Overview
User experience design is the practice of designing interactive digital products, services, environments and systems with the aim of supporting and enhancing the user experience. This unit provides an introduction to theories, principles and methods of user experience design. It addresses activities such as conceptualising, designing, prototyping and evaluating interactive products.
Details
Pre-requisites or Co-requisites
There are no requisites for this unit.
Important note: Students enrolled in a subsequent unit who failed their pre-requisite unit, should drop the subsequent unit before the census date or within 10 working days of Fail grade notification. Students who do not drop the unit in this timeframe cannot later drop the unit without academic and financial liability. See details in the Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework).
Offerings For Term 2 - 2024
Attendance Requirements
All on-campus students are expected to attend scheduled classes - in some units, these classes are identified as a mandatory (pass/fail) component and attendance is compulsory. International students, on a student visa, must maintain a full time study load and meet both attendance and academic progress requirements in each study period (satisfactory attendance for International students is defined as maintaining at least an 80% attendance record).
Recommended Student Time Commitment
Each 6-credit Undergraduate unit at CQUniversity requires an overall time commitment of an average of 12.5 hours of study per week, making a total of 150 hours for the unit.
Class Timetable
Assessment Overview
Assessment Grading
This is a graded unit: your overall grade will be calculated from the marks or grades for each assessment task, based on the relative weightings shown in the table above. You must obtain an overall mark for the unit of at least 50%, or an overall grade of 'pass' in order to pass the unit. If any 'pass/fail' tasks are shown in the table above they must also be completed successfully ('pass' grade). You must also meet any minimum mark requirements specified for a particular assessment task, as detailed in the 'assessment task' section (note that in some instances, the minimum mark for a task may be greater than 50%). Consult the University's Grades and Results Policy for more details of interim results and final grades.
All University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
You may wish to view these policies:
- Grades and Results Policy
- Assessment Policy and Procedure (Higher Education Coursework)
- Review of Grade Procedure
- Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - Domestic Students
- Monitoring Academic Progress (MAP) Policy and Procedure - International Students
- Student Refund and Credit Balance Policy and Procedure
- Student Feedback - Compliments and Complaints Policy and Procedure
- Information and Communications Technology Acceptable Use Policy and Procedure
This list is not an exhaustive list of all University policies. The full list of University policies are available on the CQUniversity Policy site.
Feedback, Recommendations and Responses
Every unit is reviewed for enhancement each year. At the most recent review, the following staff and student feedback items were identified and recommendations were made.
Feedback from Student evaluation data, student feedback
The unit evaluations and feedback from students offered minor suggestions for improvement, but no particular themes emerged.
Review feedback, curriculum learning resources and assessment tasks with a view to improving the student experience.
- Explain theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Identify needs and establish requirements for the user experience
- Gather, analyse and interpret data from user experience design activities
- Design a conceptual model or prototype for an interactive product, applying theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Evaluate an interactive product in terms of the theories and principles of user experience design
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Learning Outcomes
| Assessment Tasks | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Practical and Written Assessment - 30% | |||||
| 2 - Practical and Written Assessment - 30% | |||||
| 3 - Practical and Written Assessment - 40% | |||||
Alignment of Graduate Attributes to Learning Outcomes
| Graduate Attributes | Learning Outcomes | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1 - Communication | |||||
| 2 - Problem Solving | |||||
| 3 - Critical Thinking | |||||
| 4 - Information Literacy | |||||
| 5 - Team Work | |||||
| 6 - Information Technology Competence | |||||
| 7 - Cross Cultural Competence | |||||
| 8 - Ethical practice | |||||
| 9 - Social Innovation | |||||
| 10 - Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cultures | |||||
Alignment of Assessment Tasks to Graduate Attributes
| Assessment Tasks | Graduate Attributes | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | |
| 1 - Practical and Written Assessment - 30% | ||||||||||
| 2 - Practical and Written Assessment - 30% | ||||||||||
| 3 - Practical and Written Assessment - 40% | ||||||||||
Textbooks
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction
6th edition (2023)
Authors: Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp and Jennifer Preece
John Wiley & Sons
Hoboken Hoboken , New Jersey , USA
ISBN: 978-1119901099
Binding: Paperback
Additional Textbook Information
Students are not expected to buy this textbook. An electronic version of this textbook or the previous edition can be freely accessed through the CQUniversity Library.
IT Resources
- CQUniversity Student Email
- Internet
- Unit Website (Moodle)
- Adobe Acrobat Reader (free browser plug-in)
- Adobe Photoshop or similar image-editing software
- Google Chrome
- Microsoft Word
- Mozilla Firefox
- Adobe XD (Adobe Creative Cloud student subscription recommended)
All submissions for this unit must use the referencing style: American Psychological Association 7th Edition (APA 7th edition)
For further information, see the Assessment Tasks.
s.pace@cqu.edu.au
Module/Topic
1. Introduction to user experience design
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 1
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
2. The process of interaction design
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 2
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
3. Conceptualising interaction
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 3
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
4. Cognitive aspects
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 4
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
5. Social and emotional interaction
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 5
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
6. Interfaces
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 6
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
7. Data gathering
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 7
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
8. Data analysis, interpretation and presentation
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 8
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
9. Evaluation
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 9
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
10. Discovering requirements
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 10
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
11. Design, prototyping and construction
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 11
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
12. Interaction design in practice
Chapter
Study Guide chapter 12
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
Module/Topic
Chapter
Events and Submissions/Topic
REQUIRED RESOURCES
You must have access to the following resources for this unit of study.
UNIT WEBSITE
The unit website provides essential resources for the unit such as a Study Guide and an online discussion forum. It can be accessed at https://moodle.cqu.edu.au
STUDY GUIDE
The online Study Guide will direct you to all of the essential readings, videos, discussion questions and activities for each module of the unit. The Study Guide is available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) from the unit website.
DISCUSSION FORUM
An online discussion forum will be provided through the unit website for discussing matters that relate to the unit. The discussion forum is the primary means of support for off-campus students who want assistance with tutorial activities and assignments.
WORD PROCESSOR
You will need a word processor such as Microsoft Word for writing parts of your assignments. Microsoft Word is part of Microsoft 365, which is freely available to CQUniversity students at https://cqu365.cqu.edu.au. Sign in with your student email address and password to install the software on your computer.
WEB BROWSERS
You will need a recent version of Google Chrome (https://www.google.com/chrome) and Mozilla Firefox (https://www.mozilla.org/firefox) to explore the Web and test the prototypes that you create. Off-campus students are encouraged to install the latest versions of these browsers. On-campus students may use whichever versions are installed in their local computer lab.
ADOBE ACROBAT READER
You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader, which is a free program that lets you view, navigate and print PDF documents like the DGTL11003 Study Guide. Adobe Acrobat Reader can be downloaded from the Adobe website (https://www.adobe.com).
ADOBE XD
You will need Adobe XD, a software tool for designing and prototyping user experiences for web and mobile applications. Adobe XD is available in the on-campus digital media labs. It can also be purchased at a discounted education price as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription from the Adobe website (https://www.adobe.com/au). To install and use Adobe XD, you need either Windows 10 64-bit version 1909 (19H2) or later, or macOS 10.15 or later.
IMAGE EDITOR
You will need an image editor, preferably a recent version of Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is available in the on-campus digital media labs. It can also be purchased at a discounted education price as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud subscription from the Adobe website (https://www.adobe.com/au).
AUDIO RECORDER
You will need an audio recorder that is capable of saving a voice recording as an M4A or MP3 file for one of the assignments. Many mobile phones, tablet computers and laptop computers have a built-in audio recorder that can be used for this purpose.
1 Practical and Written Assessment
This assignment requires you to evaluate a website and prepare an evaluation report. Please refer to the unit website for the assignment details.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence agents (Gen AI)
Within this assessment, the use of Gen AI agents is as follows:
No Gen AI use at any point during this assessment.
Please refer to the Moodle Assessment tile for specific details.
Week 5 Friday (9 Aug 2024) 9:00 pm AEST
2 weeks after submission
Please refer to the unit website for the detailed assessment criteria.
- Explain theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Evaluate an interactive product in terms of the theories and principles of user experience design
- Communication
- Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking
- Information Literacy
- Information Technology Competence
- Cross Cultural Competence
2 Practical and Written Assessment
This assignment requires you to demonstrate skills in data gathering, analysis, interpretation and presentation. You must: invite a volunteer to perform a task on a website while using the think-aloud technique; collect data about the user’s experience by making an audio recording of what they say during the task; transcribe the recording; code the transcript for significant incidents; and write a report that presents your findings. Please refer to the unit website for the assignment details.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence agents (Gen AI)
Within this assessment, the use of Gen AI agents is as follows:
No Gen AI use at any point during this assessment.
Please refer to the Moodle Assessment tile for specific details.
Week 9 Friday (13 Sept 2024) 9:00 pm AEST
2 weeks after submission
Please refer to the unit website for the detailed assessment criteria.
- Explain theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Identify needs and establish requirements for the user experience
- Gather, analyse and interpret data from user experience design activities
- Design a conceptual model or prototype for an interactive product, applying theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Evaluate an interactive product in terms of the theories and principles of user experience design
- Communication
- Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking
- Information Literacy
- Information Technology Competence
- Cross Cultural Competence
- Ethical practice
3 Practical and Written Assessment
This assignment requires you to create a user persona, a navigation map, and an interactive prototype for a web or mobile software application for a fictitious business. You are also required to write a report that explains your design decisions. Please refer to the unit website for the assignment details.
Use of Generative Artificial Intelligence agents (Gen AI)
Within this assessment, the use of Gen AI agents is as follows:
No Gen AI use at any point during this assessment.
Please refer to the Moodle Assessment tile for specific details.
Week 12 Friday (4 Oct 2024) 9:00 pm AEST
2 weeks after submission
Please refer to the unit website for the detailed assessment criteria.
- Explain theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Identify needs and establish requirements for the user experience
- Gather, analyse and interpret data from user experience design activities
- Design a conceptual model or prototype for an interactive product, applying theories, principles and methods of user experience design
- Evaluate an interactive product in terms of the theories and principles of user experience design
- Communication
- Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking
- Information Literacy
- Information Technology Competence
- Cross Cultural Competence
- Ethical practice
As a CQUniversity student you are expected to act honestly in all aspects of your academic work.
Any assessable work undertaken or submitted for review or assessment must be your own work. Assessable work is any type of work you do to meet the assessment requirements in the unit, including draft work submitted for review and feedback and final work to be assessed.
When you use the ideas, words or data of others in your assessment, you must thoroughly and clearly acknowledge the source of this information by using the correct referencing style for your unit. Using others’ work without proper acknowledgement may be considered a form of intellectual dishonesty.
Participating honestly, respectfully, responsibly, and fairly in your university study ensures the CQUniversity qualification you earn will be valued as a true indication of your individual academic achievement and will continue to receive the respect and recognition it deserves.
As a student, you are responsible for reading and following CQUniversity’s policies, including the Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure. This policy sets out CQUniversity’s expectations of you to act with integrity, examples of academic integrity breaches to avoid, the processes used to address alleged breaches of academic integrity, and potential penalties.
What is a breach of academic integrity?
A breach of academic integrity includes but is not limited to plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, cheating, contract cheating, and academic misconduct. The Student Academic Integrity Policy and Procedure defines what these terms mean and gives examples.
Why is academic integrity important?
A breach of academic integrity may result in one or more penalties, including suspension or even expulsion from the University. It can also have negative implications for student visas and future enrolment at CQUniversity or elsewhere. Students who engage in contract cheating also risk being blackmailed by contract cheating services.
Where can I get assistance?
For academic advice and guidance, the Academic Learning Centre (ALC) can support you in becoming confident in completing assessments with integrity and of high standard.
What can you do to act with integrity?
