Informatics 131 Course Reference
HUMAN-COMPUTER INTERACTION

Instructor: David G. Kay, 5056 Donald Bren Hall (kay@uci.edu)

Quick links: Slides Slides (4-up) Textbook Assignments Email archive References

Course goals: The first 40 years of computer science were concerned mainly with computers themselves—making them faster, smaller, more reliable, and better understood mathematically. Perhaps that's still the main concern of the field as a whole, but today computer scientists devote increasing attention to computers in their real-world context, which usually involves the people who use them.

Computers may be complex systems, but human beings are even more complex, and when we try to understand how computers and people work together—well, there's a lot to learn. This course will introduce the broad field of human-computer interaction (HCI): The psychological underpinnings of cognition and perception; the variety of interaction devices, media, and styles; methods for designing systems and evaluating their usability; and the principles and guidelines the field has developed. The success of most systems today, especially consumer products, depends largely on HCI decisions.

This course is also the prerequisite for Informatics 132, the project course in HCI requirements and evaluation. Also of note are Informatics 133, the course in HCI programming, Informatics 134, the HCI programming project course, and Informatics 143, on information visualization.

Prerequisite courses and concepts: The prerequisite for Informatics 131 is one course in computing and upper division standing. The course will not require any significant programming—that's for Informatics 133—but we do expect each student to be able to write clear, cogent, grammatical English at an upper division level because much of the work in this course will involve describing and justifying the design decisions and evaluation judgements you make. We also expect you to have these basic computing skills: Searching and browsing the Web, reading and sending Email, downloading files, viewing and printing PDF (Adobe Acrobat) documents, and creating or saving documents for Email and other purposes in plain ASCII text form (not HTML or Word attachments).

Meeting place and times: Lecture meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:00 to 11:50 a.m. in Engineering Lecture Hall 110. The originally listed discussion and lab sections will not meet.

Office hours: I will be in or near my office during these scheduled times, during which course-related matters will have first priority: right after class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Of course emergencies may come up, but I will try to give advance notice of any change. If I'm not immersed in something else, I'll be glad to answer short questions whenever I'm in my office, so feel free to drop by any time. I'll also be happy to make appointments for other times during the week. The quickest and most effective way to reach me is by electronic mail.

Questions and announcements: You can usually get a response to your course-related questions within a few hours (perhaps a bit longer on the weekends) by sending electronic mail to the address kay@uci.edu.

We may also send course announcements by Email to the official course mailing list, so you should check your Email regularly. Note that this mailing list goes to the Email address that the registrar has for you (your UCInet ID). If you prefer to read your Email on another account, you should set your UCInet account to forward your Email to your preferred account (you can do this on the web at http://www.oit.uci.edu/email/deliverypoint.html). Don't let this slide; if you miss official announcements, your grade could suffer.

Textbook and course materials:
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, second edition, by Jennifer Preece, Yvonne Rogers, and Helen Sharp.

The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within, second edition, by Edward R. Tufte. This short monograph takes a critical look at the use of PowerPoint, a pervasive means of presenting information.

Visual & Statistical Thinking: Displays of Evidence for Decision Making, by Edward R. Tufte. This reprint of Chapter 2 of Tufte's book, Visual Explanations, describes two situations where the way information was presented had life-or-death consequences.

Annals of Medicine: The Checklist, by Atul Gawande (The New Yorker, December 10, 2007). A broad, practical discussion of how people can better cope with complex systems (in this case, surgery).

Course structure:
Assignments (40% of the course grade, with later assignments generally weighted more heavily than earlier ones)
Class participation (15%)
One midterm, given in class on Thursday, July 8 (15%)
One final exam, on Tuesday, July 27, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. (30%)

We will guarantee that overall scores over 90% will receive an A- or better, scores over 80% a B- or better, and scores over 70% a C or better, but the actual grade cutoffs may be lower.

We're required to say that in unusual circumstances, these criteria could change, but we do not expect that to happen.

Special needs: Any student who feels he or she may need an accommodation due to a disability should contact the UCI Disability Services Center at (949) 824-7494 as soon as possible to explore the possible range of accommodations. We encourage all students having difficulty, whether or not due to a disability, to consult privately with the instructor at any time.

What you must do right now to get started in Informatics 131:
— If you do not have a UCInet ID, get one. See http://activate.uci.edu/.
— If you prefer to read your electronic mail on an account other than your UCInet account, redirect your mail at http://www.oit.uci.edu/email/deliverypoint.html.
— Complete the Informatics 131 Questionnaire at http://eee.uci.edu/survey/infx131summer10 (by 5:00 on Thursday, June 26).
— Go to checkmate.ics.uci.edu, log in with your UCInet ID, choose "Course Listing," click "Go" next to Informatics 131, and then click "List me for this course." You'll submit most of your work electronically; this step is necessary to set that up.
— If you aren't yet officially enrolled in the course, check the course Email archive regularly (see above) so you can keep up with official announcements (which may include announcements about enrollment).

Good advice and helpful hints:

Check your electronic mail regularly; this is an official channel for course announcements. When sending course-related mail, start the subject line with "Infx 131" or "HCI class".

Attendance in class is essential; concepts and issues that come up in class will find their way onto the exams and class participation in various forms counts towards the course grade.

Always keep your own copy of each assignment, both electronically and on paper; if an assignment should get lost in the shuffle (or if a file server should crash, which has happened in the past), we'll expect you to be able to supply a replacement easily.

If you find yourself having trouble or getting behind, speak with the instructor. But never take the shortcut of copying someone else's work and turning it in; the consequences can be far worse than just a low score on one assignment. The ICS department takes academic honesty very seriously; for a more complete discussion, see the ICS academic honesty policy: http://www.ics.uci.edu/ugrad/policies/index.php#03.

Approximate course outline:

Week

Date

Topic

Readings*

1.	22 June	Introduction to the course and HCI Conceptual models and metaphors	1 2
	24 June	Cognitive foundations: memory, learning, vision, movement, language	3
2.	29 June	How interactions affect users; collaboration and social interaction; interaction styles	4, 5, 6
	1 July	Design process: needs and requirements, data gathering and analysis; prototyping	9, 10
3.	6 July	Design process (continued)	11, 7, 8
	8 July	Midterm
4.	13 July	Design process (continued); evaluation	12, 13, 14, 15
	15 July	Evaluation (continued); interaction devices
5.	20 July	Guidelines for hypermedia, feedback, errors, help, menus, forms, screens, typography
	22 July	Users with disabilities; information visualization; PowerPoint issues; epilogue	Other readings
6.	27 July	Final Exam

* Chapters shown are in the Preece/Rogers/Sharp text. Read the Tufte monographs and the Gawande article whenever you like, but before the last class meeting.

Acknowledgements: Alfred Kobsa and Nayla Nassif generously contributed materials to this course.