CS 124 Long paper response guidelines
Your long responses will be 1-2 page critical respones to the reading. Although
you may find it
tempting to respond to each paper separately, try to structure your
response to integrate your discussion of all of the papers.
Your response should go beyond simply summarizing the papers and
critically evaluate the work in the context of what we have studied in
this class. The guidelines listed on William Griswold's "How
to Read an Engineering Research Paper"
are excellent advice for how to read a research paper, but you should
also specifically relate the work to the UI design topics we have
discussed in the first month of this class, addressing questions such
as:
- What interface metaphor are the authors relying on?
- How did they incorporate traditional usability and
UI design guidelines?
- What role does recognition play in the interface and does
it present any unique challenges for interface design?
- In what ways did traditional UI design techniques work or
not work for the interface presented?
In doing your reading and writing your response, keep in mind the
context in which the paper was written. Be sure you know who
the
authors are (their background and where they are now), and when and
where this work was published. You don't have to explicitly
mention this information in your response (you can if appropriate), but
it can help you put the contribution or other aspects of the paper into
context.
These reading responses are vaguely specified on purpose.
Exactly
what you address in your reading response is up to you, but you should
be sure that your response is well structured and clearly addresses
salient and interesting points related to this class. Your goal
is to write critically about the paper, not just summarize it.
You should take a position (in support, or against--but do try to
vary this) on one or more of the papers' main contributions and then
defend that position with specific support from the paper and other
examples from class, in light of the points above.
If
you are having trouble and feel that these responses are too open
ended, please come talk to me and I will help you identify a direction
for your response. Not
understanding what you
were supposed to do is not an excuse for a poor response.
Futhermore, remember that everything you learned about good
writing in HUM 1 will come in very handy here.
Finally, keep in mind that these responses should be relatively short
(aim for under 1.5 pages, single spaced, 12-point font, or shorter).
It will be important to be concise in your writing, but also,
don't go overboard with the content of your response. A
short,
focused response focusing on one or two main issues is better than one
that tries to incorporate every issue we've talked about in class.
You might find it helpful to take a look at the grading rubric for these papers before you start writing.