CSE 510 - Advanced Topics in Human-Computer Interaction

Time and Location:

Winter 2008

Tuesday and Thursday, 12:00 to 1:20

CSE 403

Course Description:

Provides an introduction to several major areas of HCI research. This course is a combination of readings, small labs at the beginning of the term, and a term project.

The reading component of this course will require preparing brief reports on a combination of historical and recent papers. This is intended to help you examine what the HCI community considers to be a meaningful contribution across a variety of problems, thus preparing you to make contributions in these areas.

This course is explicitly not focused on the methods used in HCI practice. The initial labs will introduce heuristic evaluation, but the course material does not assume a strong background in HCI (there is no prerequisite) and the focus of this course is on research.

The project component of this course will require the design, execution, and analysis of a study. This is intended to give you hands-on experience with studies, as the proper design and execution of a study is critical to many areas of HCI.

Workload:

There are several (sometimes long) research papers to be read for each day of class. This course will be based on those readings, several small labs, and a term project.

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.

Grading will roughly correspond to 25% reading reports, 15% labs, 50% project, and 10% class participation.

Reading Reports:

I will expect you to have read and thought carefully about each reading. To help you out, I will require short written reading reports. Unless otherwise noted, you must submit a reading report for one of the readings assigned each day (read them all, and submit a report about the one you found most interesting). Reading reports should be between 300 and 500 words, posted in the appropriate thread in this forum:

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/gopost/board/jaf1978/3959/

Reports must be posted by 3:00 AM before each class meeting, ensuring that the day's discussion coordinator has ample time to review them the next morning. Feel free to read and comment on other people's reports after you have posted your own.

In writing these reports, note that it is generally easy to find something to criticize in any piece of research, but that focusing exclusively on this is typically not productive. You will generally find it more intellectually worthwhile to focus on what aspects of a piece of work are particularly well done, what new ideas are prompted by a piece of work, or what you might have done differently if you conducted the research. This will also lead to much more valuable discussions.

Potential topics for consideration in your report are:

These are only some suggestions for topics in your report. The important part is that we can see an intellectual effort in your report, not a simple summary. The reports will be graded on a scale of 0-3. You get 0 if you don't turn in a report. You get 1 if you turned in a weak report that doesn't convince us that you understood the paper. Most grades will be 2, if your report shows that you clearly read and understood the paper and had something interesting to say. 3 is reserved for insightful reports.

Labs:

There will be several short labs at the beginning of the term. The first will focus on designing and prototyping an interface, the second will focus on evaluating an interface made by somebody else, and the third will focus on a simple regression analysis.

Term Projects:

Term projects will be conducted in groups of two to three students. This might be an exploratory study, collecting data to answer a question, or it might be an evaluation, comparing several different approaches to a problem. I intend to be highly available to meet and discuss potential projects.

Because studies will be conducted in the educational context of this course, you generally do not need human subjects approval. You may not, however, publish the results of a study conducted without human subjects approval. You must also conduct your study in a manner that would be appropriate for an approved study. If you would like to be able to publish the results of your study, please talk with me immediately about whether your study can be submitted as an exempt procedure, meaning you might be able get Human Subjects approval in approximately a week.

You should aim to design a study that, if you obtained human subjects approval and ran the study with an appropriate group of participants, could potentially be submitted to CHI. Because studies are often expensive and time-consuming to conduct, it is expected that you will likely involve fewer participants as a part of this course than you would if conducting the study for submission to CHI.

There will be five study deliverables: a proposal, a mid-term status report, a mid-term status presentation, a final report, and a final presentation.

Calendar:

Date

Reading

Presenter

Due

January 8

Overview I

Lab 1 Out

January 10

Overview II

Greenberg, S. and Buxton, B. (2008). Usability Evaluation Considered Harmful (Some of the Time). Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), to Appear. [local pdf]

Olsen, D.R. (2007). Evaluating User Interface Systems Research. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2007), 251-258. [local pdf]

January 15

Design of Everyday Things

Read Chapters 1, 2, 3, 4

Report on a Chapter

Lab 1 Due

Lab 2 Out

January 17

Design of Everyday Things

Read Chapters 5, 6, 7

Report on a Chapter

Lab 2 Due

January 22

Design Tools

Landay, J.A. and Myers, B.A. (1995). Interactive Sketching for the Early Stages of User Interface Design. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 1995), 43-50. [local pdf]

Lin, J., Newman, M.W., Hong, J.I., and Landay, J.A. (2000). DENIM: Finding a Tighter Fit Between Tools and Practice for Web Site Design. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2000), 510-517. [local pdf]

Hartmann, B., Klemmer, S.R., Bernstein, M., Abdulla, L., Burr, B., Robinson-Mosher, A., Gee, J. (2006). Reflective Physical Prototyping Through Integrated Design, Test, and Analysis. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2006), 299-308. [local pdf]

January 24

Project Meeting Time

James Out of Town

January 29

Sensing and Interaction I

Wellner, P. (1993). Interacting with Paper on the DigitalDesk. Communications of the ACM (CACM), 36(7), 87-96. [local pdf]

Fitzmaurice, G.W. and Buxton, W. (1997). An Empirical Evaluation of Graspable User Interfaces: Towards Specialized, Space-Multiplexed Input. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 1997), 43-50. [local pdf]

Andy Wilson, MSR

Project Proposal Due

January 31

Sensing and Interaction II

Bellotti, V., Back, M., Edwards, K.E., Grinter, R.E., Henderson, A. and Lopes, C. (2002). Making Sense of Sensing Systems: Five Questions for Designers and Researchers. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2002), pp. 415-422. [local pdf]

Wilson, A.D. (2005). PlayAnywhere: A Compact Interactive Tabletop Projection-Vision System. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2005), pp. 83-92. [local pdf]

Andy Wilson, MSR

February 5

UI Toolkits I

Myers, B., Hudson, S.E., and Pausch, R. (2000). Past, Present, and Future of User Interface Software Tools. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), 7(1), 3-28. [local pdf]

Hudson, S.E., Mankoff, J., and Smith, I. (2005). Extensible Input Handling in the subArctic Toolkit. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005), 381-390. [local pdf]

February 7

UI Toolkits II

Hudson, S.E. and Stasko, J.T. (1993). Animation Support in a User Interface Toolkit: Flexible, Robust, and Reusable Abstractions. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 1993), 57-67. [local pdf]

Heer, J., Card, S.K., and Landay, J.A. (2005). Prefuse: A Toolkit for Interactive Information Visualization. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2005), 421-430. [local pdf]

Project Status Due

February 12

Human Performance I

Fitts, P.M. (1954). The information capacity of the human motor system in controlling the amplitude of movement. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 47(6), 381-391. [local pdf]

MacKenzie, I.S. (1992). Fitts' Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), 7(1), 91-139. [local pdf]

For MacKenzie article: Read Everything Before "Review of Six Studies" on Page 118, Skim Until "Error Handling" on Page 130, Read Remainder

Jacob Wobbrock, iSchool

February 14

Human Performance II

Zhai, S., Hunter, M., and Smith, B.A. (2002). Performance Optimization of Virtual Keyboards. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), 17(2&3), 229-270. [local pdf]

Wobbrock, J.O., Cutrell, E., Harada, S. and MacKenzie, I.S. (2008). An Error Model for Pointing Based on Fitts' Law. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), to Appear. [local pdf]

Jacob Wobbrock, iSchool

February 19

Large Displays

Bederson, B.B. and Hollan, J.D. (1994). Pad++: A Zooming Graphical Interface for Exploring Alternate Interface Physics. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 1994), 17-26. [local pdf]

Cao, X. and Balakrishnan, R. (2006). Interacting with Dynamically Defined Information Spaces Using a Handheld Projector and a Pen. Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2006), 225-234. [local pdf]

Patrick Baudisch, MSR

February 21

Mobile Interaction

Fitzmaurice, G.W. (1993). Situated Information Spaces and Spatially Aware Palmtop Computers. Communications of the ACM (CACM), 36(7), 38-49. [local pdf]

Li, K.A., Baudisch, P., and Hinckley, K. (2008). BlindSight: Eyes-Free Access to Mobile Phones. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2008), to Appear. [local pdf]

Patrick Baudisch, MSR

February 26

CSCW I

Grudin, J. (1994). Groupware and Social Dynamics: Eight Challenges for Developers. Communications of the ACM (CACM), 37(1), 92-105. [local pdf]

Stewart, J., Bederson, B.B., Druin, A. (1999). Single Display Groupware: A Model for Co-Present Collaboration. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 1999), 286-293. [local pdf]

Merrie Morris, MSR

February 28

CSCW II

Mandryk, R.L. and Inkpen, K.M. (2004). Physiological Indicators for the Evaluation of Co-Located Collaborative Play. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2004), 102-111. [local pdf]

Morris, M.R., Huang, A., Paepcke, A., and Winograd, T. (2006). Cooperative Gestures: Multi-User Gestural Interactions for Co-located Groupware. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2006), 1201-1210. [local pdf]

Merrie Morris, MSR

Project Status Due

March 4

Participatory and Value Sensitive Design

Bødker, S., Grønbæk, K., and Kyng, M. (1995). Cooperative Design: Techniques and Experiences from the Scandanavian Scene. In Readings in Human Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000, Baecker et al. (eds.), 215-224. [local pdf]

Friedman, B., Kahn, P., and Borning, A. (2006). Value Sensitive Design and Information Systems. In Human-Computer Interaction in Management Information Systems: Foundations, P. Zhang and D. Galletta (eds.), 2006. [local pdf]

Borning, A., Friedman, B., Davis, J., and Lin, P. (2005). Informing Public Deliberation: Value Sensitive Design of Indicators for a Large-Scale Urban Simulation. Proceedings of the European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW 2005), 449-468. [local pdf]

Alan Borning, CSE

March 6

Accessibility

Glinert, E.P. and York, B.W. (1992). Computers and Peoples with Disabilities. Communications of the ACM (CACM), 35(5), 32-35. [local pdf]

Ladner, R.E. (2008). Commentary on "Computers and Peoples with Disabilities". Submitted to ACM Transactions on Accessible Computing (TACCESS). [local pdf]

Asakawa, C. and Takagi, H. Transcoding. In Web Accessibility: A Foundation for Research (Human-Computer Interaction Series). Simon Harper and Yeliz Yesilada (eds.), 2008. [local pdf]

Bigham, J.P., Cavender, A.C., Brudvik, J.T., Wobbrock, J.O., and Ladner, R.E. (2007). WebinSitu: A Comparative Analysis of Blind and Sighted Browsing Behavior. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS 2007), 51-58. [local pdf]

Richard Ladner, CSE

March 11

TBD

March 13

Project Presentations

Project Presentations

March 17

Final Project Report Due

Length Appropriate to Content