Informatics 131 Course Reference
HUMAN-COMPUTER
INTERACTION
Instructor: David G. Kay,
5056 Donald Bren Hall (kay@uci.edu
). TA: Colin Wheelock (colin.wheelock@gmail.com
)
Quick links: Slides Slides (4-up) Textbook Assignments Piazza Q&A (public) 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 cover. 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, Informatics 143, on information visualization, and Informatics 153, on computer-supported cooperative work.
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 1:00 to 3:50 p.m. in Donald Bren Hall 1431.
The projection screen and audio of each class will be recorded and available through UCI Replay; after each class, you will receive electronic mail with the link for access. We must note, however, that this process is not 100% reliable; some classes may end up not being recorded. Moreover, in some classes we will be designing and critiquing our designs; being present to participate is an important part of the learning.
Office hours: I will plan to be available to discuss course-related matters right after class on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 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 i131@uci.edu
. We will never intentionally ignore a message, so if you don't receive a response, write again; sometimes overactive spam fiters snag a legitimate message. Using course-specific subject lines and your UCInet Email address will help your messages get noticed.
i131@uci.edu
is private between you, the TA, and me. We have also set up a more public discussion forum at www.piazza.com
. Piazza has some advantages over the typical noteboard or discussion group; we'll use it this term and analyze its usability, too.
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.
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kay/courses/131/
; http://e3.uci.edu/12z/w3m3/37505
holds an archive of official course
Email.
Textbook and course materials:
Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, third 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. (This document and the following one are available on Amazon for $7 each; we'll be using them in the second half of the course.)
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, August 23(15%)
One final exam, on Tuesday, September 11, from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. (30%)
We determine final grades neither on a formal curve (with equal numbers of As and Fs, Bs and Ds, and so on) nor on a straight, fixed scale. Grades below C are rare in this course; they result mostly from not completing assignments or otherwise not being engaged with the course. We recommend that you focus not on letter grades but on learning what's necessary to earn high scores; the grades will follow from that.
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/infx131summer12 (by 5:00 on Friday, August 10).
— Go to checkmate.ics.uci.edu, log in with your UCInet ID, choose "Course Listing" and "Summer 2 2012,"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.
— Sign yourself up for Informatics 131 on Piazza.com.
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
.
Approximate course outline:
Week | Date | Topic | Readings* |
1. |
7 August |
Introduction to the course and HCI Conceptual models and metaphors |
1 2 |
|
9 August | Cognitive foundations: memory, learning, vision, movement, language |
3 |
2. |
14 August | How interactions affect users; collaboration and social interaction; interaction styles |
4, 5, 6 |
|
16 August
|
Design process: needs and requirements, data gathering and analysis; prototyping |
7, 8, 9 |
3. |
21 August
|
Design process (continued) |
10, 11 |
|
23 August
|
Midterm; design process (continued) |
|
4. |
28 August
|
Design process (continued); evaluation |
12, 13, 14, 15 |
|
30 August |
Evaluation (continued); interaction devices |
|
5. |
4 September |
Guidelines for hypermedia, feedback, errors, help, menus, forms, screens, typography |
|
|
6 September |
Users with disabilities; information visualization; PowerPoint issues; epilogue |
Other readings |
6. |
Final Exam, Tuesday 11 September, 1:00 to 3:00 p.m. |
Acknowledgements: Alfred Kobsa and Nayla Nassif generously contributed materials to this course.