CMSC 828F - Fall 2004
Prof Guimbretière

Advanced Introduction to HCI

Homework #4 (due 12/2/04):
Paper review

The goal of this homework is for you to review 2 papers from another group in this class. You will present your review in class.

Key points of a review

Your review should focus on the following points:

• What is the key contribution of the paper?

• Is this contribution well presented and the paper well structured?

• Is the experiment design adequate to test the authors' hypothesis?

• Is the experimental design sound (issues such as measurement validity, external validity and internal validity should be considered),

• Can it be easily reproduced by a skilled graduate students?

• In there analysis, do authors take into account the possible shortcoming (if any) of their design?

• Are the results supporting the authors' hypothesis?

• Do authors work help us understand HCI better?

When writing a review, it is important to point out both positive and not so positive aspects of the work, to support all your points, and to be precise enough so that authors might address all your comments. As a rule of thumb your reviews should be written so that if the authors were to address all your remarks and submit the paper again you will most probably accept the paper. In all case it is important to stay polite.

Assignment

For this homework, you are asked to write a 1 to 2 pages review addressing the points above for two papers. Please note that your reviews will be forwarded anonymously to authors.

Grading

Each project will receive 2 to 3 reviews and will be asked to grade each review according to the following scale:

• (-) the review was not judged constructive,

• (+) the review was useful,

• (++) the review was very useful (the reviewer provided substantial feedback on how to improve the paper).

Each + received by a reviewer will add one point to the final reviewer grade for the class. Reviewer grades should be provided with the final version of the paper.