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By Jiajing Sun on Nov, 2017

Course expectations

I entered the semester with three clear goals. The first was to apply the web design skills from my earlier coursework in a real, end-to-end project — this was fully achieved through both the major group project and this portfolio. The second was to deepen my experience with HCI research methods. We conducted user testing with a low-fidelity prototype, though time and scope constraints meant we couldn't pursue more rigorous engagement methods such as interviews or longitudinal studies. That goal was partially met; it highlighted how much user research can be compressed under academic deadlines, something I've since had to navigate repeatedly in industry. The third goal was to develop my project and team leadership skills. Taking on the team lead role for the major project gave me direct experience in planning, delegation, and managing people through ambiguous technical problems — skills that have become central to my professional practice.

Learning across the course

The course covered a broad range of skills: interactive design theory, software engineering fundamentals, quality assurance, PHP, and Ajax. More valuable than any single topic, however, was the experience of running a full design lifecycle from concept through deployment. The pitch and critique sessions built communication confidence and the ability to defend design decisions under scrutiny — both of which have been equally important in my career. The side research I conducted into automated music score transcription, while ultimately inconclusive for the project, reconnected me with image processing techniques from my earlier computing background and gave me an early appreciation of how difficult the machine perception of structured documents really is.

What I would do differently

The most significant personal improvement area was documentation discipline. At the time, recording process and reasoning felt like overhead. In retrospect, thorough documentation is what separates maintainable work from work only the original author can understand — a lesson that has become more apparent with every year in engineering. I would also have pushed harder for a second round of user evaluation against the final implemented product; testing only the paper prototype left real usability questions unanswered at launch. On the course design side, reducing duplicate effort between journals and portfolios — and introducing more structured content on version control and testing — would better prepare students for the realities of collaborative software development.