CS6751 * Human-Computer Interaction * Summer 1998

Announcements

Syllabus

Instructor: Dr. Albert Badre (badre@cc.gatech.edu)
Office Hours: 2:00-3:00 MW
Office Location: College of Computing, Room 203

TA: Colleen Kehoe (colleen@cc.gatech.edu)
Office Hours: 11-12 Tu, 4:30-5:30 W, or by appointment
Office Location: College of Computing, Room 260A (Multimedia Lab)

TA: Kevin Scott (kcscott@cc.gatech.edu)
Office Hours: by appointment
Office Location:

Class Hours: 3:00-4:30 MW
Class Location: College of Computing, Room 102 (Classroom 2000)

Text: Human-Computer Interaction, Jenny Preece, et.al. (See reading assignments, below.)  Also, course notes are to be purchased from the bookstore.

Course Objective:
This course covers the human factors of software and interface design. Emphasis is placed on techniques and guidelines to design and critique different types of screens, transaction codes, types and styles of interaction, and user information packaging and referencing. Concepts in interface design and testing are considered in relation to human information processing capabilities and limitations.

Teaching philosophy:
The primary purpose of this course is to help you understand principles and develop skills in the design of computer user interfaces. To help you acquire the needed skills, the course will focus on learning by doing. Accordingly, a major focus will be on an interface design project. The textbook, the lectures, and the handout material should be considered resources to help you carry out your design. Use the book and my lectures as reference material. The underlying philosophy of the approach in this course is that concepts are learned and remembered better when they are learnt in a real work environment as in the course of project development.

Topics:
 

  •  Overview of human-computer interaction
  •  User requirements, user characteristics, and task analysis
  •  Human Information processing in human-computer interaction
  •  Interactive information transfer
  •  Visual processing factors
  •  Information processing factors
  •  Human factors of displaying information
  •  Response time
  •  User interface design principles and guidelines
  •  Direct manipulation
  •  Graphic user interface design
  •  Menus
  •  Fill-in forms
  •  Other dialogue styles
  •  Interactive transaction factors
  •  Learning component
  •  Information packaging
  •  Usability testing and evaluation
  •  Computer-supported cooperative work and multimedia interfaces
    • Evaluation:
     
    Midterm 15%
    Project 55 % with 35% for group portions and 20% for individual portion. (Must show evidence of substantive participation in group in order to qualify for a passing grade) 
    Final 30%
    Class activity/participation the sway factor
     

    Calendar & Assignments

     
    Week Monday Wednesday Reading
    0   6/24  
    1  6/29 
    Project Part 1 Assigned    		 7/1 
    3 Project Ideas Due    		 Ch 1-6
    2 7/6 
    Write-up Due    		 7/8 Ch 7-10, 17
    3 7/13 
    Report Due    		 7/15 Ch 18-20
    4 7/20
    Midterm    		 7/22 Ch 13-14
    5 7/27 
    Project Part 2 Assigned
    Report Due    		 7/29 Ch 15-16, 21
    6 8/3 8/5 Ch 22-24
    7 8/10 8/13 Ch 25-26, 29-30
    8 8/17 
    Group Reports Due    		 8/19 Ch 31-34
    9 8/24 
    In-Class Critiques
    Individual Assignments Due    		 8/26
    In-Class Critiques    		  


     
     
     
     
     

     Other Course Materials

    Questions about the course, assignments, subject material are answered on the Question and Answer Page.
    (Last updated 6/30/98. Currently 1 question.)

    Project Groups List - Forget who is in your group? (Bad sign, but look here to be reminded.)  Also, project documentation will go here eventually for all the world to see.

    Slides from Colleen's 8/19 Lecture on Evaluation (Part 2) are available.
     


     
     

    HCI-Related Links

    ACM SIGCHI -  http://www.acm.org/sigchi/
    The premier professional organization for academics and industry folks working in HCI.  Publishes a huge number of magazines, journals, books and conference proceedings on HCI.  Many are available on the web.  Many conference proceedings are available in the GVU conference room library or from Colleen.
    Human Factors & Ergonomics Society - http://hfes.org/
    Another large and well-know professional society with lots of publications. Has a broader scope than SIGCHI in some ways, since it's not specifically focused on computers. Some publications are available in the GVU conference room library.
    CHI-Atlanta  -  http://www.ratio.com/chi-atlanta/
    A local affiliate of SIGCHI.  A great way to meet people in the field, find out about jobs in Atlanta, and see what practicing HCI professionals do.  Meets about once a month.
    The HCI Bibliography -  http://www.hcibib.org/
    A large database with bibliographic entries for books, articles, conferences, etc.  Sometimes just a citation, but often includes an abstract.  Does not contain full text articles.
    Usable Web -  http://www.usableweb.com/
     A large index of web resources.  If it's on the web and related to HCI, it's probably listed here.
    HCI Journal -  http://www.parc.xerox.com/istl/projects/HCI/
    A well-known journal for HCI practitioners.  This site has archives of past issues.
    Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox Column -  http://www.useit.com/alertbox/
    A twice-monthly column about current issues in web usability.  Extremely interesting reading, especially for anyone who will be designing web pages or web technolgies (e.g. browsers).
    HCI Theses-In-Progress -  http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/hci/tip/
    Students who are currently working on a PhD or Masters thesis in HCI often list their projects here.  A good place to see what HCI "research" really means.
    Past HCI Courses -  http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/
    Web pages from past offerings of CS4753, CS6751 and CS6752 are listed on this page.  They've been taught by many different professors, but it might be useful to see what other students have done in the past.  Many contain slides, lecture notes, references to websites and students' projects.  Note that these projects were assigned by different professors who had different requirements for the projects.  Do not assume that these projects meet all the requirements for this quarter's projects.

     
     
     
     

    Last Modified on  .
    Comments, questions, corrections to colleen@cc.gatech.edu.