6752 (Spring 1997)

Instructor	Colin Potts
Email	potts@cc.gatech.edu
Room	CoC 257
Telephone	(89)4-5551
Office hours	By appointment
Class venue	CoC 102
Class time	Mon 4:30-7:30

Objective

Our emphasis in CS 6752 is on intervention, making a difference in users' experience of using computer-based technology. This, in turn,.expands into four main themes, two about the process of producing technology, and two about its characteristics once produced:

1. Design. The process of developing usable and useful computing technology from an initial investigation of user needs and capabilities,
2. Evaluation. The process of analyzing proposed or implemented systems to investigate their usability and usefulness in the context of use,
3. Visualization. The characteristics of good visual interfaces for information management,
4. Ubiquity. The opportunities for human-computer interaction and computer-mediated human-human interaction using sensory modalities other than vision and ubiquitous, wearable or environmentally embedded computation, rather than the conventional desktop computer.

If you and I do our jobs right, you should get the following out of 6752:

• Expertise with at least one HCI design method and at least one HCI evaluation method,
• Working knowledge of a range of HCI design and evaluation methods,
• Experience in designing either a visual interface for an information-rich application or a non-standard interface for a ubiquitous or CSCW application.
• Enthusiasm about HCI as a field of growing interdisciplinary significance (and possibly a decision to follow HCI as a field of research if you are wavering).

In accordance with the emphasis on intervention, the psychological, organizational, and technological underpinnings of HCI will be covered only in passing. CS 6752 follows on from CS 6751 or CS/PSY 4753, and we assume that you are already familiar with basic principles of HCI. CS 6752 does not cover user interface implementation technology, as that is the topic of another graduate class.

Course Textbook and Readings

• Baecker, Ronald M., Jonathan Grudin, William A.S. Buxton, and Saul Greenberg, Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000, Second Edition, Morgan Kaufman, San Francisco, 1995.

This is a huge book, so you may need to invest in a cart. However, the book is comprehensive and affordable. The chapter introductions alone amount to a textbook in HCI, and the readings are carefully chosen and juxtaposed. For your independent research, you may not need to go far beyond these readings.

In addition, we will look at some papers and design briefings from the recent CHI'97 conference.

Assignments and Projects

Here's what I'm going to ask you to do:

1. Class participation. Participate actively in class discussions, volunteer to post discussion summaries to the class newsgroup or web page, and (time permitting) lead a discussion on a paper of your choice. Volunteer to be a user in other team's usability evaluations, if appropriate.
2. Evaluation project. Take an existing application and perform a thorough usability evaluation on it using an evaluation method that is appropriate to the task and that you can justify.
3. Design project. Work with one or two other class members to design either a desktop application using novel visualization ideas or a ubiquitous application.

The teams in points (3) and (4) above will be different. As far as possible, I will try to maximize the amount of interdisciplinary teamwork. Both projects will involve demonstrations and/or presentations. Be prepared to defend your work.

There are no examinations in CS 6752.

Schedule

Week	Date	Topic or activity	Readings to be discussed	Assignment or preparation due
1	March 31	No class. Term starts, April 1.
2	April 7	CHI'97 videotapes and discussion. Course introduction
3	April 14	Discussion of cases. (More...) Visit to usability lab.	Introductions to Chapters 1-4. Cases A, B, and C.
4	April 21	Mini-lecture on contextual evaluation methods (Slides...) Discussion of Schedule+ in context of information presentation techniques.(More...)	Readings on information presentation.
5	April 28	Design evaluation presentations.		Design evaluation presentation
6	May 5	Discussion of CHI'97 design briefings. (More...) Introduction to design project (Slide...)	CHI'97 design briefings	Design evaluation report
7	May 12	Behavioral and social scientific evaluation methods	Barnard, Landauer & Bannon Holtzblatt & Jones, Henderson & Kyng, Grudin
8	May 19	Ubiquitous computing & agents (Slides...) Interim design presentations	Weiser, Maes, White
9	May 26	No class (Memorial Day).
10	June 2	Course review and evaluation. Design presentations.		Design presentation and report. (Suggestions...)