The course highlights the design, development, and evaluation of
human-computer interfaces, with an emphasis on usability, interaction
paradigms, computer-mediated human activities, and implications to
society. These issues are studied from a number of perspectives
including that of the engineer and end-user.
A team-based
project applies your knowledge and skills to the full life cycle
of an interactive human-computer interface.
You will gain an overview of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), with an
understanding of user interface design in general, and alternatives to
traditional "keyboard and mouse" computing; become familiar with the
vocabulary associated with sensory and cognitive systems as relevant
to task performance by humans; be able to apply models from cognitive
psychology to predicting user performance in various human-computer
interaction tasks and recognize the limits of human performance as
they apply to computer operation; appreciate the importance of a
design and evaluation methodology that begins with and maintains a
focus on the user; be familiar with a variety of both conventional and
non-traditional user interface paradigms, the latter including virtual
and augmented reality, mobile and wearable computing, and ubiquitous
computing; and understand the social implications of technology and
your ethical responsibilities as engineers in the design of
technological systems. Finally, working in small groups on a product
design from start to finish will provide you with invaluable team-work
experience.
By far the most frequent complaint about this course is the workload
associated with the project, typified by this comment from a course evaluation:
"I do know that I have worked harder in this course than in some 5
credit courses I have taken and probably will not do as well. This is
more than made up by the interesting content of the course and overall
quality of the lectures. Someone just interested in their GPA would be
better off just sitting in on the lectures if they could."
Although I believe those who report spending more time on HCI than
they do on most other courses, at least one student every year writes
that the workload was non-trivial but reasonable. The expectation of
a heavy workload may be an unfortunate self-fulfilling prophecy.
Students
can obtain good marks without killing themselves,
but need to focus their efforts on the right activities that
contribute to their grades. I describe my rationale for this approach to teaching
in my
teaching
philosophy.
If you're a regular ECSE student, you already know the drill.
Non-ECSE students wishing to enroll in this course should submit a brief
statement to me, summarizing your relevant background, reasons for
taking the course, what you expect to contribute, and what skills or
experience you hope to gain from it. Graduate students wishing to
enroll should select ECSE-542 and are expected to carry out an additional
project, typically oriented toward a conference publication on an HCI topic, for
the "graduate credit" (worth 20% of your grade).
There are assigned readings, all available on-line, for each class.
As noted above, students are expected to have completed these
readings
in advance of each class. Videos and additional
(optional) readings are also provided as further resource material.
As such, there is no official text required for the course, although
many good HCI references are available. Note that readings in the ACM
Digital Library are available free, without a personal subscription,
provided that you access them via the McGill computer network (e.g.,
via VPN). A few other readings are contained in the
password-protected section of the course website.
There is no examination in this course. Instead, your grade will be
based on regular assessments of your learning and on your work on the
term project, as described in detail in the table below.
assessment of learning (# of quizzes TBD, worst grade dropped) | 30% |
individual learning | 25% |
group learning | 5% |
project activities | 70% |
project pitch | 4% |
deliverables (6) | 48% |
presentation | 6% |
quantitative peer assessment | 8% |
qualitative peer feedback | 4% |
Each deliverable of the term project will be peer-reviewed,
with the quality of your assessment activities contributing a portion
of your grade. Bonus credit will be given based on questions contributed to and answered on Peerwise.
Grads enrolled in ECSE 542 carry out an additional course component for the extra course credit.
We will use class time to review the topics covered in the assigned
readings, carry out exercises, and assess your learning, both
individually and in groups. It is important that you complete the
assigned readings
in advance of each class.
Your primary homework activity will center around
the
term project, which you
will be working on in groups.
All assigned work is due at 23:55 on the specified deliverable date.
At that time, a web agent will collect all of the material from the
project web pages and copy it to a private directory. You may
continue to modify your web pages beyond the deadline, but any such
changes will not be seen by the marker. In cases of illness or other
compelling reason warranting an extension, the group must notify the
instructor at least one week in advance of the due date, in order to
make special arrangements. Barring such advance notice,
no credit
will be given for late work.
Peer-evaluations will be conducted through our class Moodle.
Date |
Topic and slides |
Guests |
Videos |
Readings |
In-class Exercises |
Deliverables |
Sep. 3 |
Intro to HCI |
|
Norman, Affordances and Signifiers |
Mantei, The Strauss Mouse |
Kay, Doing with Images Makes Symbols (watch first 20 minutes) |
Norman, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things |
Raskin, Intuitive Equals Familiar |
|
|
|
Sep. 5 |
Digital addiction |
|
CBC Marketplace |
Harris, TED: Manipulation Tricks |
Stolzoff The Formula for Phone Addiction Might Double as a Cure |
Harris, How Technology Hijacks People's Minds |
|
|
|
Sep. 10 |
User-Centered Design |
|
Norman, User-Centered Design |
Norman, Conceptual Models
|
Gould, The 1984 Olympic Message System |
IBM, Cost justifying ease of use |
|
Design Critique |
Yearbook ungraded |
Sep. 12 |
Applying the principles: Cognitive Engineering at Hydro Quebec |
André Gascon |
|
Tullis, Is user interface design just common sense? |
Dreyfus, Five Steps from Novice to Expert (only need to read sections indicated by red vertical lines, pp. 17-21 and 30-36)
|
|
Project Pitch |
Sep. 17 |
Personas: User Modeling and Use Case Scenarios |
|
Klemmer, Participant Observation |
Crafting User Experience Personas
|
Young, Mental Models Chapter 4 (Define Task-Based Audience Segments, pp. 75-109) |
|
Observation |
Notebook URL |
Sep. 19 |
Sketching |
|
Newman, Sketching |
NNGroup, How to Sketch for Non-Designers
|
Rojas, Etch A Sketch: How to Use Sketching in User Experience Design |
Greenberg et al., Sketching User Experiences (pp. 8-12, 17-18) |
Sketching |
Project Proposal |
Sep. 24 |
Low-Fidelity Prototyping |
|
Chi, Rapid prototyping Google Glass | Klemmer, Creating and comparing alternatives |
Dam and Siang, Prototype |
Snyder, Paper Prototyping |
Cifaldi, Sometimes, paper is your best prototyping tool |
Paper prototyping |
|
Sep. 26 |
Usability Testing |
|
Usability Testing with a Paper Prototype |
Nielsen, Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users |
Dickelman, Usability Testing -- Fear and Loathing on the Keyboard |
|
Usability Testing |
|
Oct. 1 |
Assistive Technologies: How design decisions define and redefine what it means to be disabled |
Stefanie Blain-Moraes |
Disability Experience |
Tai, A Review of Emerging Access Technologies for Individuals With Severe Motor Impairments | |
|
|
Oct. 3 |
Usability Evaluation |
|
Klemmer, Heuristic Evaluation |
Nielsen, How to conduct a heuristic evaluation |
Apple iOS Human Interface Guidelines |
Heuristic Evaluation |
Low-Fidelity Prototype and Test Plan |
Oct. 8 |
Models and Theories: GOMS, MHP, and Fitts' Law |
|
|
Wikipedia, Fitts' Law |
Laubheimer, Accot-Zhai Steering Law |
Buxton, Chunking and Phrasing |
|
Fitts' Law |
|
Oct. 10 |
Perception and Visualization |
Michael McGuffin |
Rosling, The best stats you've ever seen |
Mackinlay, Show Me: Automatic Presentation for Visual Analysis |
|
|
|
Oct. 15 |
Multimodality |
|
Ecotile |
Raskin, Down With GUIs! |
Oviatt, Ten Myths of Multimodal Interaction |
|
|
|
Oct. 17 |
Design and evaluation challenges |
Dalia El-Shimy |
|
Lougina, Making a Murderer |
El-Shimy, The privilege of asking questions |
Liu, Never ask what they want: 3 better questions to ask in user interviews |
Margolis, Questions to ask before starting user research |
|
|
Computer Prototype |
Oct. 22 |
No class
|
|
|
|
Oct. 24 |
Wearable and Mobile Interaction |
Jeff Blum |
|
Emrich, How body language is the key to expression in the wearable age | Blum et al., Spatialized audio augmented reality for blind users with a smartphone |
|
|
|
Oct. 29 |
UbiComp |
|
Weiser, UbiComp Intro |
TEDtalk Smart Devices | LG Vision |
Touché |
Weiser, The Computer for the 21st Century |
Cooperstock, Reactive Environments: Throwing Away Your Keyboard and Mouse
| Exercise |
Formative Feedback |
Oct. 31 |
Haptics |
|
Kuchenbecker, TED talk |
Brewster, The Impact of Haptics |
|
Exercise |
|
Nov. 5 |
Tangible and Gestural interfaces |
|
Fitzmaurice, Bricks |
Xiao et al., Vidgets |
Fitzmaurice, Bricks |
Norman and Nielsen, Gestural Interfaces: A Step Backward In Usability |
|
|
|
Nov. 7 |
Risks: Social Implications and Designing for Error |
|
Nancy Leveson, Engineering a Safer and More Secure World |
Jesse Schell, When Games Invade Real Life
|
Norman, Human error and the design of computer systems |
Weiser, The Technologist's Responsibilities |
Kitroeff et al., Boeing 737 Max Safety System Was Vetoed, Engineer Says |
NTSB, China Airlines Boeing 747-SP Accident Report |
Deibert, Black Code (pp. 14-20) |
Leveson, The Therac-25 Accidents (pp. 1-8, 21-22, 44-49) |
Norman, Safety Designed In |
Stroud, The minority report |
Joy, Why the future doesn't need us |
Britten, Gamble on the right button |
Amy Wang, Hawaii missile alert
|
|
|
Nov. 12 |
Mixed Reality |
|
Computerphile, Mixed Reality | Kruger, Videoplace | Le Petit Chef |
Milgram, A Taxonomy of Mixed Reality Visual Displays | Wellner, Interacting with paper on the DigitalDesk |
| |
Alpha System |
Nov. 14 |
Affective Computing and Biofeedback |
Hal Myers |
|
Picard, Affective Computing |
|
|
Nov. 19 |
Telepresence and Media Spaces |
|
Buxton, Hydra | Discovery Channel |
Buxton, Telepresence: Integrating Shared Task and Person Space |
|
|
|
Nov. 21 |
Social Computing |
Karyn Moffat |
Soylent |
Bigham, VizWiz |
Findlatre, Differences in Crowdsourced vs. Lab-based Mobile and Desktop Input Performance Data |
|
|
|
Nov. 26 |
Project Presentations |
Nov. 28 |
Project Presentations |
Beta System |