Revised September 26, 2011
CS 449: Human Computer Interaction
Watch a video introduction to this course on YouTube.
Goals
Human-Computer Interaction teaches the fundamental issues that
underlie the creation and evaluation of usable and useful computational
artifacts. Over the term, students will learn how to design novel
computational artifacts that enable a well-defined user group to
achieve specific goals more effectively than via current means. More
specifically, students will learn and directly apply:
- Rapid ethnography and contextual design techniques to identify a
well-defined user group’s needs
- Rapid, user-centered design techniques, including low-fidelity,
high-iteration prototyping practices (e.g., paper-based prototyping and
Wizard-of-Oz studies)
- Evaluation methods for measuring how a design compares to
existing methods of accomplishing a task.
Students will also be introduced to major threads of HCI research.
Logistics
Related courses
Prerequisites: CS 240 241; Level at least 3B; Computer Science students only.
Successors: CS 349
Conflicts: SYDE 348
Hardware/software used: N/A.
Typical references:
Contextual Design, by Beyer and Holtzblatt
Interaction Design, by Preece, Rogers, and Sharp
Human-Computer
Interaction, by Dix, Finley, Abowd and
Beale
Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective
Human-Computer Interaction, by Shneiderman and Plaisant
Required Preparation
The primary requirement for this course is experience in school,
managing projects, and working. In particular, time
management and communication skills (written, oral, and visual) are
essential for success in this course. Thus, students with 3+ years of
experience with courses at Waterloo (especially project-based courses),
and experience with co-op positions, should fare well.
Learning Objectives
By the end of the course, students should have the ability to:
- Conduct in-situ interviews and observations of end-users
- Analyze qualitative data to produce models of users and their
work practices
- Use rapid prototyping practices to design novel computational
artifacts, where the designs may be situated in traditional desktop
computing contexts and/or off-the-desktop computing paradigms (e.g.,
mobile computing, wall-based displays, tabletop systems, etc.)
- Evaluate their designs using expert evaluation techniques (e.g.,
cognitive walkthroughs), experimental methods, and/or discount
evaluation methods (e.g., heuristic evaluation, Wizard-of-Oz
evaluation)
- Describe current trends in HCI research
Typical Syllabus
1. Introduction to, and history of, HCI
Hours: 3
Goals:
- Ability to identify the primary luminaries relevant to HCI, as
well as their visions (e.g., Vannevar Bush and his Memex; Ivan
Sutherland and the Sketchpad; Douglas Engelbart and his system for
augmenting human intelligence)
- Articulate the primary concerns of HCI practitioners:
Understanding users and their needs within a sociocultural context;
design; prototyping; and evaluation
2. Data gathering
Hours: 6
Goals:
- Describe the human rights and ethics issues in doing work with
human
subjects; know how to obtain informed consent; know when institutional
approval is needed for human subjects research
- Articulate the strengths and weaknesses of both quantitative and
qualitative methods of describing humans and human activity
- Ability to plan and conduct semi-structured interviews using
common practices of qualitative researchers
- Ability to plan and conduct in-situ observations
3. Data analysis
Hours: 6
Goals:
- Ability to convert data collected from field studies into one or
more of Contextual Design’s five models (flow, sequence, artifact,
cultural, physical)
- Ability to develop and apply coding schemes to qualitative data
- Ability to extract, and articulate, design requirements from
collected data
4. Design and prototyping
Hours: 9
Goals:
- Ability to differentiate between interaction design, interface
design, and interface element design
- Ability to create both horizontal and vertical designs
- Ability to create low-fidelity, interactive prototypes using
techniques such as paper-prototyping, storyboarding, role-playing, and
video prototyping
- Ability to hold and participate in design critiques
5. Evaluation
Hours: 6
Goals:
- Describe the differences, relative merits of quantitative vs.
qualitative, naturalistic vs. experimental evaluations
- Ability to form and execute an evaluation plan, identifying
specific measures and goals of the evaluation
- Ability to apply discount usability evaluations to interface
designs and prototypes, functioning applications, including
Wizard-of-Oz prototyping and heuristic evaluation
- Articulate elements of good experimental design
6. Topics in HCI research
Hours: 6
Goals:
- Ability to identify major movements in HCI research, and their
motivations, philosophies, and goals
- Articulate the current state of an area well enough to know what
has been tried, what has been successful, what hasn’t, and why. For
example: Speech interfaces, their limitations and successes
Last modified: Wednesday, 15-Feb-2012 12:32:53 EST
