Empirical methods for user experience

The course is a practice-oriented learning experience in which students apply empirical methods to effectively design and evaluate interactive systems. The course teaches the practical and theoretical means to study requirements and evaluate interactive artefacts through conducting user research, gathering data, analysing studies and interpreting results. The course familiarises students both with methods widely implemented in the industry and tools for academic research. The course prepares students for professional and research tasks related to evaluation in the interaction design profession. Through being familiar with a portfolio of methods, students will be comfortable planning their evaluation studies and interpreting study results. Knowledge on conducting studies will enable students to assess the quality of studies presented to them. The students will be empowered to make better design decisions based on study results. The curriculum covers basic and advanced study designs for requirements gathering and evaluation. The course addresses qualitative data gathering and analysis, understanding and designing experiments, quantitative data processing and interpretations. The students develop the skills to rapidly integrate effective evaluation in the interaction design process. Students are introduced to tools for qualitative and quantitative data analysis. These tools are later applied to specific design cases. Interpreting the results, using real design cases, is a key activity. The students learn how to design an effective evaluation strategy for an interactive system and how to curate an effective set of methods for a given design case. The course actively discusses how to conduct studies ethically and integrate evaluation seamlessly in the interaction design process.