CS 4663/6663 Human/Computer Interaction

CS4663/6663 Human/ComputerInteraction

Fall 2002

Instructor:Lois Boggess

lboggess@cs.msstate.edu

Office: Butler 321

Office hours: 11-12 Monday, 2:30-4:30 Wednesday, other hours by appointment

Open to students outside of Computer Science.

CS majors must have completed Formal Languages with at least a C. Historically, the course has attracted a number of Psychology majors; Cognitive Science majors are welcome, as are students from Educational Psychology, Industrial Engineering and other disciplines. For non-CS majors, the requirement is consent of the instructor.

Textbooks: none required. We will be reading papers throughout the semester. For basic information, three textbooks on the market are the primary references used in the class.

Alan Dix, Janet Finlay, Gregory Aboud, and Russell Beale, Human-Computer Interaction, 2^nd edition. London: Prentice Hall. 1998

Ben Shneiderman, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, 3^rd edition. Reading, Massachusetts: Addison Wesley. 1998

Jennifer Preece, Yvonne Rogers, Helen Sharp, Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc. 2002

Course content:

There are well-known principles which should be followed in designing interfaces between humans and computers. Because this course might be the only HCI course on a student's transcript, this course will include a four-week introduction to such principles. This is about 15% of the course, and is the only anticipated overlap between this class and other courses covering principles of human/computer interaction on this campus. Other topics for the course include the following:

· Multimedia and multimodal communication between human and computer: not just presenting text, images, sound, and haptic (force-feedback)info but receiving information from humans in multiple modes, and allowing control by the human. Extreme scenario: intelligent shipboard control system in an emergency such as explosion and fires on board, where the officers and sailors all have wearable computers and communicate with the control system, but it knows more than anyone about where everyone is, what is in imminent danger but could be saved by quick action, etc. Everyday scenario: an interactive geography lesson for an elementary school child, in which the child can explore the map by running the cursor around it, hearing names of rivers when the cursor touches the rivers, cities when the cursor is close to the city, state names when a cursor first enters the area of the state, seeing flashes of photos illustrating climate, crops, architecture...

· Interfaces inclusive of people who cannot read (too young, blind, eyes busy)

· Interfaces inclusive of or designed for people who don't have all the modalities available at a workstation ("handicapped" by nature -sight, hearing, physical motion - or handicapped by circumstances - in a hazardous waste suit, or wearing very heavy gloves and a gas mask, or crammed into the inside of the huge engine you are repairing)

· Software that has to work well not only on highly equipped workstations but also on very small devices.

· Issues related to conveying information without *demanding*attention. (Example: you don't actively listen to the sound of your car's engine, but you probably notice when there's something unusual that needs attention.)

· Issues related to ubiquitous computing (we're surrounded by processors - how can they be made to cooperate to help us in ways that they don't now, that we would consider helpful and not intrusive?).

· Issues related to how people treat computers as if they were other people, even though they know that the thing they are interacting with is not another human.

Grading criteria (expected - subject to class size and distribution among majors):

· Traditional homeworks and tests on first four weeks of coursework: 15%

· Major project/experiment 60%

· Participation in other class members' experiments (or alternative - see below) 5%

· Class participation (there will be significant reading and discussion of papers) 15%

· Other5%

It is expected that most students will work on small teams. Psych and Edpsych majors will be expected to develop an experiment related to the objective of their team, consistent with the nature of the course (and normally also consistent with the objective of a project which will be implemented in code by one or more CS majors). (Ed)Psych majors will be expected to go through the process of getting permission from the Institutional Review Board for their experiment. They will also take primary responsibility for overseeing adherence to best practice for HCI principles in any project implemented by CS majors on their team, as reflected by current literature on those principle. Computer Science majors must implement a major project, which in many cases will require cooperation between two or more programmers. The instructor will have suggestions for some projects, but students will have the freedom to propose their own and negotiate team composition with the instructor. Individual (non-team) projects are possible but not encouraged.

Participation in the four experiments designed for this class is worth 5% of the credit for the course. A good faith effort to participate in all four experiments without malice or mischief is worth an A for that 5%. Students who can demonstrate that they have reasonable opportunity to participate in only three of the four experiments can also receive an A. Students who cannot participate in all the experiments by reason of representing the University off-campus during the experimental periods are excused from the experiments that they must miss. All students may choose to write a paper in lieu of participating in the experiments. The paper should be a minimum of 1500 words, and is due by the end of the experimental period: November 25. Topic should be discussed with the instructor - it is anticipated that most students would desire to write a paper covering the research literature that they have already become acquainted with for their own team's project, so that no additional research of the literature would be necessary, but a primary criterion is that the topic be such that the exercise of writing the paper be of significant value to the writer, in compensation for the significant loss to four researchers of that person's contributions to their experiment.

Week 1: August 19-23. Material for first several weeks mostly from DFAB. Humans use computers to do tasks, hence human/computer/task organization.

Humans: I/O, memory, problem solving

Input: senses

Sight, reading

First assignment, Ubiquitous Computing: see here for html, here for Word document with active links attached to descriptions submitted by class.

Week 2: August 26-30. Discussion of the Weiser articles.

Second assignment, Computers are Social Actors, see here for the assignment, here for Word document with active descriptor links.

Continued discussion of human senses, sensory memory, short-term and working memory, the magic number 7 plus or minus 2, enhancing memory

Week 3: September 2 is a holiday.

Discussion of Computers are Social Actors

Third assignment – MBTI/Keirsey personality preference inventory: see here

Friday– guest lecture by Dr. Gene Boggess (take notes – will be covered on test)

Week 4: No class on September 9, 11.

Friday– continued discussion of human performance, reasoning (deduction, induction, abduction), problem solving. Reuse of prior solutions, analogy. (Maier's "string from the ceiling" problem; how to kill a tumor without killing healthy adjacent tissue). General problem solving (Newell and Simon) – state space, operators (crossing campus)

Week 5: September 16-20. Fourth assignment – by Friday read revised draft of Banks and Boggess here and submit two relevant URLs with descriptions. Be ready to discuss and react to the paper. Here is a pointer to the URLs and descriptions submitted.

The paper (Boggess, Frontiers in Education 1999) relates a low-tech, non-computer related solution to graphic presentation of networks and so on for blind students in University classes. It is not required reading – some students thinking about applications for people with low vision might find it interesting.

Monday:"human error" (handout from last week) –sources; experts vs. novices, learning

Computer "senses" – input. "Keyboard" types, handwriting and gesture recognition.

Wednesday: Discussion of haptic devices, PHANToM, force feedback I/O for games, haptic mouse

Segments of Doug Engelbart '68 talk, with demo of mouse and chord keyboard, ref to Arpanet which will soon be operational with 20 computers.

More discussion of computer input devices.

Friday: Discussion of Banks&Boggess. General discussion related to team formation and possible project interests.

Fifth assignment: By Wednesday Sept 25, read Boggess draft on ubiquitous computing, and "Out of the Glass Box" (paper handout Friday Sept 20) and submit two related URLs with descriptions of how they are related to the readings. (This will probably be the last set of URLs you are required to find and describe that are not related directly to your own team's project.) The URLs and descriptions submitted are here.

On a personal note, I have really gotten a big kick out of the URLs turned in in the last five days: some are just plain fun in addition to being relevant. A couple hit closer to home than I think their submitters could ever know. I'm pretty sure one is the URL of the project that tied with the Banks/Boggess proposal when NSF considered the submitted proposals. They won the toss-up (according to the NSF program officer at the time). And another was written by an MSU student and published.

Week 6: September 23-27. Teams assigned Monday. Demo of touch panel application.

Wednesday: discussion of assignment 5 – Out of the Glass Box and Boggess draft on ubiquitous computing.

Sixth assignment: by Friday, Sept 27, each team is required to have ready for brief description and class discussion three possible projects from which they expect to choose one. See here for details. Team PowerPoint slides are linked below:

1. Amit Phadke, Peter Sroga, Vikram Venkatesh

2. Geoff Martino, Paul McFarling, Jason Russell

3. Joel Martin, Jean Mohammadi-Aragh, Gopi Prashanth

4. Willie Johnson, Patrick Neal, Sean Ziegeler

5. Don Goodman, Wesley McGrew, John Williams

6. Christopher Gonzales, Ken Nagel, Michael Rutledge

7. Allen Coleman, Simon Richards, Lorinda Stinnett

8. Randy Brou, Chris Dion, Drew Lanclos, Jiuquan Zhang

Week 7: September 30-October 4. The take-home test is Wednesday, October 2, to be turned in on Friday, October 4. Required readings: two papers by Weiser, one by Nass et al., 1^st chapter of Please Understand Me: "Different Drums and Different Drummers", Banks and Boggess proposal, Boggess ubiquitous computing draft, chapter 15 of DFAB "Out of the Glass Box", two book reports, and a minimum of four papers related to the above and listed in the class URLs, (which you are free to augment at any time prior to the test by submitting a relevant URL and description, and indicating to the instructor which list you believe the description and URL should be added to). You can of course, read and cite other papers not on the class lists, but you must have command of at least four of the listed papers.

Monday: The first question is available here. [lcb1]

Wednesday: [lcb2]

The test is here. [lcb3]

Friday: Tests due. Class lecture topics: Design: Tufte's Envisioning Information 1990. Lists of text, names, numbers. The counter. Affordances. Examples of poor design.

Week 8: October 7-11 Focus on the interaction part of Human Computer Interaction. Icons – affordances. Menu types, locations. Modal dialog boxes. Speech output, speech input.

A web design issue – links: User Interface Engineering's book Web Site Usability: A Designer's Guide (book's web page, with pointer to the links chapter)

Friday, teams must have decided on single project and have a three and one-half minute presentation on that project with three slides. The PowerPoint slides must be emailed to the instructor no later than 8 a.m. Friday.

1. Geoff Martino, Jason Russell, Bart McFarling

Low Visibility Web Browser

2. Patrick Neal, Willie Johnson, Sean Ziegeler

Gesture-Controlled Interfaces

3. Allen Coleman, Simon Richards, Lorinda Stinnett

Tutorial Interface Design

4. Christopher Gonzales, Ken Nagel, Michael Rutledge

Audio Navigation

5. Randy Brou, Chris Dion, Drew Lanclos, Jiuquan Zhang

Optimal Timing for Feedback

6. Amit Phadke, Peter Sroga, Vikram Venkatesh

Treasure Hunt

Fun Forest

7. Joel Martin, Jean Mohammadi-Aragh, Gopi Prashanth

Project Graffiti

8. Don Goodman, Wesley McGrew, John Williams

The One about the VW Bus

Each team must sign up for a half-hour discussion with the instructor, to take place during the week of October 14-18. Calendar of available times is here (non-interactive – send email to reserve a time, please).

Week 9: October 14-18 Students who are required to design an experiment and get IRB approval should initiate email dialog with instructor, starting with a one-paragraph description of their proposed experiment.

Discussions for this week include Winograd interview, the iRoom, process of design, users vs. stakeholders, prototyping [Preece et al.]

Week 10: October 21-25 Monday. Tidbits: Scenarios, "How to really understand the users' experience" [Preece et al.] Discussion of alternate means of "class participation" through bulletin board: anyone who does not contribute to discussion/comments in a given presentation day can get full credit by posting two good observations/questions to the bulletin board by midnight of the same day. Presenting teams must respond to postings no later than the end of the next day. All members of the class are welcome to post to the bulletin board, even if they have contributed to in-class discussion.

Bulletin board is here.

Wednesday: Discussion of team status, project issues, comments and questions.

Teams: Team Guthrie (Goodman/McGrew/Williams)

Project Graffiti (Martin/Mohammadi-Aragh/Prashanth)

Project Graffiti powerpoint slides (Oct 23)

FunForest (Phadke/Sroga/Venkatesh)

Feedback (Brou/Dion/Lanclos/Zhang)

Slides for Oct 23 presentation

Friday: Team discussions continued

Teams: Audio Navigation – Team Blue (Gonzales/Nagel/Rutledge)

Tutorial Interface (Coleman/Richards/Stinnett)

Project IGoR (Neal/Johnson/Ziegeler)