Time and Location:

Autumn 2009

Tuesday and Thursday, 12:00 to 1:20

EEB 045

Course Description:

Provides an introduction to several major areas of HCI. This course is a combination of readings, small assignments, and a term project.

Workload:

This course will be based on several small assignments, a group term project, and an exam.

Class discussions should be informal and enjoyable, as it is important that everybody feel comfortable commenting and offering their insight. The participation component of grading in this course will be based on active participation in discussion throughout the course.

There will also be readings posted before some classes. I will expect you to have read and thought carefully about any readings before that class.

Grading will roughly correspond to 55% project, 15% individual assignments, 25% exam, and 5% class participation.

Individual Assignments:

There will be several short individual assignments throughout the term. These must not be conducted in groups. This includes the project proposals that are released during the first class.

Term Projects:

The bulk of this course is the project, where you will apply the ideas and methods of user interface design. In this project, you will:

Come up with an idea for a new interactive application that serves a user need.
Learn to design different styles of interfaces and make tradeoffs amongst them.
Find real users, investigate their context of use, and test your interface designs with them.

Project webpages are linked here:

http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse440/09au/projects.html

Discussion Forum:

You may discuss your projects or other assignments here.

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/gopost/board/jaf1978/12939/

CollectIt Submission:

Submit homework and projects here.

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/collectit/dropbox/jaf1978/7152

Anonymous Feedback:

I encourage you to feel comfortable discussing any aspects of this class with both myself and the TA. I am also happy to provide a mechanism for anonymous feedback:

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/umail/form/jaf1978/2591

Calendar:

Date	Reading	Due
October 1 [slides] [video] [final minutes of audio]	Overview and Iterative Design Readings to help in your Iterative Design Assignment: Gomoll, Kathleen. (1992). Some Techniques for Observing Users. From The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, 85-90. [local pdf] Rettig, Marc. (1994). Prototyping for Tiny Fingers. Communications of the ACM (CACM), 37(4), 21-27. [local pdf] Nielsen Norman Group. Paper Prototyping: A How-To Video. [local video] This video requires the DivX Codec available at http://download.divx.com/divx/DivXInstaller.exe. I'd strongly encourage you install only the codec, not the player or anything else that comes with it (uncheck the boxes in the custom install settings, and uncheck the install Yahoo toolbar stuff).	Iterative Design Lab out Project Proposal out
October 6	No Class due to UIST conference.
October 8 [slides]	History of HCI Bush, V. (1945). As We May Think. Atlantic Monthly. [available online]	Project Proposal due
October 13 [slides]	Contextual Inquiry Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K. Contextual Design. Chapter 3. [local pdf] Example Contextual Inquiry Reports: [Greenbean] [ParkSmart]	Iterative Design Lab due Contextual Inquiry out
October 15 [slides]	Sketching, BrainStorming, and Teams Pausch, R. Tips for Working Successfully in a Group [local html] Katzenbach, J.R. and Smith, D.K. The Discipline of Teams. [local html] Buxton, B. Sketching User Experiences. pp. 135-151. [local pdf]
October 20 [slides]	Task Analysis	Contextual Inquiry due Task Analysis and Design Sketches out Video Prototype out
October 22 [slides]	Video Prototyping Beaudouin-Lafon, M. and Mackay, W.E. Prototyping Tools and Techniques. [local pdf] Feel free to read the whole thing, but you only need to read through the end of Section 4.1. [Directory of Videos Shown in Class]
October 27	Project Presentations	Task Analysis and Design Sketches due
October 29 [slides]	Conceptual Models and Interface Metaphors Norman, D. Design of Everyday Things. Chapter 1. [local pdf]
November 3 [slides]	Low-Fidelity and Rapid Prototyping Refer back to these again: Gomoll, Kathleen. (1992). Some Techniques for Observing Users. From The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, 85-90. [local pdf] Rettig, Marc. (1994). Prototyping for Tiny Fingers. Communications of the ACM (CACM), 37(4), 21-27. [local pdf] Nielsen Norman Group. Paper Prototyping: A How-To Video. [local video] And also take a look at this: Snyder, Carolyn. (2003). Paper Prototyping, Chapter 4. [local pdf]	Video Prototype due Low-Fidelity Prototype and User Testing out
November 5 [slides]	Inspection-Based Methods Lewis, Clayton and Rieman, John. (1993). Evaluating the Design without Users. [local html] Jakob Nielsen. (2005). Heuristic Evaluation. How to conduct a heuristic evaluation A list of ten recommended heuristics for usable interface design A more detailed discussion of the characteristics of the usability problems found by heuristic evaluation How to rate the severity of the usability problems
November 10 [slides]	Human Performance	Low-Fidelity Prototype due
November 12 [slides]	User Testing
November 17	Project Presentations	User Testing due Interactive Prototype out
November 19	Project Presentations	Hall of Fame/Shame out Final Presentations out Final Poster out
November 24 [slides]	Exam Review
December 1 [slides]	Remote Testing and Design Patterns	Hall of Fame/Shame due
December 3	Exam
December 8	Two Exercises and a Lesson Participation Important - No Preparation Required	Interactive Prototype due
December 10		Poster due Presentation due
December 17	Final Presentations 10:30 am, Johnson 075, Lunch and Poster Session Following