GitLab-sponsored Tufts University Human Factors/Engineering Psychology Capstone Course

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On this page

• Capstone course overview
• How to get involved
• Sponsor requirements
• Project proposals
• Best practices as a sponsor

At GitLab, we believe everyone can contribute. In that spirit, members of the UX Department can volunteer to sponsor a project for the Tufts University Human Factors Engineering/Engineering Psychology (BS) senior-level students to take on during the spring semester.

We engage, support, and recognize students during the capstone design experience. As an industry sponsor, GitLab works with the students to solve an existing problem that is relevant to both Tufts and our organization.

If you are an Individual Contributor (IC) looking to level up your leadership skills and support the design community, this is a great opportunity to share your knowledge, learn from each other, and coach the students during the capstone project.

Capstone course overview

The program duration is 15 weeks. Students participate in groups of 4-5 to solve human factors problems or design challenges set by industry sponsors.

Throughout the semester, students will deliver professional-level work, including weekly reports and presentations (with peer review), article reviews, and sponsor meetings/reviews. User research methods and principles will be applied along with project management and planning. The outcome of this course includes students creating a final project video, poster, and presentation which will be presented to the class, department, and sponsors.

How to get involved

If you're interested in sponsoring a project, you should complete the following by the last week of December (before the Spring semester begins):

1. Reach out to your manager for awareness and to discuss how participation might impact your capacity.
2. Brainstorm projects that would be a good fit for the students. You'll need a project description for each idea, these are the descriptions that students read and select from once the course begins.
3. Post a message in the #ux channel or add an item in the UX Weekly meeting to see if other members of the UX Department are interested in joining.
4. Email the professors, Linda Borghesani ([email protected]) & Nick Katis ([email protected]) about your interest in sponsoring and the project proposals you have in mind.
5. The professors may set up a meeting to help you select which project to move forward with. Read Sponsor requirements and Best practices as a sponsor for more information on how to prepare before the course begins.

Reach out to @gdoyle on Slack if you have questions or want help brainstorming projects. More information including FAQs can be found here.

Sponsor requirements

• 1-5 UX volunteers are ideal. At least 1 Product Designer and 1 UX Researcher.
• Prepare at least three project descriptions for students to take on. The head instructors, Linda & Nick, will help you select one of those for the students to pick from.
• Be dedicated to working with the student team to make sure they have access to the necessary resources (for example, Dovetail) and people (for example, experts or participants to interview). Work with your manager to give students the appropriate access to GitLab tools and projects.
• Be in contact with the students on a weekly basis (~30 min/week check-ins), for reviews and guidance on the problem they are solving.
• Collaborate with Legal to have the students sign an NDA to follow the guidelines of our SAFE framework. It would be best to work with @igorman to create the NDA in a confidential issue or Slack. Once the students select a project in January, you'll need to share the project start date and the student's emails in order for the NDA to be officially issued. Send the NDA to the professors Linda and Nick.

Project proposals

Do you have a project that has been in the backlog for a while now? It could be a good one for the students to take on! In general, the best projects include:

• A loosely defined scope so that the students can bring their creativity. The instructor may suggest the students scope it down so they can complete it in the 4 month semester. For example, improving the GitLab CI/CD onboarding flow. This topic provides enough flexibility to go through the entire design process but also allows the students to scope it down to evaluate specific areas of the onboarding flow and target certain users.
• An opportunity to perform discovery research, design (prototype), and solution validation.
• Async-first approach.

Each project proposal should include a summary with:

• A title: A concise and catchy name for the project. This is one of the first things the students will see when choosing their project for the semester.
• Description: A summary of the problem, including a problem statement and general background about the concepts that would make sense to beginner, non-GitLab users.

Check out previous years projects for ideas.

Best practices as a sponsor

• Create a designated public project in the Tufts University Group to track the Capstone project progress. Encourage students to create GitLab accounts with their school emails and invite them as owners to the project. This can help them get familiar with how GitLab works and the problem they'll be solving. This can also be the place where they access resources or materials they need to complete the project. Check out this project for inspiration.
• Use issues in the project to track sponsor-assigned tasks, such as project prep and reviewing student deliverables.
• Write up a summary of the problem and link any resources that would be helpful for the students to look at to gain a better understanding of the concepts they'll be learning. Check out this markdown file for inspiration.
• Create a Slack channel for daily communication with the students. Follow the Slack access request guidelines to include external users in a Slack channel. You can also use this access request issue as a reference.
• Create an agenda document for weekly check-ins so that the students know what to expect. Check out this agenda for inspiration.
• Record weekly check-ins and add them to the Tufts Capstone Project playlist on Unfiltered. This playlist is private as some recordings will contain confidential information, such as reviews of confidential research or competitors.
• In one of the first meetings with the students, ask them what skills they are hoping to get out of the project. There are opportunities during the weekly check-ins to focus on those skills and teach the students how they are used in real-world scenarios. An example of this is explaining how to use design systems in Figma, including how to get the library in Figma, adding and editing components, and even making contributions to the Figma kit itself.
• If the students and professors are interested, they can present their final presentation at one of our UX weekly meetings. Be sure to get UX input in the #ux channel on this before doing so!
• Share a write-up of the students' results in the GitLab UX Research project. Check out this summary for inspiration.