Stop Grading the Artifact: Traceability as the New Core Assessment in HCI

Generative AI is making a familiar HCI assessment question unavoidable: what, exactly, should we grade when production is cheap? Many HCI courses already value process, critique, and iteration; the challenge is making those practices consistently assessable and usable for timely feedback when fluent artifacts can be produced on demand. We propose traceability as a new core assessment object: a lightweight, learner-authored evidence trail that makes design reasoning inspectable, including provenance, decision rationale, iteration history, claim integrity, and responsibility. Importantly, traceability is not positioned as authorship proof; its purpose is pedagogical, supporting fair evaluation of reasoning and enabling targeted formative feedback. We introduce receipt-based assessment, in which instructors grade a small set of decision receipts and provenance annotations, keeping workload manageable while reducing “policing vibes.” We contribute a concrete rubric, receipt templates and implementation strategies to reduce labor and conflict while maintaining rigor. We end with open questions to the EduCHI community about minimum viable traceability, fairness norms, and when hybrid oral or in-class checks are necessary.