Course Credits:
for ECSE-424: 3 credits
(3,4,2) (Lectures, Labs and tutorials, outside work) -> this breakdown is of dubious validity
for ECSE-689: 4 credits
(3,0,9) (Lectures, Labs and tutorials, outside work)
Instructor:
Prof. Jeremy R. Cooperstock
McConnell Engineering, Room 424
Telephone: 398-5992
email: address and policy
Office hours: See course web page
Lectures:
ENGTR 2110, WF 16:00-17:30
Prerequisites:
Course Description:
The course highlights the design and evaluation of human-computer
interfaces, with an emphasis on usability, interaction paradigms,
post-GUI approaches, computer-mediated human activities, and
implications to society. These issues are studied from a number of
perspectives including that of the engineer, cognitive psychologist,
and end-user. A team-based project, dealing with the design,
development, and evaluation of a computer-based device within the
themes of the course will dominate the semester's activity.
Learning Outcomes:
After completing this course successfully, you will: understand 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
their 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.
Academic Integrity:
The instructor values it. Google my name with "academic integrity".
Course Content:
This course will provide a basic overview of the major themes of
Human-Computer Interaction, with a concentration on topics of
relevance to an engineering perspective, in particular, user interface
paradigms. During the semester, you will be applying this body of
knowledge to the design, implementation, and evaluation of a novel
interactive computing system, while working in small groups.
The following table provides a tentative schedule for the topics to be covered throughout the course, along with readings for each section. Note that you must be logged on to a McGill computer system in order to download the readings from the ACM web site.
| Week of | Topic | Guests/Videos | Readings | Material Due | Lecture Slides |
| Jan. 3 | Introduction: Use and Context, Terminology | Intelligent Home (video) | Strauss Mouse (video) |
Norman, The Psychopathology of Everyday Things (missing pages to be provided) | Norman, Affordance and Design |
Raskin, Intuitive Equals Familiar
optional readings indicated in square brackets: [Garreau, Thinking Outside the Box]
|
Exercise 1: Yearbook | Jan 5 | Jan 7 |
| Jan. 10 | Cognitive Engineering and Historical Overview | André Gascon (Jan. 12) | Alan Kay (video, Jan. 14) | Johnson, The Xerox Star (read the sections indicted by a red vertical bar in the left margin) |
[Oviatt, Ten Myths of Multimodal Interaction (appears later as required reading) | Gascon, L'ingenierie cognitive]
|
Exercise 2: Design Critique | Jan 12 | Jan 14 |
| Jan. 17 | Understanding and Observing Users | Adriana Olmos (Jan. 21) | Gould, The 1984 Olympic Message System | IBM, Cost justifying ease of use | Gentner & Grudin, Why Good Engineers (Sometimes) Create Bad Interfaces
[Snyder, Paper Prototyping ]
|
Jan 19 | Jan 21 | |
| Jan. 24 | Design Paradigms: User and Task Analysis, User-Centered Design | Bill Mogridge (Designing Interactions video) | Salomon, CHI'89 Information Kiosk | Exercise 3: Interface Prototyping | Project URL | Project Proposal | Jan 26 |
| Jan. 31 | Usability Principles and Evaluation: Interaction Design, Usability Heuristics, Shneiderman's Golden Rules | David Rollert (Feb. 4) | Norman, Emotional Design | Dickelman, Fear and Loathing on the Keyboard | Tognazzini, First Principles of Interaction Design | Exercise 4: Usability Testing | Feb 2 | Feb 4 |
| Feb. 7 | Models and Theories: GOMS, Model Human Processor, Fitts' Law, Hick's Law, the Magical Number 7, Shneiderman's Syntactic/Semantic Model, Norman's Seven Stages of Action, Information Visualization | Michael McGuffin (Feb. 9) |
Buxton, Chunking and Phrasing
[Miller,
The Magical Number Seven
| Pirolli and Card,
Information
Foraging in Information Access Environments |
Graph
Design]
|
Exercise 5: Fitts' Law | Low-Fidelity Prototype | Feb 9 | Feb 11 |
| Feb. 14 | Accessibility and Risks: Error Classification, Automation, Designing for Error | Gary Perlman (Feb. 16) | Nielsen, Accessibility is not enough | Norman, Human error and the design of computer systems |
Leveson, The Therac-25 Accidents (pp. 1-9, 21-22, 44-49) |
Weiser, The Technologist's Responsibilities
[Britten, Gamble on Right Button]
|
Exercise 6: Usability Evaluation | Feb 16 | Feb 18 |
| Feb. 21 | Study Week | ||||
| Feb. 28 | Graphics and Sound: GUIs, Speech and non-speech audio | Buxton, Speech, Language, and Audition |
[Norman,
UI
Breakthrough-Command Line Interfaces | Raskin,
Down With GUIs! | Barnes, The
misused mouse Part 1
and Part 2 |
Mynatt, Designing Audio Aura |
Computerworld,
Give
your computer the finger]
|
Exercise 7: UI Design | Computer Prototype and Evaluation Plan | Mar 2 | Mar 4 | |
| Mar. 7 | Multimodal Interfaces and Ubiquitous Computing | Jerome Pasquero (Mar. 11) |
Oviatt, Ten Myths of Multimodal Interaction |
Weiser, The Computer for the 21st Century
[
Raman, User Interface Principles for Multimodal Interaction |
Visell, Virtual Ground Materials in Walking | Brewster, The Impact of Haptics |
Marsal, Apple looks to take multi-touch beyond the touch-screen |
Hayward, Do It Yourself Haptics (first 7 pages)] |
Cooperstock. Throwing away your keyboard and mouse] |
Formative Feedback | Mar 9 | Mar 11 |
| Mar. 14 | Gestural Interaction and Touch | Marcelo Wanderley (Mar. 16) | Billinghurst, Gesture Recogntion | Fitzmaurice, Bricks | Ishii, Tangible Bits
[
Wanderley & Orio, Evaluation of Input Devices |
Wanderley & DePalle, Gestural Control of Sound Synthesis] |
Mar 16 | Mar 18 | |
| Mar. 21 | Affective and Social Computing | Hal Myers (Mar. 23) | Picard, Affective Computing | Bigham, VizWiz |
[Benovoy, Biosignals Analysis and its Application in a Performance Setting | Wired, Ready to Ware] |
Alpha System | Mar 23 | Mar 25 |
| Mar. 28 | Augmented Reality and CSCW | Mike Wozniewski (Mar. 30) | Wellner, Interacting with paper on the DigitalDesk |
Buxton, Integrating the periphery and context
[
Cooperstock, Interacting in Shared Reality |
Mann, A First Step Toward Personal Imaging |
Rekimoto & Saitoh, Augmented surfaces: a spatially continuous work space for hybrid computing environments |
Ullmer & Ishii, The metaDESK |
Rekimoto & Nagao, Computer augmented interaction with real world environments |
Law, Material Deformation Underfoot in Virtual Reality | Hinckley, Passive real-world interface props for neurosurgical visualization]
| Peer Critique | Mar 30 | Apr 1 |
| Apr. 4 | Project Presentations (April 6) | Beta System | |||
Instructional Method:
There will be two 1-1/2 hour classes every week throughout the term.
These will consist of a mixture of lecture, group discussion, and
at the end of the term, student presentations. Students are expected
to complete their assigned readings each week. Through iterative
development and modifications based on evaluation of your term
project design, you will gain experience applying the lecture concepts
to a real design problem.
Course Readings:
Each week, selected readings, all available on-line, will be assigned.
As such, there is no official text required for the course, although
many good HCI references are available, some on
reserve in the Schulich library.
Computer Resources:
Students will likely be using various computer workstations on campus to
conduct their work. Complete compliance with the McGill University codes
of conduct concerning computer usage is expected and required. The course
web page (http://www.cim.mcgill.ca/~jer/courses/hci/)
contains announcements, lecture summaries, assignments, and pointers to
other useful resources.
Evaluation:
Your marks will be based largely on the term project as well as a
presentation and a final examination. Additional components of the
final grade are determined by exercises, participation and
contribution to in-class and on-line discussions.
The term project will be done in groups -- ideally two-to-three students per group. Each member must take on a primary responsibility of at least one component and identify his or her role. While team members may work together on multiple aspects of the project are are encouraged to do so, specific responsibilities of each member must be delineated.
All assigned work is due at the start of class on the assigned 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.
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Last updated on 5 December 2010
by Jeremy Cooperstock