This is an OLD version of the course. Please go to the 2014 page instead!

Schedule and Readings

  • The schedule and assignments are tentative and subject to change. Check back here often!
  • We are using the Tepper calendar; note that the start and end dates for classes is quite different from the rest of the university.
  • The readings are due on the date noted.
  • Required text: (see note about this text!):
    • Hartson-Pyla text: H. Rex Hartson and Pardha S. Pyla, The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience, Morgan Kaufmann / Elsevier, 2012.
  • Optional texts: (none of the readings from these is required, but these older books are excellent to have if you are interested in this topic)
    • CD Text = Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K., Contextual Design
    • Nielsen Text = Jakob Nielsen. "Usability Engineering". Boston: Academic Press, Inc. 1993. ISBN 0-12-518406-9 (paperback) or ISBN 0-12-518405-0 (hardcover).
    • Norman book = Donald A. Norman, "The Design of Everyday Things". New edition: Basic Books, 2002, ISDN 0-465-06710-7
  • PowerPoint slides will be posted at least a day before the lecture.
  • VPN Note: Access to the ACM Digital Library (for the papers and guest lectures) is restricted to only those on a CMU machine. Use VPN if you are at home, or you can get a password from the instructor. For VPN, here are the instructions for SCS, or here are the general CMU instructions.
  • The times where the TAs will be available for office hours are shown on the staff page and in this Google Calendar.
  • The course is being videotaped, and videos of the lectures will be posted here the day following the lecture. Here is the table of contents of all course videos for the course.
  • You can also subscribe to the videos in iTunes or as an RSS feed.
  • The course syllabus is available here, and the full list of homeworks is available here.

Monday, October 21, 2013, and Wednesday, October 23, 2013 No class, because we are running on the Tepper schedule. Tepper graduate courses start Oct 28, according to their schedule.

Monday
October 28, 2013

**SPECIAL ROOM**
Gates 6115

1. Why is UI Design Important and Why Is It Difficult?

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 1
Video of lecture 1 (or MP4 download (1.1GB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 1
Recommended Readings:
  • Brad A. Myers. "Challenges of HCI Design and Implementation," ACM Interactions. vol. 1, no. 1. January, 1994. pp. 73-83. PDF arrow
  • CD Text, Chapter 1
  • Nielsen Text: Chapters 1, 2
Wednesday
October 30, 2013		 2. Discovering what people can't tell you: Contextual Inquiry and Design Methodology

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 2
Video of lecture 2 (or MP4 download (408MB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 3
Recommended Readings:
  • CD Text, Chapters 5-7
  • Karen Cross, Adrienne Warmack, and Brad Myers. "Lessons Learned: Using Contextual Inquiry Analysis to Improve PDA Control of Presentations". Unpublished. PDF arrow
Do Homework 0 in class.
Start on Homework 1.
Monday
November 4, 2013

3. Contextual Analysis/Design Methodology, cont.

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 3
Video of lecture 3 (or MP4 download (305MB))

Movie (88.5 MB) for in-class CI demonstration (mpeg file)
Powerpoint slides of main points in the video

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 6
Recommended Readings:
  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapters 4, 17
  • CD Text, chapters 8-10
Wednesday
November 6, 2013		 4. From Analysis to Design: Sketching and Prototyping

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 4
Video of lecture 4 (or MP4 download (312MB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 7, 8, 11
  • Bill Buxton, "What Sketches (and Prototypes) Are and Are Not", in CHI 2006 One-Day Workshop on "Sketching" Nurturing Creativity: Commonalities in Art, Design, Engineering and Research, Sunday, April 23, 2006, Montreal, Canada. 2 pages. Local PDF arrow
Recommended Readings:
  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 5, 15
  • Norman book (all chapters)
  • Nielsen's text, Chapter 4
  • Marc Rettig, "Prototyping for tiny fingers", Communications of the ACM, Volume 37 , Issue 4 (April 1994), Pages: 21 - 27. Unpublished. PDF arrow
  • Brad Myers, Sun Young Park, Yoko Nakano, Greg Mueller, Andrew Ko, "How Designers Design and Prototype Interactive Behaviors". 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC'08. Sept 15-18, 2008, Herrsching am Ammersee, Germany. pp. 177-184. Local PDF arrow (See also the original survey.)
  • Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, videotape of his talk on "Sketching and Experience Design", June 1, 2007, for the Stanford University Human-Computer Interaction Seminar (CS 547). Video (1 hr, 30 min) arrow
  • Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. San Francisco, CA, Morgan Kaufmann. 2007. Amazon arrow
Turn in Homework 1.
Start on Homework 2.
Monday
November 11, 2013

5. How to Design a Good Usability Evaluation

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 5
Video of lecture 5 (or MP4 download (346MB))

Required Readings:

Recommended Readings:
  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapters 16, 18
  • Nielsen's text: Chapters 6, 7
  • CD Text: Chapters 17-20
  • Kathleen Gomoll, "Some Techniques for Observing Users," From The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, Brenda Laurel, ed. New York: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc., 1992. pp. 85- 90. PDF arrow
Wednesday
November 13, 2013		 6. Graphic and Interaction Design for User Interfaces

Pdf of slides for Lecture 6
Video of lecture 6 (or MP4 download (333MB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 17
Guest Lecture:
Steven Dow (Guest Lecturer)

An interface is the link between a user and a product that communicates how a product will be used and creates an experience for the people who will use it. Interaction design is the process of creating and defining product behavior, encompassing both usability and aesthetic dimensions of an artifact, service, or environment.

In this lecture, we will explore issues that pertain to the design of interfaces. Students will be introduced to interface and interaction design fundamentals as applied to visual interfaces, including use of design systems, typography, color, scale, ordering, hierarchy, and repetition. They will also gain an understanding of the design process for creating interface designs.

Turn in Homework 2.
Start on Homework 3.
Monday
November 18, 2013		 7. Implementing a Wireframe Prototype: Overview of Using PowerPoint, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Fireworks, Balsamiq, OmniGraffle, html, etc.

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 7
Video of lecture 7 (or MP4 download (200MB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapters 9

Turn in Homework 3.
Start on Homework 4.
Wednesday
November 20, 2013

8. Evaluation using Heuristic Analysis

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 8
Video of lecture 8 (or MP4 download (390MB))

Required Readings:

Recommended Readings:
  • Nielsen Text: Chapter 5
  • Jakob Nielsen, "Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation Barrier", Cost-Justifying Usability, edited by Randolph G. Bias and Deborah J. Mayhew. On line in HTML arrow
  • Rolf Molich and Jakob Nielsen. "Improving a human-computer dialogue", Communications of the ACM, March 1990. Volume 33 Issue 3. pp. 338 - 348. ACM DL PDF arrow
  • John D. Gould and Clayton Lewis. "Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think," Communications of the ACM. Volume 28 , Issue 3 (March 1985), pp. 300 - 311. ACM DL PDF arrow
  • Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich. "Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces," Proceedings CHI'90, Human factors in computing systems, 1990. Seattle, Washington ACM DL PDF arrow
Monday
November 25, 2013

9. Usability Engineering Process

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 9
Video of lecture 9 (or MP4 download (250MB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 19
Recommended Readings:
  • Hartson-Pyla text: Chapters 2, 21, 23, 24
  • Nielsen's text: Chapters 6, 7
  • CD Text: Chapters 2-4
  • John D. Gould and Clayton Lewis. "Designing for usability: key principles and what designers think," Communications of the ACM. Volume 28 , Issue 3 (March 1985), pp. 300 - 311. ACM DL PDF arrow
  • Budwig, M., Jeong, S. and Kelkar, K. When user experience met agile: a case study. In Proceedings of CHI'2009: The 27th international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (Boston, MA, USA, 2009). ACM, 3075-3084. ACM DL PDF arrow

Turn in Homework 4.
Start on Homework 5.

Wednesday
November 27, 2013

(No class - University Holiday: Thanksgiving)
Monday
December 2, 2013		 10. Designing for the Web

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 10
Video of lecture 10 (or MP4 download (264MB))

Required Readings:

Recommended Readings:
  • Nielsen Text: Chapters 11-16
Turn in Homework 5.
Start on Homework 6.
Wednesday
December 4, 2013		 11. International and Handheld User Interfaces

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 11
Video of lecture 11 (or MP4 download (317MB))

Required Readings:

Recommended Readings:
  • Nielsen Text: Chapter 9

Course Evaluation day. Please fill out both:
Monday
December 9, 2013		 David Bishop 12: Guest lecture: Interaction Design: Perspective from a local professional

Video of lecture 12 (or MP4 download (404MB))

Recommended Readings:
  • Heather L. McQuaid David Bishop, "An Integrated Method for Evaluating Interfaces", Published in the Usability Professionals’ Association 2001 Conference Proceedings. PDF arrow
    (article including the discussion of the "Cost-Benefit Chart" with 4 quadrants)
Turn in Homework 6.
Wednesday
December 11, 2013		 13. Other HCI Methods: Cultural Probes, Diary Studies, Card Sorting, "Body Storming", Keystroke Model, "Speed Dating", Cognitive Walkthroughs, Cognitive Dimensions, etc.

PowerPoint slides for Lecture 13
Video of lecture 13 (or MP4 download (388MB))

Required Readings:

  • Hartson-Pyla text: 1.6.5, 6.6.4, 6.12, 7.5
  • Scott Davidoff, Min Kyung Lee, Anind K. Dey, and John Zimmerman. 2007. Rapidly exploring application design through speed dating. In Proceedings of the 9th international conference on Ubiquitous computing (UbiComp '07), Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 429-446. pdfarrow
Recommended Readings:
  • Nielsen Text: Chapter 7
  • Bill Gaver, Tony Dunne, & E Pacenti, Design: Cultural Probes, ACM Interactions. vol. 6, no. 1, 1999, pp. 21-29. ACM DL PDF arrow
  • John, B. E. (2003) "Information processing and skilled behavior." Chapter 4 In J. M. Carroll, (Ed.), Toward a multidisciplinary science of human computer interaction. Morgan Kaufman. pp. 55-101. Local CMU-only copyarrow (GOMS, KLM)
  • Marion Buchenau and Jane Fulton Suri. 2000. "Experience prototyping." In Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques (DIS '00), pp. 424-433. ACM DL PDF arrow (Bodystorming)
  • Clayton Lewis and John Rieman, "4.1. Cognitive Walkthroughs", in Task-Centered User Interface Design; A Practical Introduction (on-line book), 1994. htmlarrow
  • T. R. G. Green and M. Petre. Usability analysis of visual programming environments: A ‘cognitive dimensions’ framework. Journal of Visual Languages and Computing, 7:131-174, 1996. pdfarrow
Last day to turn in any late homeworks.
Friday, Dec. 13, 5:30pm to 8:30pm, in 7500 Wean Hall
or
Monday, Dec. 16; 2:00pm to 5:00pm, in Tepper 152
FINAL EXAM
This class will have a final exam. It will be given twice, to accommodate both the "normal" and the Tepper calendars. Anyone can go to either exam time, and you do not need to let me know which one you will attend. Note that the last two lectures are after the official end of classes for "normal" courses so you don't want to leave before the evening of Friday, Dec. 13, 2013.

Rwanda stiudents will take the exam on Friday, December 13 from 15H-18H. Other distance students will take the exam sometime between Dec 13 - Dec 16, to be determined.

See information about the final.