Schedule and Readings

Introduction to this Course: What is an Interaction Technique and Why are they Important?

Required Reading:

• IxT Book, chapter 1

Other Readings:

• Brad A. Myers. "Challenges of HCI Design and Implementation," ACM Interactions. vol. 1, no. 1. January, 1994. pp. 73-83. pdf

Pointing Devices and Fitts' Law

Required Reading:

• IxT Book, chapter 4

Other Readings:

• Card, S.K., English, W.K., & Burr, B.J. Evaluation of mouse, rate-controlled isometric joystick, step keys, and text keys for text selection on a CRT. Ergonomics, 21(8), pp. 601-613. 1978. pdf
• Brad A. Myers, Rishi Bhatnagar, Jeffrey Nichols, Choon Hong Peck, Dave Kong, Robert Miller, and A. Chris Long. "Interacting At a Distance: Measuring the Performance of Laser Pointers and Other Devices." Proceedings CHI'2002: Human Factors in Computing Systems. Minneapolis, Minnesota, April 20-25, 2002. pp. 33-40. pdf.
• Video of guest lecture by Ted Selker to 2014 class about the IBM Pointing Stick: Slides for his lecture, link to the video shown during the talk, and Panopto video of the talk
• Wobbrock, J. O., Shinohara, K. and Jansen, A. (2011). The effects of task dimensionality, endpoint deviation, throughput calculation, and experiment design on pointing measures and models. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '11). Vancouver, British Columbia (May 7-12, 2011). New York: ACM Press, pp. 1639-1648. ACM ref
• Soukoreff, R. W. and MacKenzie, I. S. (2004). Towards a standard for pointing device evaluation, perspectives on 27 years of Fitts' law research in HCI. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 61 (6), pp. 751-789. ScienceDirect

Start on Homework 1

No class, Martin Luther King Day

History of Personal Computers and their Interaction Techniques

Required Reading:

• IxT Book, chapter 2

Other Readings:

• Brad A. Myers. "A Brief History of Human Computer Interaction Technology." ACM interactions. Vol. 5, no. 2, March, 1998. pp. 44-54. pdf
• Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad Demo, 20:42 min Video, 1964. mpg download or Youtube
• Bill Moggridge, "Designing Interactions" excerpt #1, pp. 17 – 111. (on Canvas--only accessible to class members)
• William L. Bewley, Teresa L. Roberts and William L. Verplank David Schroit. “Human Factors Testing in the Design of Xerox's 8010 'Star' Office Workstation,” Proceedings SIGCHI'83: Human Factors in Computing Systems, Boston, MA, Dec, 1983. pp. 72-77. ACM ref
• Ivan E. Sutherland. “Sketchpad: A Man-Machine Graphical Communication System,” AFIPS Spring Joint Computer Conference, 1963. pp. 329-346. ACM ref
• Larry Tesler. “The Smalltalk Environment,” Byte Magazine. Aug, 1981. 6(8). pp. 90-147. archive.org version
• Gregg Williams. “The Lisa Computer System,” Byte Magazine. Feb, 1983. 8(2). pp. 33-50. archive.org version

History of Handhelds (PDAs to Smartphones) and their Interaction Techniques

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 3

Other Readings:

• Bill Moggridge, "Designing Interactions" excerpt #2, pp. 180-235. (on Canvas--only accessible to class members)
• Eric Bergman, Ed. Information Appliances and Beyond. San Francisco, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers. 2000. excerpt, pp. 82-129. (on Canvas--only accessible to class members)
• GO Corporation - Introducing PenPoint (1991), 15:20 video on YouTube

Mon. January 24, 2022 - Semester Course Add Deadline

Menus

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 7
• All the Widgets video, vimeo or YouTube or download wmv file (600MB), sections: "Menus", "Palettes", "Buttons", "Radio buttons", "Checkboxes" (00:17:16 - 01:01:14), and "Forms and dialog boxes" (01:21:31 - 01:30:05)

Other Readings:

• J. Callahan, D. Hopkins, M. Weiser, and B. Shneiderman. 1988. An empirical comparison of pie vs. linear menus. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '88), J. J. O'Hare (Ed.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 95-100. ACM ref or local pdf.
• Benjamin B. Bederson. 2000. "Fisheye menus". In Proceedings of the 13th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '00). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 217-225. ACM DL
• Gordon Kurtenbach and William Buxton. 1993. "The limits of expert performance using hierarchic marking menus." In Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '93). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 482-487. ACM DL
  
• Gordon Kurtenbach and William Buxton. 1994. "User learning and performance with marking menus." In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '94), Beth Adelson, Susan Dumais, and Judith Olson (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 258-264. ACM DL
  

Methods for Designing and Evaluating Interaction Techniques

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 21

Other Readings:

• Scott R. Klemmer, Bjorn Hartmann, and Leila Takayama. 2006. How bodies matter: five themes for interaction design. In Proceedings of the 6th conference on Designing Interactive systems (DIS '06). ACM, pp. 140-149. ACM DL

Homework 1 Due.
Start on Homework 2

Scrolling and One-Dimensional Input

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 5
• All the Widgets video, vimeo or YouTube or download wmv file (600MB), sections: "Scroll bars" (00:02:30 - 00:17:16)

Other Readings:

• William Buxton and Brad Myers. "A Study in Two-Handed Input," Proceedings SIGCHI '86: Human Factors in Computing Systems. Boston, MA. April 13-17, 1986. pp. 321-326. pdf or html and video.
• Brad Myers, Kin Pou ("Leo") Lie and Bo-Chieh ("Jerry") Yang, "Two-Handed Input Using a PDA and a Mouse", Proceedings CHI'2000: Human Factors in Computing Systems. April 1-6, 2000. The Hague, The Netherlands. pp. 41-48. local pdf.

Optional Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 6: Percent Done Progress Indicators
• Brad A. Myers. "The Importance of Percent-Done Progress Indicators for Computer-Human Interfaces," Proceedings SIGCHI '85: Human Factors in Computing Systems. San Francisco, CA. Apr. 14-18, 1985. pp. 11-17. Reprinted as Datapro Report no. AS40-300-301, Dec, 1986. pdf. See also YouTube video or local mp4.

Forms, Property Sheets and Dialog Boxes

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 9
• All the Widgets video, vimeo or YouTube or download wmv file (600MB), sections: "Forms and dialog boxes" (1:21:31 - 1:30:05).

Guest Lecture #1: TBD

Text Entry for Computers and Handhelds, and Text Editing

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 8
• All the Widgets video, vimeo or YouTube or download wmv file (600MB), sections: "Selecting text" (01:01:43 - 01:13:26) and "Entering input" (01:13:26 - 01:21:31)

Other Readings:

• Jacob O. Wobbrock and Brad A. Myers. 2006. Analyzing the input stream for character- level errors in unconstrained text entry evaluations. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 13, 4 (December 2006), pp. 458-489. ACM DL or local pdf.
  Note: You can skip section 4 -- you do not need to read about the algorithms.
  
• Video of guest lecture by Larry Tesler to 2014 class about the invention of copy and paste and other text editing ideas.

Homework 2 Due.
Start on Homework 3

Text Entry and Editing, continued.

Creating, Selecting And Manipulating Objects

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 10
• All the Widgets video, vimeo or YouTube or download wmv file (600MB), sections: "Selecting graphical objects", "Editing graphical objects" (01:30:07 - 01:39:15)

Other Readings:

• Brad A. Myers. (1998) "Scripting Graphical Applications by Demonstration," Proceedings CHI'98. pp. 534-541. ACM DL, or local pdf, and video or YouTube (3:09). (Topaz)

Desktop Metaphors, Icons, Window Managers

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 11
• All the Widgets video, vimeo or YouTube or download wmv file (600MB), sections: "Introduction" (0:00 - 02:30), and "Icons and windows", "Manipulating windows", "Conclusion and credits" (1:39:15 - 2:14:54 (end)).
  

Other Readings:

• Brad A. Myers. “A Taxonomy of User Interfaces for Window Managers,” IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. Sept, 1988. 8(5). pp. 65-84. IEEE DL or local pdf
• Video of guest lecture by David Canfield Smith to 2014 class about the invention of icons and the Star UI: Slides for his lecture and Panopto video of the talk
• Video of guest lecture by Norm Cox to 2016 class about the graphic design of the icons: Slides for his talk (pdf), and Panopto video of the talk
• Video of guest lecture by Tandy Trower to 2016 class about the design of Microsoft Windows: Slides for his lecture and Panopto video of the talk (but the audio is a little garbled).
• Sara A. Bly and Jarrett K. Rosenberg. “A Comparison of Tiled and Overlapping Windows,” Human Factors in Computing Systems, Proceedings SIGCHI'86. Boston, Mass, Apr, 1986, 1986. pp. 101-106. ACM DL or pdf
• David Canfield Smith, DigiBarn TV: Xerox Star 8010 Final Demo - Live Demo, YouTube Video

Homework 3 Due.
Start on Homework 4 (after the break)

Mid Term Exam take home test
(see information about the midterm)

(Mid-Semester Grades Due by 4:00 p.m. on March 12, 2025)

Spring Break -- no class

Spring Break -- no class

Interactions in 3D, Virtual and Augmented Reality, and Games

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 12

Other Readings:

• Rick Carey, Tony Fields, Andries van Dam, Dan Venolia. 1994. Why is 3-D interaction so hard and what can we really do about it? (panel). In Proceedings SIGGRAPH '94. ACM, pp. 492-493. ACM DL.
• Michael Chen, S. Joy Mountford, and Abigail Sellen. 1988. A study in interactive 3-D rotation using 2-D control devices. In Proceedings SIGGRAPH '88. ACM pp. 121-129. ACM DL.
• Steve Swink. Game Feel. CRC Press. Chapters 1, 6, 7 and 15. (on Canvas--only accessible to class members)
  (Note: Game Feel is written by a game designer rather than a traditional HCI practitioner, so he doesn't practice the formal study of interaction techniques. Think about how our class techniques and his approach relate as you're reading. Because he is a game designer, he may reference video games in passing with which you may be unfamiliar. If you're interested, YouTube is filled with demo videos that can show you what the game looks like and how it plays, especially if you add "review" or "gameplay" to your search.)
• Video of Game Controllers from 1972 to 2006. http://youtu.be/Q-03HmcjOPs
• Video about the camera design of Super Mario World (2D predecessor to
  Super Mario 64): http://youtu.be/TCIMPYM0AQg

Ubiquitous Computing, Physical Widgets, Sensors, Wearables, and Internet of Things (IOT)

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 13

Other Readings:

• Saul Greenberg and Chester Fitchett. 2001. Phidgets: easy development of physical interfaces through physical widgets. In Proceedings of the 14th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '01). ACM, pp. 209-218. ACM DL or local pdf
  NOTE: only pages 209-211 and 215-218 (not the architecture)
• Hiroshi Ishii, Dávid Lakatos, Leonardo Bonanni, and Jean-Baptiste Labrune. 2012. Radical atoms: beyond tangible bits, toward transformable materials. interactions 19, 1 (January 2012), 38-51. ACM DL

Gesture Recognition

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 14
• Video: Dean Rubine. 1992. Combining gestures and direct manipulation. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '92), ACM, actual video or (ACM Ref for description)

Other Readings:

• Jacob O. Wobbrock, Andrew D. Wilson, and Yang Li. 2007. Gestures without libraries, toolkits or training: a $1 recognizer for user interface prototypes. In Proceedings of the 20th annual ACM symposium on User interface software and technology (UIST '07). 159-168. ACM DL or local pdf
• Jacob O. Wobbrock, Meredith Ringel Morris, and Andrew D. Wilson. 2009. User-defined gestures for surface computing. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09). ACM, 1083-1092. ACM DL or local pdf.
  
• Paper: Dean Rubine. 1991. Specifying gestures by example. In Proceedings of the 18th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques (SIGGRAPH '91). ACM, 329-337. ACM DL

Homework 4 Due.
Start on Final Project

Interaction Techniques for People with Disabilities

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 17

Other Readings:

• Shaun K. Kane, Jeffrey P. Bigham, and Jacob O. Wobbrock. 2008. "Slide rule: making mobile touch screens accessible to blind people using multi-touch interaction techniques." In Proceedings of the 10th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility (Assets '08). ACM, pp. 73-80. ACM DL.
• W3C, "Introduction to Web Accessibility," on-line
• Brad A. Myers, Jacob O. Wobbrock, Sunny Yang, Brian Yeung, Jeffrey Nichols, and Robert Miller. "Using Handhelds to Help People with Motor Impairments", Fifth International ACM SIGCAPH Conference on Assistive Technologies; ASSETS 2002. July 8-10, 2002. Edinburgh, Scotland. pp. 89-96. local pdf

Topics for Final Projects due

Brad Might be Away?

Guest Lecture #2:

Form Final Project Groups due

Various Undo Models, Interaction Histories, and Macro Recording

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 15

Other Readings:

• Brad A. Myers. (1998) "Scripting Graphical Applications by Demonstration," Proceedings CHI'98. pp. 534-541. ACM DL, or local pdf, and video or YouTube (3:09). (Topaz)
• Kurlander, D. and Feiner, S. Editable Graphical Histories. Proc. 1988 IEEE Workshop on Visual Languages. (Pittsburgh, Oct. t0-12, 1988). 127-134. IEEE DL, or pdf and video (2:42)

Brad Will Be Away

Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Interaction Techniques

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 18

Two-page proposal for Final Projects due

Wed,
Apr. 2, 2025

Brad Will Be Away

Guest Lecture #3: TBD

Required Readings:

• TBD

Formal and Informal Models, Metaphors and Patterns for the Design of Interaction Techniques

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 19

Other Readings:

• William Buxton, "Lexical and Pragmatic Considerations of Input Structures," Computer Graphics, January, 1983, (17)1, pp. 31-37.  ACM DL  or local html.
• Brad A. Myers. 1990. A new model for handling input. ACM Trans. Inf. Syst. 8, 3 (July 1990), pp. 289-320. ACM DL or local pdf.

Interim Reports on Final Projects due

Tools and Models for Using and Implementing Interaction Techniques

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 20

Other Readings:

• Brad Myers, Scott E. Hudson, and Randy Pausch, "Past, Present and Future of User Interface Software Tools," ACM Transactions on Computer Human Interaction. March, 2000. Vol. 7, no. 1. pp. 3-28. ACM ref or local pdf

Legal Issues Around Interaction Techniques such as Patents

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 22

Other Readings:

• Brad A. Myers, "Legal and Intellectual Property Issues," sidebar in The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience, by: Rex Hartson & Pardha S. Pyla. Waltham, MA: Elsevier/Morgan Kaufmann, 2012. pp. 851-852. (on Canvas--only accessible to class members)
• Jacob O. Wobbrock and Brad A. Myers. "Using Edges and Corners for Character Input." US Patent No. 7,729,542, issued June 1, 2010, Filed March 29, 2004, claiming priority to provisional filed April 4, 2003. pdf

Interaction Techniques for Help

Required Readings:

• IxT Book, chapter 16

Final Project Presentations 1

Groups Presenting:

• TBD

Final Project Presentations 2

Groups Presenting:

• TBD

Everyone please fill out the Custom Course Survey and the official CMU course evaluation.
(Last day of classes = April 25, 2025.)
(SIGCHI Conference, April 25, 2025-May 1, 2025)

Take-home final test on second half of the course

Everyone please fill out the the peer evaluation for your project.

(Final grades due by 4:00 p.m. on Thursday, May 8, 2025 for graduating students)