CSC 428 Fall 1996 Course Syllabus



INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEPARTMENT

NEW JERSEY INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

CIS 447

Design of Human-Computer Interfaces

Spring Term, 2006

1/9/2006

NOTE: the syllabus and the dates contained within are subject to change. Please check the website for the most current information.

INSTRUCTOR: Richard W. Egan

Room 5600 GITC

973-596-5314 (MTHF) - NJIT

Egan@njit.edu

Yahoo IM: Lecturerrich

OFFICE HOURS:

Posted at



After this Class Wednesday 2:00 – 2:45 PM (once a month this may be cancelled due to departmental meetings)

Monday 5:00 – 5:45 PM

Tuesday 5:00 – 5:45 PM

Other hours can be arranged if necessary

COURSE WEB PAGE:

NOTE: This course also uses WebCT, so you must ensure that you can access WebCT and the course at the start of the term. If there is a problem call the help desk at X2900.

COURSE DESCRIPTION: CIS 447 will cover the basic theories and principles applied to the design of human-computer interfaces. It makes the following assumptions: .

1. That you know no psychology or sociology theory - keeping up-to-date with late night radio and television talk shows and reading advice to the lovelorn do not count

2. That you are prepared to try a course entirely different from your traditional information systems course.

The course is intended to introduce the student to the basic concepts used in designing interactive computer systems. It will cover the basic theory and methods that exist in the field. Case studies are used throughout the readings to exemplify the methods presented and to lend a context to the issues discussed.

The course is primarily a design course. Each student in the course will be asked to develop a human-engineered prototype of a user interface. The students will follow a software development process that applies behavioral techniques to measure and improve the quality of their user interface design. Students will learn how to use survey research, task analyses, protocol analysis, design representations and interface evaluation techniques to improve the design of the interface. The final weeks of the class will cover a variety of available interactive techniques and the role of guidelines in design.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: The course is not intended to train the student in human-computer interaction engineering but rather to expose him or her to the concepts of the field. The exposure has several purposes.

1. To facilitate communication between human factors engineers and soon-to-be computer scientists on user interface development projects.

2. To provide the future user interface designer with concepts and strategies for making design decisions.

3. To expose the future interface designer to tools, techniques and ideas for interface design.

4. To introduce the student to the literature of human-computer interaction.

5. To stress the importance of good user interface design.

COURSE ATTENDANCE:

Attendence will be taken on each class. You are expected to arrive on time and to stay for the entire class period.

If you do miss a class, you must have a valid excuse for this. You will need to present evidence of your excuse to your instructor. This includes a copy of the obituary if you needed to attend to a death in the family, a medical excuse or a court summons. If you do not have a valid excuse then you will not be eligible for a grade of ‘A’. Common courtesy says that if you can not be here you contact me before hand and let me know.

COURSE BOOK: Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, Jenny Preece, Yvonne Rogers and Helen Sharp, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2002, ISBN: 0-471-49278-7 (Referred to as Book in the course reading assignments.

COURSE READINGS: Copies of the lecture notes, course assignments and exams from previous courses will be made available to you on the course web page for this course. In additon useful readings that will help you with the course lectures will be made available as PDF files on the course web page.

TEAMS: Students are recommended to team up in groups of FOUR for the course assignments. The assignments are a considerable amount of work and a team will help to carry out some of the required tasks. Teams are also the standard fashion in which user interface design is carried out, i.e., through feedback from another colleague. However, it is understood that teams can also be frustrating especially when your partner is unreachable and has not done his or her part of the agreed upon work. Therefore you can work alone, but note that both team and single person assignments will be graded equally. A few rules about teams.

1. Students are responsible for putting together their own teams. Students are encouraged to be proactive in forming their teams. If you wait until someone contacts you, you could be working alone or with others who are not interested in working towards a reasonable grade in this course.

2. Students can break with a team but they must inform their partner and the instructor that they are breaking with the team at least one week before the assignment is due. It is best for both members of the team to contact the instructor at this time so adjustments can be made on due dates.

3. Students can join new teams, but they must join their new team at least a week before the assignment is due. If you join a new team, an email to the new team and the instructor must be received by the one week deadline.

4. Teams can consist of no more than four students.

5. Note: You will often have to work with other people throughout your life who you feel are not carrying their share of the load or doing the work at the level you desire. Now is a good time to get practice in dealing with these people, negotiating compromises and making the best of the situation.

LATE ASSIGNMENTS AND MISSED EXAMS: Assignments must be turned in by the time designated - if turned in later, they will automatically receive a point reduction in grade, See Below. Exams must be taken at the assigned times. There are, of course, reasonable excuses for late assignments such as significant illness, a death in the family, a court appearance, etc. If you have one of these excuses, you must document it with a copy of the medical excuse, the obituary or the court summons. If work assignments keep you from completing the course requirements on time or from attending an exam, you need to make arrangements with the instructor ahead of time.

Late assignments will receive the following reductions when received;

|Number of Days Late |Point Reduction |

|If received by the next class |20 |

|If received after the next class |50 |

Assignments that are turned in late WILL NOT BE RETURNED immediately. THERE IS A ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY ON LATE ASSIGNMENTS IN THIS CLASS. THE ABOVE SCALE WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED.

Weekly Summaries: You are expected to read/view the assigned material before class. To help me know what you have understood or did not understand you will submit a halfto three-quarter page summary of the readings, plus a list of anything you did not understand or are not sure of. If you understand it all then say that. This summary is due on the Monday before class and is submitted to WebCT. This will give me enough time to look at them and know where there are problems

COURSE PAPERS: The papers are available in PDF form on WebCT under the link Readings.

Reading No. Title

1 Don Norman’s Principles

2. Widgets – Brad Myers – A brief history of HCI

3. Input Devices –Ron Rosenfeld, Dan Olsen, Alex Rudnicky Universal Speech Interface

4. Screen Design - Swaminathan & Sato

5. Color Paper: Shubin Exploring Color in Interface Design

COMMUNICATION WITH THE CLASS: News about changes in the class, the course notes, responses to questions about the assignments, etc. will be announced in the class and will be included in the bulletin board section of WebCT.

MATERIALS YOU WILL NEED FOR YOUR ASSIGNMENTS: YOU NEED THE FOLLOWING FOR YOUR ASSIGNMENTS.

ASSIGNMENT 3: You will need to turn in either executable code or a URL for a web page that contains your design. Therefore, you need to know how to build an application and to write a CD containing the application. The application must run in a Windows 2000 environment.

ASSIGNMENT 4: You will need to turn in a Camtasia file of your user study. If you send in a digital version of the video session, write it on a CD that can be played with RealPlayer. If you do not have access to a video camera, you can schedule your usability study in the Usability Lab at NJIT.

ASSIGNMENT 5 Presentation: You will need to turn in a powerpoint presentation of your interface design.

ASSIGNMENT 5: Group CD: For Accreditation purposes, we must collect and keep copies of all assignments and work. To help in that effort EACH GROUP will also create a CD (with course number, group number and member names), which will contain the group’s assignments/project, both written report and Digital.

Note: All projects MUST be handed in on a CD and should be able to be run from that CD.

If the CD is not handed in with the group project on it, it will result in an ‘F’ for the project.

Grading - The grading is as follows:

Assignments 1-4 50%

Assignment 5 Presentation 10%

Assignment 5 Documentation 15%

Midterm 13%

Weekly Summaries (12) 12%

Total 100%

CAUTIONARY NOTE: This will not be an easy course. Be prepared to work! In particular, much of the material will be relatively new to you and much of it will demand skills you do not normally use in your computer science courses. For example, you will be expected to read more than average and you will also be expected to write interpretive reports of results from your studies.

Academic Integrity

Both NJIT and Rutgers students are expected to follow published guidelines on academic honesty and integrity. You must acquaint yourself with these policies before submitting any assignments. All written work must be original. Violations of NJIT/Rutgers policies will be reported to the Dean of Students at both institutions and may result in failure on a particular assignment, failure in the course, failure in the course and probation, or failure in the course and expulsion. Honor Code violations will be pursued immediately and aggressively .

The goal of this class is to learn the concepts presented and be able to implement them. Homework is an important tool in understanding the concepts better and developing the necessary skills to use these concepts. We expect that for those of you who work in teams, that you will be equal partners in that team, and you will understand all the work that is done and submitted.

You should feel free to ask others in the class when you have questions or problems with a homework assignment. However, each person (or team) must do each homework assignment himself or herself, and code and run it himself or herself. For programs, this means you must do the majority of the design on your own. You must type it in the computer entirely on your own, and turn the output from your own program. For exercises, essay-style and other question-oriented homework, your answers must be substantially your own.

We realize that this presents a "fine line" of what would constitute cheating, and what is proper. It's up to you to uphold this distinction, so we do not have to. We follow and enforce the integrity guidelines established by the College of Computing Sciences and NJIT.

COURSE OUTLINE: - information noted under Lectures is on the course web page under the links LECTURES and ASSIGNMENTS

|Week |Lecture Topic |Reading Assignment |Lectures |

|Week 1 |Introduction to the Design of |Book - Chapter 1, pages 1- 33 |Lecture 1 – Intro to User |

|Jan 18th |Human-Computer Interfaces | |Interface Design |

| | |Video – Home Scheduler | |

|Week 2 |Engineering Principles of Design |Book - Chapter 2 – pages 35-69 |Lecture 2 – Norman’s Design |

|Jan 25th | | |Principles |

| | |Reading 1 – Norman’s Design Principles | |

| | | | |

| | |Quiz #1 - 1/29 – 2/4 on WebCT | |

|Week 3 |Identifying Needs and |Book - Chapter 7, pages 201 – 238 |Lecture 3 – Conducting a Task |

|Feb 1st |Establishing Requirements | |Analysis |

| | |Book - Chapter 12, pages 359 – 388 |Lecture 5 – Observations and |

| | | |Interviews |

|Week 4 |The Process of Interaction Design|Book – Chapter 3, pages 73 – 104 |Lecture 6 – The Design Process |

|Feb 8th |– Part 1 | |Assignment 1 Due! (at 1:00 PM |

| | | |on Feb 8) Please bring copy to |

| | | |class |

|Week 5 |The Process of Interaction Design|Book - Chapter 6, pages 165- 200 |Lecture 8 – Design How-To |

|Feb 15th |– Part 2 | | |

|Week 6 |User Interface Representations |Book - Chapter 8, pages 239 - 278 |Assignment 2 Due! |

|Feb 22nd |and Prototypes | |(at 1:00 PM on Feb 22) |

| | | |Lecture 9-Part 1 - User |

| | |Quiz #2 2/26-3/4 on WebCT |Interface Representations |

| | | |Lecture 10 – Exam Review |

|Week 7 |Introducing Evaluation |Book - Chapter 10, pages 317 – 338 |Midterm exam will be held on |

|Mar 1st | | |March 4-5, 2005 online via |

| | |Book - Chapter 13, pages 389 – 427 |webct |

| | | |Lecture 11 –Part 1 Methods for |

| | | |Early Design Evaluation |

|Week 8 |Design Guidelines for GUI Designs|Reading 2 –Widgets |Lecture 12 – Choosing Widgets |

|Mar 8th |– Widgets | |for your GUI design |

| | |Video - Toolglass & Magic Lens | |

| | | |Lecture 13 – The Infinite |

| | | |Variety of |

| | | |Menus |

|Mar 13 -19 |Spring Break | | |

|Week 9 |Interaction Styles and Input |Reading 3 - Input Devices |Assignment 3 Due! |

|Mar 22st |Devices | |(at 1:00 PM on Mar 22) |

| | | |Lecture 14 – Interaction |

| | |Quiz#3 3/26 – 3/31on WebCT |Styles and the Widgets that |

| | | |Accompany Them |

| | | | |

| | | |Lecture 15 – Choosing Amongst |

| | | |Multiple Input Devices |

|Week 10 |Running a Usability Study |Book – Chapter 14, pages 429 - 460 |Lecture 19 – How to Run and |

|Mar 29th | | |Interpret a Usability Study |

| | |Video- Example Usability Study | |

|Week 11 |Designing the Layout of your |Reading 4 – Screen Design |Lecture 16 – Screen Design |

|Apr 5th |Screen Displays |Reading 5 - Color |Lecture 18 – Color and Icons |

| | | | |

| | | | |

| | |Quiz #4 4/9 – 4/14 on WebCT | |

|Week 12 |Design and Evaluation in the Real|Book - Chapter 15, pages 461- 489 |Assignment 4 Due! |

|Apr 12th |World | |(at 1:00 PM on Apr 12) |

| | | |Lecture 20 – Response Time |

| | | |Lecture 21 – Direct |

| | | |Manipulation |

| | | |Lecture 22 -Examples of |

| | | |Complete HCI – based Systems |

|Week 13 |Computer-Sup-ported Cooperative |Book - Chaper 4, pages 105 - 140 | Lecture 23 - |

|Apr 19th |Work | |Computer-Supported Cooperative |

| | |Video - Montage |Work |

|Week 14 |If DL then narrated powerpoints |There will be no exceptions to the due |Assignment 5 Due! |

|Apr 26th |0f interface designs |dates of Assignment 5. |(at 1:00 PM on Apr 26) |

| |Must be submitted on WebCT and | | |

| |posted also in the discussion | | |

| |area. | | |

|Finals | | |Final exam - To be determined |

|May 4-10 | | | |

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