contribution hasn't already been done.
  • If any of the new references are "must reads", add to the CS295J/Literature to read for class 4 (2/13/09) page. You are "expected" to add 1/2 of a reference.
  • Estimate the impact of the contribution.
  • Estimate the risk and costs of the contribution.
  • Propose a 3-week (30 hour) result that you could create to demonstrate feasibility.
  • Bring a printout of your contribution concept to class. It should be legible from 2 meters away, so use big text. You can hand-write it on posterboard or paste together printouts.
• Bring a list of holes in the proposal -- e.g., "background section needs something on workflow capture."

Assignment 2 (out January 30, 2009)

• Refine literature short summaries to include the relationship to our project.
• Draft by tuesday noon a subsection in the background section of the CS295J/Research proposal, making sure to include citations to the relevant materials in the literature page. Add any new references to the literature page.
• Read and comment/edit by Thursday noon all background sections
• Revise your background section by Friday noon (so David can print before class)

• Add to or refine one or more specific contribution in the CS295J/Research proposal; each contribution must have a list of ways it can be demonstrated. Some will become part of the preliminary results, others will be parts of the future work that will be proposed.
• Add to or refine one or more specific aim in the CS295J/Research proposal; make it consistent with the contribution you added.

• Identify the one additional most important paper for us to read this week also by Tuesday noon; be prepared to summarize relevance in 2 minutes in class
• Read those "most important" papers for class discussion.

• Be prepared to summarize to the class your contributions to the background, contributions, and aims sections.
• If there is preliminary work that will help to make decisions about contributions and aims, please get started on it (and be ready to report on what you'd like to do or what you have done).

Assignment 1 (out January 23, 2009)

• spend 10 hours adding to any part of the wiki you think is relevant
• by Monday noon add any potential readings. If you've got a tentative summary evaluation, go ahead and add it. It's ok to edit folks summary evaluations, but try to make the result more accurate or precise without losing information.
• by Wednesday noon finish with any summary evaluation and also identify at least one as-relevant-as-possible reading as yours. Put your name on that entry in the reading list as the "owner" so that there are no duplicates.
• by Wednesday 5pm -- select 2 additional relevant readings that are owned and that you will read by Friday and be prepared to discuss. Put your name as a "discussant" in the reading list; there should be a max of two discussants per reading.
• by Friday class -- author a summary description, less than 250 words, in the wiki of how the reading you own relates to our project. Be prepared to describe, in two minutes, how your reading relates to the project. Also be prepared for everyone in class to discuss after your description. You may bring notes for yourself, but no slides. The wiki page for your reading will be displayed while you talk.
• by Friday class -- read and be prepared to discuss the other two readings you choose.
• by Friday class -- make one more wiki page titled "<Last-Name> week 1" with a list of the keys for the citations you added, the readings you summarized, the reading you presented, the two readings you were a discussant on, and any other readings you did in detail.
• Let me know if you have any kind of problems. You should be spending right around 10 hours -- if that's a problem, let's talk.
• The How Tos page has some tips. Edit or add as you find others.