Table of contents

1. Course Format
   1. Curriculum and practice
   2. Final project
2. Weekly Format
   1. Lectures
   2. Discussion Sections
3. Office Hours
4. Attendance & Participation
5. Accounts
6. Grading Policy
7. Late Policies
   1. Extension Requests
8. Dropping A Quiz Grade
9. Group Work
10. Etiquette for Dropping the Course
11. Climate & Incident Reporting
12. Academic Misconduct Policy
    1. Attribution and Cheating
    2. Citing sources
    3. Quizzes
    4. Cheating
13. FAQs
    1. I have a question, how do I contact the teaching staff?
    2. Are there any required supplies?
    3. What can I talk about in office hours?

Course Format

Curriculum and practice

For the first five weeks, lecture occurs three days a week (Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday), studio once a week (Mondays during lecture), and section occurs twice a week. While lectures and studio focus on introducing core HCI concepts, sections reinforce these concepts and help students improve technical skills. Outside of class, students will work individually or in pairs on weekly projects. Weekly projects allow students to engage in the design cycle and develop technical skills.

Final project

Using design methodologies and technical skills learned during the first five weeks, students will work in groups for the last three weeks to ideate, prototype and implement a final project. Students will choose their own design methodologies and project topic within a theme. During the last three weeks, final project studio will take the place of lecture and studio. Final project studio provides in-class time for teams to work together and receive feedback from course staff.

Weekly Format

Lectures

We will have lectures on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11am-12:30pm every week. Studios will be led by CS 160 Teaching Assistants and lectures will be taught by Instructors. A general weekly schedule can be found below:

• Monday: Studio (in-person)
• Tuesday: Lecture (in-person)
• Wednesday: Lecture (remote)
• Thursday: Lecture (in-person)

Lectures will be recorded, and recordings will be made available on the course syllabus page.

If you miss a lecture, you can complete a make-up assignment by watching the recording and filling out this form. Lecture slides can be found in the Lectures subfolder of the student-facing Drive folder.

Discussion Sections

Each week, we will cover 2 topics. We will offer a total of 8 sections every week, allotting 4 sections per topic. Discussion section attendance is not counted towards your grade, however - students should try to attend 1 section for each topic to get the most of the concepts taught in these offerings and be prepared for upcoming assignments.

Section slide PDFs can be found in the Section subfolder of the student-facing Drive folder.

Office Hours

Office Hours will be posted on our Google Calendar.

Attendance & Participation

You are expected to attend all lectures and all studios. Everything that we say in class may be included in any assessment, and may be difficult to obtain through other channels. After lectures or studio, you may be expected to complete an assignment that will be simple to complete for those in attendance. Studio sessions and any breakout room discussions will not be recorded. Lectures will be recorded, and recordings will be made available on the course syllabus page.

If you miss a lecture, you can complete a make-up assignment by watching the recording and filling out this form.

Sections are not required, but we anticipate in many cases they will be extremely useful to your success in the course and beyond. Make sure you do not have conflicts with at least one section time for each topic so you can get timely help preparing for assignments and practicing skills.

There are 30 total participation points – participating in a lecture or studio session earns you 1 participation point. You need only 20/30 participation points to receive a full participation grade. You can also earn participation points by being active on the course Slack. At the end of the course, excellent participation will be taken into account for students with borderline final grades.

Accounts

Grading Policy

Final grades will be determined with the following breakdown:

30% Weekly projects: The weekly projects each consist of Design Cycle Checkpoints. Each checkpoint will be graded independently with a detailed rubric. These rubrics will be released with the grades. All submissions should adhere to the guidelines for successful submissions.

30% Final project: Final projects take place during the last three weeks of class in assigned groups of 4-6. For grading, we will take into account several aspects of the final project process: teamwork and participation, design checkpoints, observation/need-finding, evaluation, implementation, and deliverables (e.g., presentation, poster, article).

20% Participation: Your participation grade is determined based on your attendance, preparation, and participation in class and studio, and the feedback you provide on your peers’ designs. It is also determined by your activity on the course Slack. Studio takes place on Mondays, then Mon-Thurs for the last 3 weeks of class, and you will provide feedback on peers’ designs.

20% Assessments: Every week for the first 6 weeks, there will be a quiz. The quiz will cover content throughout the week, so we encourage you to complete it progressively during the week instead of waiting until the end. It will be multiple choice and short answer, and will cover lecture material (including breakout room prompts), readings from any prior week, and readings from the current week. There is no midterm or final exam.

The grading bins will follow standard bins:

If the class grade distribution ends up being too low relative to EECS grading guidelines, we may curve grades upwards. And remember, we’ll take high participation into account for students on the borderline!

Late Policies

This is an accelerated 8-week course, and assignments tend to be accumulative – it can be easy to fall behind. Please plan accordingly and communicate with course staff before you get overwhelmed - we are here to help you succeed!

Unexcused late submissions incur a 25% penalty per day they are late.

Students each have 5 Slip Days they can use on their assignments. These are meant to be used for extenuating circumstances. When submitting an assignment late, please fill out this Slip Day Form. If you do NOT submit a slip day form, we will simply assume you want to save them for later, and deduct points for tardiness accordingly. On team assignments, all team members will lose a slip day(s) for late submissions.

Extension Requests

In order to efficiently process extension requests, we are using this Extension Request Form. If you would like to request an extension on an assignment, please fill out this form before the due date, as this allows us to easily evaluate and make a decision on your request.

If you are not in the Disabled Students Program and would like to request an assignment extension (i.e. under extenuating circumstances) - please include as much information and/or documentation as possible to help us understand the nature of your request. If you are in the Disabled Students Program, and we have received a copy of your accommodations letter, timely requests for extensions <= 4 days are automatically approved.

If you require an extension longer than 4 days, we may need to check in with you, and work out a plan to keep you on course for success in the class.

Dropping A Quiz Grade

In addition to the policy above, we will drop your lowest quiz grade. If you need to miss a single quiz, that quiz will receive a 0 but can be dropped as your lowest score.

Group Work

When you work in pairs and groups, each group is responsible for making sure that all members are participating. After each project, you will be asked to describe the effort put in by each member of the group, both on specific tasks and as a fraction of the group’s effort. Make sure you discuss this regularly, to make sure your group is in agreement about the work breakdown.

If a group member is not participating, the entire group must meet with the teaching staff. Effective group work (which entails some amount of conflict resolution) is a key skill for success in industry. We would like you to work through conflicts if at all possible, and we will devote some class time to this topic.

Etiquette for Dropping the Course

The majority of the work in this course is conducted in pairs and groups. Dropping the course in the middle of a project will have negative consequences for your peers. If you drop the course, do so only after seeing through your current project. Please commit to the course by the time you are assigned to your final project group.

Climate & Incident Reporting

We aim to create a class where students work respectfully with each other and feel they are treated equitably by our course staff. However, we acknowledge that may not always be the case.

If you ever think that you (or another student) are being marginalized, excluded, or being treated disrespectfully, please fill out this EECS Student Climate & Incident Reporting Form. You are also more than welcome to reach out directly to either Diyah or Shm.

Academic Misconduct Policy

Attribution and Cheating

In this course, we encourage students to learn and draw inspiration from each other. In this class, you will do significant work in pairs and in groups. Though deliverables for some assignments are individual, and the final work should be your own, we encourage general discussion among students about the topics being covered in class.

Citing sources

For the design portion of weekly projects (typically cycles I/II) and the final project we encourage you to draw inspiration from existing work and seek feedback on your designs. Be sure to cite your inspiration sources and feedback partners. When drawing inspiration from existing designs, focus on elements you want to incorporate (e.g., bold colors, low contrast, sharp corners) rather than copying the design as a whole. One rule of thumb is that you should be able to justify how your design differs significantly from existing examples.

Utilize only resources and assets (e.g. images) that you have permission to utilize, and that you properly attribute in your Design Reports. The #resources-and-links channel in Slack is a great place to find and share quality sources for images, icons, etc.

For the implementation portions of weekly projects, write your own code. It’s important to us that each of you know how to assemble user interfaces on your own so you can be productive contributors to your group. As such, you may speak with other students about their assignments, and can see parts of their code, but no copy and paste is tolerated. Cite any resources from which you borrow source code, layout code, or algorithmic ideas to your project, including Stack Overflow and external GitHub projects, as a comment adjacent to the code with a URL to the source and a description of what you reused.

Quizzes

Quizzes are meant to reflect your current understanding of the concepts, and must be completed independently. Your answers can include things you have learned from readings, lectures, or discussions with others.

Cheating

If you are feeling overwhelmed or highly stressed by the course requirements, please reach out to the instructors. Cheating and plagiarism will not be tolerated, and will get negative (not zero) points on the assignment. Please familiarize yourself with the UC Berkeley Student Code of Conduct. We expect all students and teaching staff to conduct themselves according to the UC Berkeley Honor Code.

“As a member of the UC Berkeley community, I act with honesty, integrity, and respect for others.”

FAQs

I have a question, how do I contact the teaching staff?

Please use Slack for all course-related questions. If you have a technical or logistical question about an assignment, please use the class messaging feature on Slack. If you have a personal issue pertaining to the course, you may use the private messaging feature on Slack to message staff. Slack lets us organize and efficiently respond to questions. Please refrain from sending emails.

Are there any required supplies?

Yes. In lieu of a text book, we will require supplies for design and prototyping tasks. Ideally, you will acquire your design supplies for the first assignment. At the latest, you will need supplies for the first wireframe assignment and studio critique.

What can I talk about in office hours?

We will hold many office hours each week. Keep in mind they may be quite busy the day before challenging assignments are due. We highly encourage everyone to make use of office hours; examples of topics that can be covered include design critique of in progress work, debugging assistance, life advice, conceptual brushups of course topics, etc.