Usability has become the preeminent requirement of interactive software. To meet this necessity, human-computer interaction (HCI) has emerged as a serious field of research, development, and application. Despite this attention to usability on some levels, interactive software is still too difficult to use— as any computer user knows. A major cause underlying poor usability is a lack of understanding of a usability engineering process for developing usable interaction designs. Software developers still have primary responsibility for developing interactive systems, but most are not trained in usability methods and, therefore, do not have the knowledge and skills to include usability methods in their life cycle activities. This course, which has been designed to focus on usability methods and a usability engineering development process, uses an integrative and cross-disciplinary approach to bring together a broad variety of topics together in relation to the problem of developing quality user interaction designs.
Among the topics studied are the design and evaluation of effective user interaction designs, beginning with principles and guidelines for designing the product: effective interaction design content and interaction style. Additionally, much emphasis is given to the development process for user interaction designs as an integral, but different, part of interactive software development. The development process includes iterative life cycle management, requirements and task analysis, usability specifications, design, prototyping, and evaluation. It is a goal of this course to help students realize that developing the human-computer interface is not something to be done at the last minute, when the "rest of the system" is finished.
This is an active learning course, rather than lecture-based. That means the student has more responsibility than usual in the learning process. Before each class, the student will read and study the class notes applicable to that class. It is the student's job to manage the pace of this reading so that it fits the class schedule. Quizzes, usually unannounced, will be given to ensure the reading is done. Class time will be used for quizzes, questions and discussion, review of reading material, and videotapes. However, the main use of class time will be for in-class activities to demonstrate techniques and principles and to practice the skills described in the class notes. A semester-long group project will give students hands-on experience in applying these skills and techniques to develop a usable interaction design for their own application system.
In addition to the content-specific objectives listed in the next section, I have these personal goals for each student:
The outcome-oriented objectives for of the course are that each student, upon successful completion, will be able to:
No official coursework, but students should have substantial experience with computers, especially their interactive use, and an intense interest in making them easier to use. Some knowledge of software engineering fundamentals would be very useful. Your knowledge can be gained either from coursework or from practice. If concepts such as interaction design evaluation, usability, prototyping, representation/specification techniques, life cycle, methodology mean nothing to you, this may not be the class for you.
WARNING: On the other hand, if you have considerable experience in HCI and usability, you are welcome to participate in this course, but be warned that this is not an advanced course in usability engineering. Although this course gives thorough treatment to the usability engineering process, this is an introductory course.
Required: D. Hix and H. R. Hartson, Developing User Interfaces: Ensuring
Usability Through Product and Process, John Wiley, 1993.
Class notes are posted on the course website. This is the major source of content and discussion for the course. We highly recommend that you print these notes and bring them to class in a notebook and use them for note taking in class. Frequent quizzes will be based on these notes.
| Quizzes | 15% | ||||||||||||
| Homework | 5% | ||||||||||||
| In-Class activities | 15% | ||||||||||||
| Interface development project* | 55% | ||||||||||||
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| Final exam | 10% |
*Individual project grades will be weighted by amount of participation in team effort (see below).
The major work component for the course is the semester project. It involves defining, analyzing, specifying, designing, prototyping, and evaluating the interaction design for the user interface of an interactive system of your choice. The purpose of the project is to give you real-world exposure to all steps involved in developing a significant user interaction design. It is not always necessary to develop a complete interaction design to learn the usability engineering process but it is important to follow all the steps in the process for at least part of an interaction design.
This is a team project. I will assign students to teams, trying to balance knowledge, skills, and backgrounds. All development activities, including writing the deliverables, are team activities. All team members are to participate in all development activities. Do not divide the overall process among the team members. Even though this might seem like a more efficient way to proceed, this leads to a kind of specialization that poses a barrier to each person learning the overall process. The is especially true for a person who gets the job of programming, at the price of not learning usability engineering skills.
Project Grading
Beyond trying to assess objectively whether all requirements are met, we try to assess subjectively how well requirements are met. This is based on our own knowledge and experience and can sometimes be somewhat relative among the project teams of the class. Your grade is based on our perception of how much you put into it and how well you understood, interpreted, and applied the material covered in class to your project. You can be sure this is done in the fairest way possible. We evaluate your assignments in detail.
Note about Iteration in the Project
In course feedback, students have noted the fact that we emphasize iterative refinement but don't allow for it in the project. We don't have you iterate your design after doing formative evaluations. The goal is to teach the process and not necessarily to produce a product. We teach the process by doing each step once. But that doesn't give you the satisfaction of seeing an improvement in the product. This approach still exposes you to the full process (once), and I'm afraid we'll have to live with that in the constraints of a semester.
I have tried to work in some iteration, but have not been able to find a reasonable way to squeeze in two more project assignments (to redesign and re-evaluate). I could easily just put them into the calendar and make all the deadlines tighter, but you wouldn't be able to do it.
But there is some room for iteration of some project parts. In the spirit of iterative refinement, the modus operandi of HCI, we encourage you to get your project assignments completed before the due date and have the GTA review it and make comments on it during office hours so you can make corresponding changes before submitting on the due date.
Team Member Evaluations
The eight project assignments are described separately in the course Website, under "Projects". Each member of the team is expected to contribute equally to each part of the project. It is possible that the most difficult part of the project assignments is working well together in a group. Be aware of possible group problems and be ready to solve them. Don't make the mistake of taking this aspect for granted. Sometimes, however, despite our best efforts, some team members end up not pulling their fair share of the weight.
To ensure that each team member is given a project grade reflecting individual contributions, the eighth and final project assignment is a Team Member Evaluation. Each team must turn in a paper copy of the Team Member Evaluation Form (print from Web) as a required deliverable to report the relative effort/contribution of each person on your project team over the whole project.
This form is not optional. Be professional and give a careful rating. The ratings on these forms will be used as weightings, as explained at the beginning of the semester, to convert team project grades into individual student project grades. The team is given a grade for each part of the project. Each individual team member's grade for each project assignment is a weighting of the team grade, where the weighting is based on an evaluation of individual contributions, collected from each team member at the end of the semester (and moderated as necessary by the instructor).
Although In-Class Activities are often done with teams, grading will be done on an individual basis, generally following these criteria:
Reading assignments
You are responsible for keeping up with the reading of class notes per the schedule given in the course calendar.
You are also responsible for knowing where our class discussion are, with respect to the class notes, and setting your own reading pace to keep ahead enough to be prepared for class discussions and activities. There will be numerous quizzes, often unannounced, to assess how well you are keeping up.
Homework and project assignments
All homework and project assignments must be turned in at the beginning of class on the due date. All due dates for assignments are firm. Any assignment that you do not hand in on time will be given a grade of zero. If you are not able to complete an assignment by the due date, you should hand in as much of it as you have done. You must prepare your assignments electronically and hand in a hardcopy by the due date/time. Assignments may not be submitted via email to either the professor or a GTA.
Attendance and Making-Up Graded Activities
Occasionally you might need to be absent from class for a good reason, and it might cause you to miss a quiz and/or an in-class activity. Attendance is not required for the course, nor does it play a direct part in the course grade. However, if you are absent for a quiz, or if your turn comes up for an in-class activity when you are absent, you will get a grade of zero for that quiz or activity.
One might normally expect to be able to make up a quiz or activity missed due to an excused absence (i.e., an absence for a legitimate reason such as illness). However, the large number of quizzes and in-class activities would entail an unreasonably large amount of time and effort spent on negotiating excuses and administering and grading make-up assignments. Therefore, the policy for this class must be: No make-ups for missed quizzes or in-class activities. As an alternative, when final grades are computed for the course, I will drop the lowest quiz grade and will consider other ways for you to make-up an in-class activity missed. If more compensation is appropriate, I will consider dropping more grades. Also, the course grades will be curved, so your missed classes will probably average out with those of the other students. Thus, if your absences are infrequent, it shouldn't have a significant effect on your course grade.
If you have to miss class for an extended period due to a protracted illness or similar reason, we will treat your needs as a special case and I will do everything I can to help you recover lost ground.
Weather delays
If the university is closed on an assignment due date, it will be due (in a box or pile outside Dr. Hartson's door) by 2 p.m. on the first day the university reopens.
Questions about grading
It is the professor's responsibility to establish grading standards and work with the GTA in grading. The GTA has the responsibility to grade homework and project assignments. Therefore, when you have questions about grading of these, you should first see the GTA who graded the work. All questions regarding grading must be resolved within one week of return of the graded work. Keep all graded work until the end of the semester. In case your grade is incorrectly recorded, you will need to bring in the graded original in order for the recorded grade to be changed.
Responding to e-mail
The professor and GTA will make every effort to answer your email to them in a timely fashion. However, due to the volume of email with classes of this size, you should not expect to get a reply in less than 24 hours. Many times you may get a reply in less than 24 hours, but you should not count on it (e.g., to answer questions about a homework or project assignment within the last few hours before that assignment is due). Please put "CS5714" as the subject line of your email; that will help us identify your emails more quickly.
Grades via e-mail
Because of the large number of students in each class, professors and GTAs will not be able to reply to individual email requests for final exam and/or class grades at the end of the semester, but grades will be posted (on the Web and otherwise).
The Virginia Tech honor code is in effect for all work, whether performed individually or in teams. All assignments submitted shall be considered graded work unless otherwise noted. All aspects of your coursework are covered by the honor system. Any suspected violations of the honor code will be promptly reported to the honor system. Honesty in your academic work will develop into professional integrity. The faculty and students of Virginia Tech will not tolerate any form of academic dishonesty.
We wish to make any accommodations needed by any student because of a disability. Please contact the instructor during the first week of class.