Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction for Technology ... · else, please take 05-863 / 45-888: "Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction for Technology Executives" in Fall,

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction for Technology Executives 95-763 - Heinz Distance Education only Summer, Mini 5, 2018 (6 units), May 21, 2018 - June 28, 2018

What is this course for?

This course provides an overview and introduction to the field of human-computer interaction, with a focus on how it applies to managers, technology executives, and others who will work with HCI professionals. Particular emphasis will be placed on what HCI methods and HCI-trained specialists can bring to design and development teams. The course will provide a hands-on introduction to proven tools and techniques for creating and improving user interfaces, such as Contextual Inquiry, Rapid Prototyping, Heuristic Analysis, and Think-Aloud User Testing. Students at the end of the course will have learned how to perform some useful techniques and will have an understanding of systematic procedures for creating usable and useful designs and systems.

What is HCI?

Human computer interaction (HCI) is an interdisciplinary field in which computer scientists, engineers, psychologists, social scientists, and design professionals play important roles. The goal of HCI is to solve real problems in the design and use of technology, making computer-based systems easier to use and more effective for people and organizations. Ease of use and effectiveness are critical to the success of any systems that interact with people, including software systems, home, office and factory appliances, and web and phone applications.

You may visit the CMU HCII website for more information.

Who is this course for?

In Summer, 2018, this course, 95-763, is limited to only selected Executive Education students. Everyone else, please take 05-863 / 45-888: "Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction for Technology Executives" in Fall, 2018, mini 2.

05-863 / 45-888 is open to graduate students from all departments who are interested in a quick introduction to HCI. It is approved as an elective in Tepper, INI, MSE, IS, MSIT, and other Master's programs. May be available to undergraduates with permission of the instructor.

This course is on Canvas.

Comments from Previous Years

"Homework assignments were great--challenging, but very relevant."

"Course videos are excellent. ... Panopto [the class's video server] allowed me to watch the videos at my work computer. :)"

"This class has been one of my favorites so far in the program! I have really enjoyed it and plan to talk to our UX team at work about future opportunities in the field."

"I just wanted to say thank you, both to you and [the TA] for an excellent class. The assignments were actually really fun and I was always excited to see how people responded to my prototypes. I don’t think I have ever used the words fun and exciting in the same sentence when talking about homework. I believe this class influenced my future. Prior to taking the class I knew nothing about HCI. ... Pretty soon there will probably not be any aspects of our lives where technology is not included. Whether that is good or bad, that is the way it will be. How we are able to interact with increasingly complex technology in a simple and understandable manner is of great importance and fascination to me. This is where I want to be in the future and this class and you played a large role in helping me see that. I am excited about it. So thank you :)""I really enjoyed taking a device I owned and redesigning it. Though it was a lot of work, I thought it was fun."

"Brad is a great lecturer. Informal, interesting, nice to listen too and one can see he puts effort into his delivery. He is among the better lecturers at CMU."

Instructor

Brad Myers [email protected]

Class Time

Mondays & Thursdays

Teaching Assistant

TBD

Prerequisites

None. Assignments will involve user testing, paper prototyping, and implementing a prototype of a working design, using some computational medium. However, you can select how to implement your solutions, and you can choose whether to use HTML with an editor like Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, Microsoft Expressions Blend/Sketchflow, or even PowerPoint. Thus, everyone from non-programmers to expert programmers are welcome. No background in HCI is expected.

Corequisites

None.

Required Textbook

My colleagues wrote a major new textbook, and our class helped improve it for over 2 years. We have been using it for a few years now, and it receives good marks from the class:

H. Rex Hartson and Pardha S. Pyla, The UX Book: Process and Guidelines for Ensuring a Quality User Experience, Morgan Kaufmann / Elsevier, 2012.

Book Website The book on Amazon (Hardcover) Kindle Edition (eBook)

Other useful resources

Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K., Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. 1998, San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc. ISBN: 1-55860-411-1 (paperback) Author's site; or Amazon

Jakob Nielsen. Usability Engineering. Morgan Kaufmann, San Francisco, 1994. ISBN 0-12-518406-9 (paperback) [updated from the the older hardcover: ISBN 0-12-518405-0]. Author's site; or Amazon

Donald A. Norman, The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books; 1st Basic edition (September 2002), ISBN: 0-465-06710-7 (paperback) [updated from the original 1988 hardcover version]. Author's site; or Amazon

Amount of Work

This is a "6 unit" mini. As per university policy, this means that this course is expected to take students 12 hours per week, including class time. Surveys of previous students show that this is accurate. Here is the university policy:

Definition of a "Unit"

Carnegie Mellon has adopted the method of assigning a number of "units" for each course to represent the quantity of work required of students. For the average student, one unit represents one work-hour of time per week throughout the semester. The number of units in each course is fixed by the faculty member in consultation with the college offering the course. Three units are the equivalent of one traditional semester credit hour.

Hence, a 9 unit semester-long course should require 9 hours of student engagement, on average, including class time; if the instructor requires 3 hours of lecture and 1 hour of recitation, they can expect students to spend 5 hours outside of class engaging in class work. For mini courses that run for only seven weeks, the conversion from units to number of hours per week during the mini involves multiplying by 2. For example, a 6 unit mini course should on average involve 12 hours of student engagement; if the instructor requires 3 hours of lecture and 3 hours of lab, they can expect the students to spend 6 hours outside of class.

How to Submit Homework

All Homeworks must be turned in using Canvas. (Let us know if you are enrolled and you don't have access to the Canvas site!) All documents should be in pdf (Adobe Acrobat) format, except for your executable prototype, which should be in its native format, and homework #5 where you should turn in the Microsoft Word version of your two evaluation reports. If your homework is one file, you can just upload it, and name it like this: HCI-HWn-lastname-firstname.pdf, for example: HCI-HW1-myers-brad.pdf. If you have multiple files, you should zip up all your files into one .zip file, and name it like this: HCI-HWn-lastname-firstname.zip, for example: HCI-HW4-myers-brad.zip. An exception is homework #5 which has custom turn-in instructions. Failure to follow the turn-in instructions may result in up to a one-grade penalty (10 points out of 100).

All homeworks are due before class (before 10:30am Eastern time) on the due date. See the penalty for late assignments.

We will try to return your graded homeworks on the morning when the next homework is due. Your graded homework and your grades will be available on Canvas as well.

Grading

See the homework list and the submission requirements. You can also see the number of points for each assignment:

Assignment Percent of Grade

Homework 0 --

Homework 1 12%

Homework 2 12%

Homework 3 12%

Homework 4 12%

Homework 5 12%

Homework 6 10%

Final Exam 30%

Late Policy:

Assignments are due before the beginning of class on the specified day. A penalty of 10 points out of 100 (one letter grade) will be immediately applied after the start time of class. An additional 10 points will be subtracted for each additional class period late.

For Homeworks 4 and 5, there cannot be any late assignments--everyone must be ready to have someone else evaluate their implementation and HEs to respond to.

Cheating Policy: No Cheating

All assignments in this course are individual: you are required to do them by yourself. Each person must do their own work independently. No copying anybody else's work. No copying answers from any other course's assignments. No copying code from the Web. For homeworks where you are supposed to do a user study, it is considered cheating to make up the

data -- you must run a real person and record what they actually said and did. For your designs of user interfaces, do not copy a commercial design. In particular, it is not acceptable

to use any art-work (pictures) from commercial products, unless it is explicitly marked as free clip-art. Penalty for cheating: a zero on the assignment, and possibly other penalties as well. The final exam will be individual and closed book. No copying or notes will be allowed for the final.

Disciplinary action for cheating or plagarism:

While there is a university-wide disciplinary committee which handles serious disciplinary matters referred to it, the responsibility for establishing disciplinary guidelines rests with each department. Since the primary affiliation of this course is with the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII), we will follow the set of rules established by that department. The following are the rules to be applied uniformly by the HCII

First, cheating in any form is not permitted as an ethical or professional behavior and will not be tolerated. Cheating includes, but is not necessarily limited to:

The use of unauthorized materials including computer programs in preparation of an assignment or during an examination.

The submission or use of falsified data. The submission of work that is not the student's own. Plagiarism- use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the

representation of them as one's own original work. (See below) The use of an alternate/stand-in/proxy during an examination. Supplying unauthorized data to another student for the preparation of an assignment or during an

examination. Collaboration in the preparation of an assignment, unless specifically required or allowed by the

instructor, will usually be viewed as cheating. Each student, therefore, is responsible for understanding the policies of the instructor offering any course as they refer to the amount of help and collaboration permitted in preparation of assignments.

Should any student be found guilty of cheating on a quiz, exam, homework or project, at minimum a zero grade will be recorded and then averaged in with the other grades (should there be any) for the term. Depending on the circumstances, and at the discretion of the instructor and the Department Head, the student may be failed in the course and may be expelled from the University. In any case, the University will be notified of any case of cheating or plagiarism. A repeated occurrence of cheating will be treated as an automatic failure (R grade) and expulsion from the University.

A subtler form of cheating arises in the form of plagiarism, which is defined as "passing off as one's own the ideas or works of another." Making use of reference material and failing to note (either at all or properly) the original source constitutes plagiarism. When two or more people work together on an individual project and each then turns in his/her individual report as though no collaboration was involved, this also is plagiarism. Simply rewriting another's words or thoughts, or rearranging another's materials, is in every sense plagiarism - unless the student properly and completely references such material, each and every time it is used and to the full extent of usage. Should a case of plagiarism arise, the initial responsibility for judging the seriousness of the offense will rest with the instructor. If the instructor feels that the student was simply sloppy in referencing the material used and plagiarized, a judgment of sloppy professionalism rather than cheating will be made. The grade for the paper, project or thesis will be lowered by at least one grade point. On the other hand, if the instructor feels that the student plagiarized flagrantly, and intentionally meant to mislead the instructor into thinking that the work was the student's own original work, the grade for the report, project or thesis will be recorded as zero.

It should be emphasized that any group collaboration that involves individual take-home projects, papers or theses should be carried out only with considerable discretion. That is, students are encouraged to discuss and collaborate among themselves on the various principles which are exposited in class or covered in the reading material, etc.; but any group discussion or collaboration which involves any specifics of take-home projects, papers or theses should be avoided - unless the ideas or efforts of others are properly noted. Put differently, when individual work and thinking is called for, group thinking and/or work is entirely inappropriate and is a form of plagiarism. In any case of cheating or plagiarism, the student may request a review of the instructor's decision by the department head, who will then make the final decision for the department. The student, of course, can appeal any faculty decision to the University Committee on Discipline. In a case of flagrant cheating by a graduate student on a thesis, the matter will be forwarded to the Disciplinary Committee for stronger action.

University Policy on Academic Integrity University Academic Disciplinary Actions Overview for Graduate Students

Take care of yourself

Do your best to maintain a healthy lifestyle this semester by eating well, exercising, avoiding drugs and alcohol, getting enough sleep and taking some time to relax. This will help you achieve your goals and cope with stress.

All of us benefit from support during times of struggle. You are not alone. There are many helpful resources available on campus and an important part of the college experience is learning how to ask for help. Asking for support sooner rather than later is often helpful.

If you or anyone you know experiences any academic stress, difficult life events, or feelings like anxiety or depression, we strongly encourage you to seek support. Counseling and Psychological Services (CaPS) is here to help: call 412-268-2922 and visit their website at http://www.cmu.edu/counseling/. Consider reaching out to a friend, faculty or family member you trust for help getting connected to the support that can help.

If you or someone you know is feeling suicidal or in danger of self-harm, call someone immediately, day or night:

CaPS: 412-268-2922 Re:solve Crisis Network: 888-796-8226 If the situation is life threatening, call the police:

o On campus: CMU Police: 412-268-2323 o Off campus: 911

If you have questions about this or your coursework, please let me know.

©2018 Copyright Brad Myers. Website designed and built by Michael Loffredo and Julie Eckstrom. All rights reserved.

Course Schedule

The readings are due on the date noted.

The course is using videotapes of my lecture from Fall, 2017. Here is the table of contents of all of the course

videos for the course.

o You can download the lectures as MP4 files. I have included the links below.

o Also, if you start playing the video of a lecture from panopto, there is a down arrow icon at the top right

of the screen which will download that lecture as a podcast.

o Alternatively, here is another way from a former student:

"At first, the Panopto server was giving me an access error. But, if I logged in to that website in a new

window within my browser, then refreshed the course website page, it allowed me to download the

MP4s. Then, I had to place those MP4s in my iTunes as home movies. Then transfer them to my phone."

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.

Required text: (see note about this text):

o 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)

o CD Text = Beyer, H. and Holtzblatt, K., Contextual Design

o Nielsen Text = Jakob Nielsen. "Usability Engineering". Boston: Academic Press, Inc. 1993. ISBN 0-12-

518406-9 (paperback) or ISBN 0-12-518405-0 (hardcover).

o Norman book = Donald A. Norman, "The Design of Everyday Things". New edition: Basic Books, 2002,

ISDN 0-465-06710-7

Monday, May 21, 2018

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

2. Discovering what people can't tell you: Contextual Inquiry and Design Methodology

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 1

Video for Lecture 1 or mp4 download

PowerPoint slides for lecture 2

Video for Lecture 2 or mp4 download

Activities

Do Homework 0

Start on Homework 1

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 1

Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 3

Recommended Readings

Brad A. Myers. "Challenges of HCI Design and Implementation," ACM Interactions. vol. 1, no. 1. January, 1994.

pp. 73-83. PDF

CD Text, Chapter 1

Nielsen Text: Chapters 1, 2

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

Thursday, May 24, 2018

3. Contextual Analysis/Design Methodology, cont.

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 3

Video for Lecture 3 or mp4 download

Activities

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

Monday, May 28, 2018

4. From Analysis to Design: Sketching and Prototyping

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 4

Video for Lecture 4 or mp4 download

Activities

Turn in Homework 1 (note: deadline is Tuesday, May 29, due to Memorial Day)

Start on Homework 2

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

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

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 (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)

Bill Buxton, Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design. San Francisco, CA,

Morgan Kaufmann. 2007. Amazon

Thursday, May 31, 2018

5. Design in HCI

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 5

Video for Lecture 5 or mp4 download

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 17

Monday, June 4, 2018

6. How to Design a Good Usability Evaluation

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 6

Video for Lecture 6 or mp4 download

Activities

Turn in Homework 2

Start Homework 3

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Chapters 12, 14

James Hom, "The Usability Methods Toolbox". Online in HTML. In particular, sections: General Concepts of

Usability Testing and Thinking Aloud Protocol.

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

Thursday, June 7, 2018

7. Implementing a Wireframe Prototype: Overview of Using PowerPoint, Balsamiq, InVision, PhotoShop, html, etc.

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 7

Video for Lecture 7 or mp4 download

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Chapters 9

Monday, June 11, 2018

8. Evaluation using Heuristic Analysis

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 8

Video for Lecture 8 or mp4 download

Activities

Turn in Homework 3

Start Homework 4

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Chapter 10, 13, 22

Jakob Nielsen, Heuristic Evaluation. On line in HTML. Includes List of 10 Heuristics.

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

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

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

Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich. "Heuristic evaluation of user interfaces," Proceedings CHI'90, Human factors in

computing systems, 1990. Seattle, Washington ACM DL PDF

Thursday, June 14, 2018

9. Designing for the Web

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 9

Video for Lecture 9 or mp4 download

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Sidebar on pp. 51-53 in section 2.1.3

Top Ten Guidelines for Homepage Usability

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

Recommended Readings

Nielsen Text: Chapters 11-16

Monday, June 18, 2018

10. Usability Engineering Process

Activities

Turn in Homework 4

Start Homework 5

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 10

Video for Lecture 10 or mp4 download

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

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

Thursday, June 21, 2018

11. International and Handheld User Interfaces

Course Evaluation Day. Please fill out both:

The official CMU course evaluation: https://cmu.smartevals.com

The class-specific questionnaire: TBD

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 11

Video for Lecture 11 or mp4 download

Required Readings

Hartson-Pyla text: Sidebar on pp. 104-106 in section 3.3.1, Sidebar on pp. 690-691 in section 22.1.1

International Sites: Minimum Requirements

Mobile Usability

Recommended Readings

Nielsen Text: Chapter 9

Monday, June 25, 2018

13. Other HCI Methods: Cultural Probes, Diary Studies, Card Sorting, "Body Storming", Keystroke Model, "Speed Dating",

Cognitive Walkthroughs, Cognitive Dimensions, etc.

(Note that there is no class 12)

Activities

Turn in Homework 5

Start Homework 6

Class Materials

PowerPoint slides for lecture 13

Video for Lecture 13 or mp4 download

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. PDF

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

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 (Bodystorming)

Clayton Lewis and John Rieman, "4.1. Cognitive Walkthroughs", in Task-Centered User Interface Design; A

Practical Introduction (on-line book), 1994. HTML

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. PDF

Thursday, June 28, 2018

Activities

Turn in Homework 6

Final Exam: Anytime between June 28 and July 2, 2018

This class will have a final exam.

You will arrange to take it with a proctor. (Note that this means the entry of your final grade will be delayed until about

July 11.)

See information about the final.

©2018 Copyright Brad Myers. Website designed and built by Michael Loffredo and Julie Eckstrom. All rights reserved.