DS4UX (Spring 2016)/Schedule

Week 1: March 28

Day 1 plan

Assignments due

• fill out the pre-course survey

Agenda

• Quick introductions — Be ready to introduce yourself and describe your interest and goals in the class.
• Why Programming and Data Science for UX Research? — What this course is about
• Class overview and expectations — We'll walk through this syllabus.
• Group formation — We'll assemble in our peer programming groups for the first time.
• Installation and setup — You'll install software including the Python programming language and run through a series of exercises.
• Interactive lecture: programming concepts 1
• Self-guided tutorial and exercises — You'll work through a self-guided tutorial to practice the basic concepts we introduced in the lecture.

Homework

• Complete Self-guided tutorial and exercises (if you didn't finish this in class).
• Complete CodeAcademy lessons

Resources

• Python for Informatics: Preface and Chapter 1 Why should you learn to write programs?
• Command line cheat sheet — covers basics like ls, pwd, cd and much more.

Week 2: April 4

Day 2 plan

Agenda

• We will review the programming concepts introduced last week as a group.
• We will introduce some new programming concepts into the mix.
• We will play a guessing game (click here to download the code)
• We will use what we have learned so far to cheat at Scrabble.
• We will introduce our first set of Coding Challenges.
• We will take a sneak peak at what a good final project looks like.

Homework

• Complete the second set of CodeAcademy lessons
• Work on the Week 2 coding challenges

Resources

• Python for Informatics: Chapter 2 Variables, expressions and statements and Chapter 3 Conditional execution
• Python data types cheat sheet
• Python loops cheat sheet
• Working within loops
• Wordplay handout
• cdsw-au2015-lecture1-20151010.ogv -- Mako Hill's lecture video from a previous course, which covers most of the concepts from my Week 1 and Week 2 lectures.

Week 3: April 11

Day 3 plan

Agenda

• We will review your feedback from last week
• We will walk through the solutions to the code challenges from last week
• We will introduce some new programming concepts
• We will walk through an example of programming in a UX Research context
• We will begin working on a series of exercises using the Baby Names dataset

Homework

• Day 3 coding challenges

Resources

• go here

Week 4: April 18

Day 4 plan

Agenda

• Week 3 code challenges — We'll briefly walk through the concepts and solutions to the Week 3 coding challenges as a group.
• Day 3 follow up — We will cover some important concepts that we didn't have a chance to cover in depth last week.
• Reading and writing files — we will learn how to read and write basic datafiles with Python.
• Burke-Gilman traffic counter — we will start working with a dataset of bike and pedestrian traffic on the Burke-Gilman trail.
• Wikipedia Notifications survey analysis — We will walk through a real life example that uses the concepts we've developed so far to answer research questions.

Homework

• Day 4 coding challenges (Required) Turn in here!

Resources

• Two video lectures by Mako Hill, which covers most of the concepts from NEXT week's lecture (as well as some useful review):

• cdsw-au2015-lecture2-20151024.ogv
• cdsw-au2015-lecture3-20151107.ogv

Week 5: April 25

Day 5 plan

Assignments due

• Day 4 coding challenge Turn in here!

Agenda

• Week 4 code challenge solutions — We'll walk through the concepts and solutions to the Week 4 coding challenges as a group.
• Lecture 1: What is an API? — Ray will introduce us to APIs ("Application Programming Interfaces").
• Exercise 1: PlaceKitten API — we will write our first API requests using the PlaceKitten API.
• Lecture 2: Using data from APIs in Python — Ray will introduce us to JSON ("JavaScript Object Notation"), a type of data structure that is commonly used by APIs, which can be easily imported into Python and converted to a dictionary for analysis.
• Week 5 project: Introducing the Wikipedia API — We will learn the syntax of the MediaWiki API (used by Wikipedia), as well as how to test API queries in a sandbox, and how to perform those queries in Python—in preparation for the Week 5 coding challenges.
• We will go over a list of sample APIs, datasets, and research questions that will get you thinking about what research you want to conduct for your final class project.

Homework

• Day 5 coding challenge (Update: NOT Required)
• Final project ideas

Resources

• Project Idea Assignment resources: some examples of APIs, datasets, and research questions to help you complete your Final Project Idea Assignment.
• JSON formatter and validator: (useful for examining the structure of large/complex JSON blobs)
• Hurl.it API sandbox: like the Wikipedia API sandbox, but can query many more APIs!
• Two video lectures by Tommy Guy and Mako Hill, which covers most of the concepts from this week (as well as some useful review):

• cdsw-au2015-lecture2-20151024.ogv
• cdsw-au2015-lecture3-20151107.ogv

Week 6: May 2

Day 6 plan

Assignments due

• Final project ideas — MOVED FROM WEEK 5
• Day 5 coding challenge

Agenda

• Day 6 lecture

Homework

• Day 6 coding challenge (Required)

Resources

• go here

Week 7: May 9

Day 7 plan

Assignments due

• Day 6 coding challenges (Required)

Agenda

• Day 7 lecture

Coding challenges

• Day 7 coding challenges

Resources

• go here

Week 8: May 16

Day 8 plan

Assignments due

• Final project proposal MOVED FROM WEEK 7

Agenda

• Day 8 lecture

Coding challenges

• Day 8 coding challenges

Resources

• go here

Week 9: May 23

Day 9 plan

Agenda

• Day 9 lecture
• review of key concepts and tools from this course
• presentation workshop

Resources

• go here

Week 10: June 3 (DATE CHANGE)

Please note that this class we will meet Friday evening, rather than Monday evening, because of the Memorial Day holiday.

Assignments due

• Final project presentation

Agenda

• Day 10 lecture - Final project report review, next steps for Data Science
• Final project presentations

Resources

Week 11: June 6

FINALS WEEK - NO CLASS

Assignments due

• Final project report and code due by midnight on Wednesday, 6/8/2016