Saturday, May 28
Module Reviews
AY15/16 Sem 1
NM4227 - LAJ1201 - CS4249 - CP3201 - CP4101
Whew! Sorry I've been super busy sorting my life out here in the States. 
These are the modules I took last year. Since I took them a considerably long time ago, I might not be able to recall too much detail.
As usual you can find my semester files here.
NM4227 Playable Art
In this module, you learn about
art games, do readings and make art games.
For an NM module, it was a little more on the
heavy side with 3 reflections, 1 essay and 2 projects (also depends on how much you have to carry your team).
I had a super fun time! My two game projects, "Marry Lah" and "Despairity" were
showcased in the NM art exhibition,
Random Blends 
And as usual, since Alex (the bestest NM lecturer) was teaching it, everybody was in good hands.
Assessment
Basically your projects are 60% of your grade and the rest depend on your essays.
Lectures
Lectures are very relaxing especially towards the end where you get to playtest everybody else's games. Just go with the flow
Essays
I always did badly in Alex Mitchell's essays so what I did this time was ask him many questions about his requirements. I ended up doing pretty well for the reflections and artist essays.
In the case of my
game artist review, I split my sections into About artist, About their games, Thesis Statement, Analysis of 2 Games (further split into Gameplay, Artist Intentions, Critique), and Conclusion. My artist this time was
Gregory Weir, and my thesis statement was "
The mix of interactivity and textual narrative in Weir’s games, if not well integrated, could hinder the player’s experience."
If you're going to take this module, choose an artist that has games on newgrounds/kongregrate. Why?? So you can use the
online comments section as evidence to your critique.
PROTIP:
Always update your teacher on your ideas and drafts. Not only you get tips and a better feel of what they want, think of it as extra word count. When your teacher starts to grade your work, they already have an idea of what you're going to write. I believe it makes them think your work is easy to understand, but in actual fact, you've already explained your ideas to them before, and their mind will fill in information automatically.
Projects
As usual, groups in NM modules are
randomly assigned (yay)
Project 1 is a
board game. My team had lots of fun designing and playtesting our game, Marry Lah, which basically favours married couples inside the game just like how Singapore gives benefits to married couples but not singles.
We had to submit the board game and a copy of game rules.
Project 1 Board Game
Project 2 is a
computer game. Since I was the only programmer in my group I programmed the game. It's the first time I didn't have to do the art too! Honestly the artist did a really great job. The producer was also really hardworking and took care of the submissions and presentations for us. The designer was nice to work with as well.
You can play our game
HERE.
Project 2 Computer Game
What I loved most was getting to play other people's games!
10/10 recommended module.
Final grade: A+
LAJ1201 Japanese 1
Assessment
CA (formula not released)
|
75%
|
Final exam
|
25%
|
I had such a great time in Tokyo
... So, I
made the mistake of taking took this module.
If you've had little to zero experience in Japanese like me, you'll find the workload to be medium-heavy. (Heavy, if you're an arts student lol)
Class participation is important. Before every tutorial, you're required to complete homework exercises in the homework packet, and memorize a japanese dialogue. There is also a quiz every lesson which means you'll be memorizing ~30 new vocab every week. The homework, quizzes and participation add up to 75% of your total grade. So if you're a quiet student like me, you'll lose a bit of points
The
final exam consists of oral, listening and written assessments.
- Everybody dies in the listening quiz in the final - don't worry, your suffering is short. My friends' advice was to listen to the recordings given with the textbook. Don't just watch lots of anime - that didn't work out for me.
- For the oral, you must familiarize yourself with the kaiwa (会话？) in the textbook. The stuff tested is more or less what you hear in the recordings given with the textbook.
- For all written exams including the midterm and final, the most important book you should study is the Grammar helper book (the light pink one). The textbook can be largely ignored.
Final grade: B+
CS4249 Phenomena And Theories Of Human-computer Interaction
Assessment
Assignment 1: AutoComPaste - Experiment Design and Analysis
|
25%
|
Assignment 2: Fitts Law, KLM, Cogtool
|
25%
|
Class participation
|
10%
|
In-class quizzes
|
10%
|
Final exam
|
30%
|
As a UX Designer, this was one of the most useful modules for my career. If you want to be a UX Researcher, this module has everything you need.
- I learned about proper HCI user research and experiment processes.
- I picked up R for statistical analysis.
- I picked up Cogtool to analyse the efficiency of interfaces.
- I learned useful stuff about humans such as memory, task modeling, biases, heuristics - things you should think about when designing interfaces.
The
assignments are quite time consuming - especially the first one, where you need to plan an experiment and get ~6 people you know to help you test an application. The experiment is very repetitive and boring for your tester, so you pretty much owe your testers big time afterwards
The
final exam is very doable if you study the material well and do past year papers. Make sure to attend the revision session because it will make you aware of some tricks they put into questions.
Final grade: A-
CP3201 Industry Seminar
This is an
ungraded module - you either get Participation (2MC) or none. I took it because I was short of a few points to graduate.
The
talks are interesting because people from different industries - health startups, banks, traditional software engineer companies - will come and talk to you about their work life. Of course this is their way to entice you to join them but it is a good opportunity to network if you're interested.
"
Join this module if you want to find out about all the jobs you DON'T want to have later on in your life" - a friend of mine
I skipped most of the talks but I still got my 2MCs.
CP4101 B.Comp. Dissertation
This is your famous FYP that spans two semesters.
However, you have to bid for your topic in Week 7 of the semester before. Remember to pick a good supervisor and most importantly a topic you have interest in. You have to spend one. year!!!
Some of my deliverables:
Efficiency analysis
Prototypes
Wireframes
Even though my FYP was heavy and I was so burnt out at the end, I got to research, design and code an entire app. To me, that's an accomplishment and I learnt a lot from my mentor :)
Alrighty - I have to sleep!! Going to visit the Monterey Bay Aquarium tomorrow to see penguins and deep sea creatures
#byeresponsibilities
Labels: CP3201, CP4101, CS4249, design, fyp, LAJ1201, module reviews, NM4227, NUS, NUS module reviews, school
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