Syllabus

CSE 340 – Spring 2024

About This Course

Essential Links:

• Canvas
• EdStem
• Gradescope
• Topics & Assignments (below)

Teaching Team

Lecture and Section Schedule and Locations

Office Hours

Learning Objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Describe different human needs and abilities and how those should inform user interface design, adaptability, and evaluation
• Design and implement user interfaces for mobile applications, including interfaces with custom components.
• Audit user interfaces for their accessibility by people with different abilities.
• Use reactive programming patterns to manage application state with immutable data
• Be familiar with model-view-controller and observer-style architectures
• Be able to design and implement custom interface layout algorithms (cut due to ASE strike)
• Program in Dart and Flutter

Course Policies

Grading

Extensions

The teaching team is happy to provide extensions in response to emergencies. Please contact us (see Communications, below) to request such exceptions as soon as you are able. If at all possible, you should do this before the assignment deadline. 

We discourage submitting work late, as this limits the amount of feedback we can give you to help you to learn more. However, assignments may be submitted late by following the resubmission process for this course (see next section). Note that resubmissions can only be used for assignments for which feedback has been released– for most assignments, this means you will not be able to use a resubmission until at least one week after the initial due date.

Resubmission policy

Learning from mistakes is an important part of mastering any skill. To enable this, you are allowed to revise and resubmit your work on any assignment or report/reflection in order to demonstrate improvement after your initial submission. Note that class work (participation) is not subject to the resubmission policy.

Resubmissions are subject to the following rules:

• You may not resubmit an assignment until feedback has been released for that assignment (typically about a week after the initial deadline)
• Resubmissions must be submitted through a provided form, and must be accompanied by a short write-up describing the changes made. This will both support you in being deliberate about the changes you make and ease grading of resubmissions by making the changes clear.
• Your updated assignment materials will be resubmitted through Gradescope in the same way you initially submitted your assignment. The course staff will re-open a Gradescope assignment to accept late work once feedback has been released and the resubmission form for that assignment has been opened.

• Code will be committed to your Gitlab repo and turned in through the Gitlab submission button.

• A maximum of one assignment can be resubmitted each week.

• Resubmission cycles will end on Sunday evenings at 11:59pm

• You may only resubmit an assignment once.
• You will have a limited time after you receive feedback to do your resubmission for an assignment. Typically this will be 1-2 weeks.
• We will not accept resubmissions on the final project.
• An assignment that has been found to involve academic misconduct may not be resubmitted
• As with regrades, when you resubmit an assignment, we will look at the entire assignment. Therefore, it is possible for your grade to go either up or down through this process. We recommend you carefully re-read the specification as well as our feedback before asking for the resubmission to be graded.

Note that it is in your best interest to correctly submit something that demonstrates progress by the due date, then continue to work on the project and do a resubmission after you have received feedback. That way you will get at least one round of feedback which you can use in your resubmission.

Regrade Policy

Reflecting on feedback is one of the most valuable ways you can learn from your mistakes, and we encourage you to do so. If you have a question about a grade you received or if you feel the grade you received is incorrect, please email an instructor for an appointment to discuss the assignment and your grade in detail.

It is also possible for the graders to make mistakes. If that happens we certainly would like to correct the error. Please note the following: When you request a regrade, we may look at the entire assessment, homework or reflection. Therefore, it is possible for your grade to go either up or down through this process.

We will be using Gradescope to grade almost all of your assignments. Gradescope has a mechanism to manage regrade requests, including the length of time regrades will be accepted. Regrade requests for assignments must be submitted within one week of when the grade was returned to you.

• The time limit for such regrade requests will be detailed in the email you receive from Gradescope when your work is graded.
• Follow the Gradescope instructions on how to submit a regrade request.
• You must submit any requests separately for each problem with an explanation of why you want this problem regraded. Remember the more detail you provide the more likely we will be to give you an accurate response to the regrade request.
• It may be helpful to also send a private message on EdStem to the instructors that you are requesting a regrade, particularly if there are many parts to it.

Disability Accommodations

We are happy to provide whatever disability accommodations we can to support your success in this class. That includes both permanent and temporary health conditions (mental or physical). You do not need to disclose your conditions to us.

If you have an accommodation letter from DRS, please share it with Prof. Shapiro (see Communications, below). He may share details about your accommodation needs with the teaching team for the purposes of ensuring that we can work together to support you.

Even if you do not have an official disability diagnosis or accommodation from UW, you may also request accommodations. Please contact Prof. Shapiro directly (see Communications, below) to discuss this. You do not need to share your medical or mental health details to make such a request.

Religious Accommodations

People of all faiths, or none, are welcome in this course.

When you complete the Attendance and Conflicts form, please indicate the dates of religious events that are pertinent to your faith, and describe what accommodations would best support you. We will do all we can to address your needs. To ensure that we fully comply with UW’s Religious Accommodations Policy, please also submit a Religious Accommodations Request  within the first two weeks of this course.

Extenuating Circumstances

We recognize that our students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and can have widely-varying circumstances. Extenuating circumstances can include physical or mental health and wellness, work-school-life balance, familial responsibilities, military duties, unexpected and unavoidable travel, or anything else beyond your control that may negatively impact your performance in the class. If you have any unforeseen or extenuating circumstances that arise during the course, please do not hesitate to contact the instructor to discuss your situation as soon as possible. The sooner we are made aware of the situation, the easier it can be resolved and the more likely we will be able to offer flexibility. While we will make every effort to support and accommodate students experiencing difficulties, we are far more likely to be able to assist before a deadline has passed than after. Note that requests for extensions are generally not granted retroactively.

Academic Integrity

Academic integrity is an important value that we adhere to in this class. Please read and comply with the Allen School’s guidelines on academic conduct.

You may use whatever online or in-person documentation, tutorials, or other resources you wish to do the assignments for this class. However, the work you submit should be substantively your own.

Here are examples of acceptable uses of online resources:

• Downloading a book about Flutter and following along with its examples to figure out how to create a stateful widget
• Using Copilot to get help fleshing out the color scheme for a custom widget
• Browsing code on github to see how others have implemented similar functionality

Here are examples of unacceptable conduct:

• Asking your friend to do your homework for you
• Asking co-pilot to generate an entire widget or program for you
• Copying code from github and changing a few things here and there to make it match your goals without crediting the github author

We recognize that there is a gray area between the first (acceptable) Copilot example and the second (unacceptable) Copilot example. We do not want to prohibit you from making use of helpful tools, but also want to ensure that you are learning all you can from this course. Here are some rules of thumb that you may find helpful:

• You should be able to explain the reasoning behind every line of code (or documentation) that you submit.
• At least 90% of the tokens in your programs should be typed by you.
• If you are unsure whether something is allowable, be conservative.

• If you want help navigating this uncertainty, ask the teaching team for guidance.

• When making use of others’ code, or Copilot-generated code, document that you have done so.

Communications

We want you to succeed in this class, and an important way that you do that is by asking questions and discussing course issues with your peers and teaching staff. Some ways to do that include:

We have a class discussion board on Ed (link above), where you can make public posts that benefit the whole class, and are answered more quickly because your fellow students can help the course staff by responding too.

This is the best way to ask questions about things like homework and programming.

Before posting, please search through the questions that have already been posted in case someone has already asked the same question.

We hold office hours in person and remotely.

If none of those times work for you, you can also discuss matters with us privately on the Ed discussion board. Using Ed notifies the whole course staff at once and is faster than email.

If none of these work for you, you can send an email to Prof. Shapiro.

Remote Instruction

Zoom

Zoom will be used for some number of office hours or special sessions, but lecture and section are expected to be in person.

Guidelines and Expectations

Students are expected to adhere to the following expectations for remote instruction in CSE 340. These guidelines are intended to help class go more smoothly, facilitate questions and group activities, and foster a sense of community within the class.

Video

You are not required to have your video turned on during remote office hours or instruction. However, we do encourage you to have your video on, not to monitor you, but to help to create a sense of community in the classroom.

Audio

Please keep your mic muted unless you’re asking a question

Asking Questions

When in person, to ask a question, raise your hand.

In the event that class, section, or office hours take place via Zoom, and you wish to ask a question, you may use the raise hand feature in zoom, or type “hand” in the chat. When we can, we will call on you to unmute yourself and ask your question.

You may also post questions in the chat, but you may be asked to unmute your mic and ask your question aloud.

It may be helpful for some students to see the instructor speaking even when the instructor is sharing their screen. This can be achieved by right clicking the instructor’s video and choosing “pin” video. Then, under “view options” you can choose the side-by-side option which will enlarge the instructor video

Inclusivity

Our goal is to make CSE 340 a welcoming environment for all. We are working toward using a broad base of examples in our course material. Please let us know if you see an opportunity to improve our course materials to be more representative of our student population. Additionally, if you experience interactions with anyone that are excluding or otherwise uncomfortable, please reach out to the course staff so that we can address the situation. Should you feel uncomfortable bringing up an issue with a staff member directly, there are a number of Community Feedback Mechanisms and Resources including the Anonymous Feedback form, but understand we can not respond to you directly if you use the latter. Responses, if possible, will be broadcast to the class as a whole or systematic changes to the class when necessary.

Sexual Harassment

University policy prohibits all forms of sexual harassment.

• If you feel you have been a victim of sexual harassment or if you feel you have been discriminated against, you may speak with your instructor, teaching assistant, the chair of the department.
• You can also file a complaint with the UW Ombudsman’s Office for Sexual Harassment. Their office is located at 339 HUB, (206)543-6028. There is a second office, the University Complaint Investigation and Resolution Office, who also investigates complaints. The UCIRO is located at 22 Gerberding Hall.

Platform Compatibility Matrix

In this class, you will create applications that can run on desktop/laptop computers as well as mobile devices.

The operating system on the computer you develop on affects what operating systems you can compile your applications for (i.e. can target).

* we haven’t tested this scenario

Schedule of Topics and Assignments

Assignment details will be posted on Ed and Canvas.

Topics listed below will be covered in lecture or section.

Peer audits are due within 5 days after the submission of the assignment that is being audited.

Install Guides:

• macOS 
• Windows 
• Linux

Additional Resources:

• Handy Dart/Flutter Links To be updated over the quarter. Suggestions welcome.
• Git cheat sheet by GitHub

Week 1

Topics Covered

• Course goals, non-goals, and policies
• Getting your devices setup for development

• We recommend using VSCode for this course, but you can use other editors if you like. We cannot provide support for other IDEs/editors.

• Dart crash course

Assignments

• Setup your computer and mobile devices for development
• Submit Attendance and Conflicts form
• Dart 101 (in Ed)

Week 2

Topics Covered

• Git refresher
• Properties of People – Part 1
• Flutter UIs are Widget trees
• Auditing accessibility

Assignment: Fake calculator

Week 3

Topics Covered

• Immutable vs. Immutable data
• Stateless and Stateful widgets

Assignment: Weather app

Week 4

Topics Covered

• Dynamic data
• Accessing sensors
• Robustness

Assignment

• Weather-sensitive, location-aware Seattle food guide

Week 5

Topics Covered

• Reactive programming
• Properties of People – Part 2

Assignment

• Journal app, Part 1

Week 6

Topics Covered

• Event handling & Time travel
• Drawing

Assignment

• Journal app, Part 2
• Open Source Discovery (no audit needed)

Week 7

Topics Covered

• SUS testing

Assignment

• Drawing app with infinite undo, redo, and replay

Week 8

Topics Covered

• Coordinate systems and manual layout
• Final project requirements

Assignments

• Pie menu widget
• Start final project

Week 9

Topics Covered

• Students choose! Possible topics include

• Syncing user data to the cloud
• Integrating ML into your app
• …
• Or just having project work time

Assignments

• Keep working on final project

Week 10

Topics Covered

• Final project presentations

Acknowledgements

We thank Prof. Jen Mankoff for originally creating this course, and the many students and TAs who have taken and/or taught it over the years. Their experiences and feedback inform how we are teaching this class now.

The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Duwamish, Puyallup, Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations. Please learn more about native lands.