Winter 2012 — Informatics Department — Bren School of ICS — UC Irvine

ICS 4: Human Factors for the Web
Course Reference

Instructor: David G. Kay, 5056 Donald Bren Hall (kay@uci.edu). TA: Kenneth Cameron (kcamero1@uci.edu)

Quick links: Slides (all) (6/pg) Textbook Assignments Sample Midterm Email Q&A (private) Piazza Q&A (public) Email archive References

Course goals: Each of you is a consumer of web pages. Most of you are creators of web content in some form. Many of you will enter careers where you will specify or manage the presentation of information on the web. Yet few people have a concrete understanding of what makes some web sites more successful than others—more navigable, more comprehensible, easier to develop and maintain, less frustrating, less error-prone. This course will focus on the principles of human-computer interaction (HCI) as they apply to the design, development, and evaluation of web sites.

This course is not a course in implementation tools or skills. If you know how to use Dreamweaver or HTML, that's great, but it's not expected or required for your work in this class. We will concentrate on usability—how to evaluate the effectiveness of web sites and how to design them to be more effective. This is what you need to do (and what too many websites neglect) before you start writing HTML.

Prerequisite courses and concepts: This course was designed for majors outside of the School of Information and Computer Sciences; it has no academic prerequisites. We do expect each student to be able to write clear, cogent, grammatical English; 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). If you need to brush up on any of these, let us know and we'll help.

Curricular connections: This course satisfies General Education category II (Science and Technology). If you're a major in the School of ICS (ICS, CS, CSE, BIM, Informatics) you should strongly consider taking Informatics 131 instead of this course, because Informatics 131 covers the field of HCI more broadly. Its prerequisite is any single course in computing (such as ICS 10 or ICS 21) and it meets at the same time as this course in room 174 ICS.

Meeting place and times: Lecture meets Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 10:50 a.m. in PSCB 140.

Office hours: You are welcome to drop by my office at any time. If I'm there and not immersed in something else, I'll be glad to chat about the course or other topics. I will definitely be in or near my office during these scheduled hours, when course-related matters will have first priority: Tuesdays from 12:30 to 1:00 and Fridays from 9:45 to 10:30. Of course emergencies may come up, but I will try to give advance notice of any change. I'll also be happy to make arrangements for other times during the week; "making an appointment" is no big deal (but if you make one, don't skip it without getting in touch). The quickest and most effective way to reach me outside of class is by electronic mail (see below).

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 ics4@uci.edu. We will never intentionally ignore a message, so if you don't receive a response, write again; sometimes overactive spam filters snag a legitimate message. Using course-specific subject lines and your UCInet Email address will help your messages get noticed.

The ics4@uci.edu Email address is private between you and me and the TA. We have also set up a more public discussion forum at a site called 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 will send official course announcements by Email to the EEE 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. This course has a home page at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kay/courses/4/; an archive of official course Email is at http://e3.uci.edu/12w/w3m3/36500.

Textbook and course materials:
Our official textbook is User-Centered Website Development: A Human-Computer Interaction Approach, by Dan McCracken and Rosalee Wolfe. If you have a background in coding with HTML and CSS, you may prefer this as an alternative: Head First Web Design by Ethan Watrall and Jeff Siarto; it covers the same main concepts but with an engaging style and a focus on implementation.

We may assign other readings as the course goes on.

Course structure:
Assignments (40% of the course grade, with later assignments generally weighted more heavily than earlier ones)
Class participation (15%, including coming to class, participating in discussions and in-class activities, and being active on Piazza)
One midterm, given in class on Thursday, February 9 (15%)
One final exam, on Thursday, March 22, from 8:00 to 10:00 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 ICS 4:
— If you do not have a UCInet ID, get one. See https://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 ICS 4 Questionnaire at http://eee.uci.edu/survey/ics4winter12 (by Friday afternoon of the first week).
— Go to checkmate.ics.uci.edu, log in with your UCInet ID, choose "Course Listing" and Winter 2012, click "Go" next to ICS 4, and then click "List me for this course." You'll submit most of your work electronically; this step is necessary to set that up.
— Go to www.piazza.com and follow the steps to add yourself as a student in this course.
— 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 "ICS 4" or "Web 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 (due to human or machine error), 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 School of ICS 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: