Data Systems Project

6 EC

Semester 1, period 1, 2, 3

5294DASP6Y

Owner Master Information Studies
Coordinator dr. Lise Stork
Part of Master Information Studies, year 1

Course manual 2025/2026

Course content

This project stretches over the whole first semester and will let students from both tracks work together so that you can apply gained knowledge to solve a complex problem in a real world project. The Project is founded on two pillars:

1. Experience and understand the creative process of developing an interaction environment as part of research into complex systems, with a particular focus on stakeholder research, user-research, data identification, context mapping, interaction design from agile development to a technologic prototype, and evaluation (validation).

2. Stimulating personal & professional leadership, via activities that improve team building and project management skills, and activities that contribute to one's intellectual development, autonomy and employability. These activities are either organised by the students themselves, or are offered in the form of workshops. The aim, of this course is also to introduce students to a rigours application of academic skills, such as research question formulation, experiment design, and evaluation.

Within the 20 weeks of this projects the students work in groups of not more than 5 students and design, implement, and evaluate the interactive prototype  for a complex application. The overall structure of each project is  ideation (September - October), prototyping (November - December)  and implementation / evaluation (January). 

The application has to fulfil the requirements provided by the client, where the focus lies on the finding of a multi-disciplinary solution by

  • Understanding the client requirements, resulting in a requirement document (ideation)
  • Development plan and schedule (ideation, prototyping, implementation / evaluation)
  • Creative exploration of means of interaction available to address the client’s problem (ideation)
  • Reflecting on the findings and decision making regarding the potential prototype (ideation / prototyping)
  • Conceptualising the prototype (prototyping)
  • Iterative implementation (Implementation / evaluation)
  • Test (Implementation / evaluation)
  • The findings will be presented in a final report and in the annual DSP conference end January, where selected groups present during the conference sessions and all groups present during the poster sessions.

Objectives

  • Execute interviews to discover stakeholder’s needs in designing a data system.
  • Translate stakeholder's needs into a problem definition and set of requirements and design goals and create a problem definition.
  • Carry out a literature study with respect to the problem context.
  • Successfully explore and utilize a set of strategies in response to the problem.
  • Evaluate, adjust, and select promising interaction solutions via interaction design standards.
  • Produce a working prototype of a proposed interaction approach.
  • Validate assumptions with experiments and evaluate an (early) prototype on the basis of a scientific evaluation.
  • Reflect upon and justify design decisions in written as well as public oral form.
  • Reflect on social factors that influence the design.

Teaching methods

  • Lecture
  • Seminar
  • Self-study
  • Presentation/symposium
  • Supervision/feedback meeting
  • Computer lab session/practical training

This course offers various types of working methods

  • Working independently on e.g. a project and final deliverables

This is the main working mode in this project. Depending on the arrangement of the level of cooperation between groups within a project, groups have to organise their work independently but are helped by the supervisor. This includes planning meetings with stakeholders, design and implementation sessions, preparing the final material that will be graded, etc.

  • Workshops

There will be 6 workshops in the User Interaction Lab. ○ workshops 1-3: Ideation (September/October) 
○ workshop 4-6: Prototyping (November/December) 

  • Lectures

4 lectures are planned. The aim is to provide enough pointers to further help you to work structurally in your project.

○ 2x Ideation research methods○ 2x Prototyping research methods + validation

  • Supervision/feedback meeting

Each group has a supervisor assigned. During the ideation and prototyping phases, meetings should be arranged twice per block, where each group gets an adequate time for discussion. In January, groups will get a supervision session of every Monday and Friday.

  • Symposium day

The course will end with a Symposium day (attendance mandatory), in which all project groups present their work. 

Learning activities

Activity

Hours

Deliverables

8

Werkcollege

130

Self study

30

Total

168

(6 EC x 28 uur)

Attendance

In TER part B of this programme no requirements regarding attendance are mentioned.

Assessment

Item and weight Details

Final grade

Inspection of assessed work

Grades will be announced to students via an email.

Assignments

Each group has to provide the final report, a 3 minutes pitch video, the poster, and, if selected for the conference presentation, the presentation.

The complete set of contributions will be evaluated as such:

Alignment of the solution to the needs of the stakeholders

Did the students describe the problem of the stakeholder?  Did  the students show that they established a need/requirement list? Did they later show that their discussion that they solved the problem/ answered the stakeholders need.

20%

Successful exploration and utilization of a set of strategies in response to the problem or assignment

Did the students explain why the chosen approach is reasonable (based on discussion with experts or on a literature review) and can they then show that the chosen strategy for the solution is performed properly.

Did they acquire the knowledge needed to cary out the project? Is the methodology appropriate and performed in a state-of-the-art fashion?

10%

Reflection and justification on design decisions

Did the students show that they understand the pros and cons of the decisions they have taken.

10%

Validation user-experience of the prototype 

Do the students address validity problems of the study? Is the test method described appropriately.

20%

Sustainability/feasibility and technical quality of the final product +Discussion

:Is the chosen approach easily extensible? Would it work in a daily setting? Does the group discuss the pros and cons of the chosen approach and reflects on alternatives?

If applicable, was the relevance for society well recognised (technological aspects, ethicas  aspects, historic context, or environmental aspects). Is the  description of the context readable for a non-expert in the field? 

20%
Presentation of the final product & process 10%

Team management

How was the overall working attitude of the group?  Did the group take initiatives by themselves to carry out the project? How did the group organise/plan work?

Did the students actively participate in work discussions? How  was the cooperation of  group members during the  research?

10%

 

Each student has to finish the course with at least a 5.5.

Fraud and plagiarism

The 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' applies to this course. This will be monitored carefully. Upon suspicion of fraud or plagiarism the Examinations Board of the programme will be informed. For the 'Regulations governing fraud and plagiarism for UvA students' see: www.student.uva.nl

Course structure

WeeknummerOnderwerpenStudiestof
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

Contact information

Coordinator

  • dr. Lise Stork