cs3724:  Introduction to HCI

Syllabus, Spring 2002, Dr. North

Course:

Tues, Thurs 2-3:15pm
Torgersen 3100
CRN: 11379
Final Exam:  May 3, 7:45-9:45am
Prerequisites:  cs2604 required
Mandatory first day attendance.

Professor:

Dr. Chris North
619 McBryde Hall
Office Hours:  Tues Thurs 3:30-5pm, or by appointment.

Teaching Assistant:

Purvi Saraiya
Office Hours:  Mon Wed 12-2pm, McBryde 133, or by appointment.

Text:

• Ben Shneiderman, Designing the User Interface, Addison-Wesley.
• Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things, Currency Doubleday.  (optional)

Website:

• http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs3724/spring2002north/ 

Grading:

45%  Projects
20%  Homeworks
25%  Exams
5%    Presentation
5%    Class Participation

Topics:

This course will cover the basic elements of design, development, and evaluation of software user interfaces.  Approximately 50% of the course will be devoted to programming graphical user interfaces (please note that this is a different emphasis from previous offerings of this course).  Topics covered include:  

• Design 
  • design process
  • design guidelines
  • interaction styles, direct manipulation
  • information visualization
  • future directions
• Development
  • event-based programming
  • GUI widgets
  • basic graphics, animation
  • Visual Basic, ActiveX
  • Java, Swing
  • ASP, data-driven websites
• Evaluation
  • usability evaluation
  • heuristic evaluation
  • controlled experimentation
  • surveys, data logs

Format:

This course will likely be a different experience for students at this stage in the program.  The course will be heavily discussion based.  Hence, class participation will be important and part of the grade.  Each student will also make a short class presentation during the semester.  A large portion of the grading is devoted to a sizable design and Java implementation project that students will do in groups of 3.  Many of the assignments will be of an open-ended and subjective nature, requiring significant self-motivation and creativity on the student's part for success.

Honor System:

The Honor System policies of the University and Computer Science Department are to be observed in this course.  All assignments (with the exception of the group project) must be completed by students working alone.  The group project must be completed by the members of the group only.