Homeworks, CS 419/519: Inclusive Design with Personas, Fall 2017

Homework #1: Reverse-engineer Abby

Meet "Abby". Abby is a persona I've been working on with a group of colleagues as part of an emerging method we call GenderMag. (GenderMag is an evaluation method for finding software features that may not be gender-inclusive.) Your mission is to pretend like you and your teammate are in the process of creating Abby for a company you both pretend to work for (Company X).

Specifically, with your temporary teammate, do the following to fill out this template:

Using Appendix C as a guide, describe the "pretend" lifecycle processes you followed for Abby, for the family planning lifecycle stage only, ie pp 184-189. You'll need to have a feeling for the Abby persona and for Appendix B for this, because Appendix B gives an idea of the kind of substantiation you're aiming to achieve for your Abby persona.
What to turn in:
- The Company X "pretend" core team to create the Abby persona. See pp 184-185. It should end up looking like the bullets in the middle of p. 185.
- The Company X "pretend" answers to each category shown on pp. 185-186 (Product problems, Resources, etc.), using the subbullets on pp. 184-186 as examples.
- The Company X "pretend" action plan to create the Abby persona. See pp 185-189. It should look like Figure C.1, but with specifics filled in. For example:
  - Organizational introspection about xxxxx.
  - Data collection of data about x and data about y.
  - What stakeholders exactly?
  - Who is doing the evangelizing exactly?
  - And so on for the various activities C.1 suggests
- The "pretend" data you're pretending you'll use in creating the Abby persona. It should look like Figures C.3 and C.4. The "questions" in Figure C.3 came from figuring out what they were aiming to solve. In your case, you can refer to what Abby looks like right now to come up with questions, along with the problems you invented when you used the bullets on pp. 184-186 above.
  Note 1: Figure C.4 shows places they found that they thought might be useful, but at that stage they hadn't read them yet to decide whether or how to use them.
  Note 2: Don't do a literature search for this assignment; just "pretend" you know the sources to look in. (Literature searches will happen later in the course.)
How to turn it in: Use TEACH: 419 Submission 519 Submission
Note: On-line foundation documents for Abby are here as an additional example, but they are not the style or level of detail I expect from you in this assignment.
You can find the grading policy for HW1 here.

Homework #2: Poll for special class session

A UX professional from Microsoft is interested in bringing an inclusive design problem to our class for brainstorming, provided that we can work out the schedule. This class will be a 2-hour session that will also serve as the make-up classes for two earlier cancelled classes, as promised.

Here is the Doodle poll to find out what times are possible for most of you to come. Filling out this poll also gives you full credit for "Homework #2".

Deadline to fill it out: Friday, Nov. 3.

Grading policy: 1 point if you fill out the poll. 0 points if you don't.

Margaret M. Burnett
Date of last update: Oct. 27, 2017