Course Syllabus

Faculty of Computer and Information Technology

Department of Computer Science

Course Number: CPCS 381

Course name: Human Computer Interaction

Year: 1431-1432

Term: Fall

Instructor Name: Dr. Hana Abdullah Al-Nuaim

Office: Office of the Dean of the Women’s Campus

Office Hours: online

Email:

Please use group email that will be assigned to class ()

Course Information

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Recommended Background:

Software Engineering, System Analysis, Multimedia Design, Visual Languages

Required Textbook:

  • Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human Computer Interaction. Ben Shneiderman. Pearson
  • A Practical Guide to Usability Testing by J. Dumas & J. Redish (Required)

Resources and Handouts

  • Fast Track Human Computer Interaction by Smith-Atakan
  • Chapter 2 : The Usability Engineering Lifecycle. D. Mayhew
  • Chapter 7: Observing The User Experience. Mike Kuniavsky
  • Chapter 2: User-Centered Websites Development. A HCI Approach. D. McCracken. R. Wolf
  • Online resources updated regularly and sent via class group email
  • Field Work

Course Objectives:

  • Human understanding, interaction, interfaces, scenarios, collaboration.
  • Usability engineering fundamentals, and human-centric development and evaluation of software systems.
  • Concepts and techniques introduced in this course are applied to graphical user interfaces and/or web design.
  • To understand human performance memory and perception impactthe design of computing systems
  • To understand how design impacts human interaction
  • To understand how to effectively design to support human interaction
  • To understand how to use evaluation methodologies to inform design and development of new computer technologies
  • To prepare documents for the different phases of the software engineering lifecycle
  • To be able solicit true user requirements through user profiles
  • To conduct usability testing methods
  • Compare and Contrast different Data collection methods
  • To employ different data collection methods
  • To understand the basic steps in conducting scientific research.
  • Identify how human memory and perception affect design
  • To employ HCI methods in software design

Skills Acquired:

  • Writing reports
  • Creating questionnaires
  • Conducting interviews
  • Writing research papers
  • Conduction software analysis & critique
  • Conduct usability testing with real users and report findings scientifically
  • Pilot testing and creating prototypes.

Teaching Methods:

Lecturing, discussions, group work in class, Presentations and watching a DVD.

Evaluation Methods:

  • Quiz: 25pts
  • Final: 40pts
  • Homework: 35 pts including presentations.
  • There may be selective presentation if I think its necessary and the homework grade will include the presentation

Class Rules:

  • If you don 't have Internet access at home, Use those available in KAU
  • There will be no group work, you must do your own work
  • You must attend all classes
  • Cheating will be dealt with severely
  • Late homework will not be accepted after the class time (2:00pm), unless prior arrangement is made
  • If for some reason you cannot come yourself to deliver the homework I will accept an electronic copy for severe cases only then next day you must bring a paper copy of it. The two copies must match
  • If your mobile phone rings while in class, you will be asked to leave the class
  • There will be no makeup tests and no bonus points.
  • Medical reports will be accepted for severe cases only.

Course Outline:

Date / Lecture / Topics / Reading
18/10/1431 / Introduction to Usability of Interactive Systems and UCD Process
Introduction to Term topic: Knowledge Cities / Introduction to class, homework and rules. Graphical User Interface Design in general, usability engineering and HCIProject Intro: Student Collaboration / Lecture 1
Shneiderman’s Chapter 1
25/10/1431 / Data collection methods for user data / Types, comparison advantages, disadvantages, and common errors / Lecture 2
4/11/1431 / Introduction to research and information search
HW # 1 is due / Introduction, Background, Problem, Research Question, Methodology
How to search and collect material
How to evaluate Internet resources and relevant material / Lecture 3
Shneiderman’s Chapter 13
10/11/1431 / Understanding users and their tasks . Balancing function and design / User Profiles and Personas. Real-world people doing their real-world tasks and hypothetical archetypes / Lecture 4
17/11/1431 / Human abilities and quality of service / Role in Software Engineering, Principles, Types, advantages and disadvantages / Lecture 5
Shneiderman’s Chapter 10
24/11/1431 / Prototyping
watch a DVD for paper prototyping / Cognition, Human perception, attention, representation, memory, social aspects / Lecture 6
2/12/1431 / Theories, Guidelines, and Principles
HW # 2 is due / Principles and theories of HCI how it applies to design and the technological aspects (input/output, interaction styles, on-line information) / Lecture 7
Shneiderman’s Chapter 2
Vacation / 5/12/1431 till 16/12/1431
16/12/1431 / Quiz 1 (open notes) / Managing Design Process and Evaluating visual Interface Design. Disorientation, Cognitive overload, Digression problem, Art Museum Problem, Structure types
23/12/1431 / User interface interaction design and interaction devices / Lecture 8
Shneiderman’s Chapter 8
30/12/1431 / Dialogue and menu design
HW #3 is due / Types and Guidelines / Lecture 9
Shneiderman’s Chapter 11, 6
7/1/1432 / Usability principles / Learnability, Effienciency, Memorability, Error rate, Subjectively Pleasing / Lecture 10
14/1/1432 / Usability testing / Observation, Interview, Questionnaire, Focus groups, Usage studies / Lecture 11
Shneiderman’s Chapter 4
21/1/1432 / Testing Procedures and Guidelines / How to conduct a Usability Test / Lecture 12
28/1/1432 / Testing Procedures and Guidelines
HW4 is due / How to conduct a Presentation, What information to include / Lecture 13

Report Guidelines:

Your paper must be typed on 8.5 x 11 inch paper or A4. Drawings or pictures must be clear and legible. Be sure to put on a cover page indicating your name, title of work, course and date. You will be judged on the how professional the visual appearance is, grammatical correctness if in Arabic and quality of writing of your paper as well as its contents.

Text font size should be 12 points. You may choose your own font style.

Homework #1 (5 pts)

From what we discussed in class about knowledge cities and knowledge citizens, think around you at the thousands of electronic devices with user interfaces. The purpose of this assignment is to give you a better appreciation for the value of good design in the real world, and for you to observe how people interact with devices to perform tasks.

Your examples should be specific. It's very hard to find a large interface that's completely good or completely bad, so don't try. Instead, focus on a particular feature or aspect of a user interface that makes your case. Avoid fuzzy words like “intuitive” and “user-friendly”. Find concrete reasons for your judgment.

What to deliver Your report should include 1 bad example of a physical interface that you can actually see and touch :Include the name, purpose and manufacturer of the product

  • Describe the purpose of the overall interface
  • Describe the particular aspect you and find good or bad
  • Explain why it's good or bad if bad, speculate why it might have been designed that way, and suggest a better design if possible illustrate with screenshots or photographs, use digital cameras rather than getting a picture online

Please write a well organized and interrelated report. There is no minimum or maximum, make you own judgment.

Homework # 2 (8 pts) Individual:

The objective of this assignment is to give you practice in conducting research by searching for relevant information, relating information to a certain topic and making conclusions.

You are to write a 5 page paper on Knowledge Cities and ICTs from a HCI or Usabilityperspective by showing different points of view from different sources. The particular example will be assigned to you in class. The details of the homework will be discussed in class and only once.

You will be graded on how well you evaluate internet resources and how well you make your argument, how you support it and the way you conclude it. It must be in English since most resources re in English. Formatting, spacing, stapling and professionalism in writing will be graded. Please include a copy of your resources if they are not too long and highlight in yellow the paragraph or sentences you used in your paper.

Homework #3 (7 pts)

Evaluation of a City Website or a knowledge management system

What to deliver your report should include:

1)A description of the interface for a city in the Arab world with a population more than a million people

2)Information about the target users

3)Conduct a heuristic test with one of the employees in the college or anywhere in KAU

4)Results of the test

5)The right or wrong things you did

6)What you have learned from the experience

Homework #4 (15 pts group of 2 or 3)

Part 1: The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice in writing, testing and administering a questionnaire to a true user population.

In addition to practice in valid questionnaire design and questionnaire administration, the assignment asks you to focus on finding information about the user interface of a computer system “User Profile”. Its intent is to help you develop probing skills (through good question design). These skills can then be used to find out how to design a system based on the user profile to prevent underlying causes for failures.

Guidelines:

This assignment will have 8 steps for the user profile. They are:

  1. Use an assigned a collaborative tool as an example
  2. Selection of your user group.
  3. Preparation of a draft questionnaire (1-2 pages).
  4. Piloting of the draft questionnaire.
  5. Preparation of a final questionnaire.

Administration of the final questionnaire.

  1. Analysis of the results.
  2. Write-up and presentation of the results of the survey.

You should turn in a report that is similar to the user profile report in the handouts. It should include the following:

  1. A review of the literature from HW2 about knowledge cities and an explanation with picture about the city chosen.
  2. The pilot from HW3
  3. The draft questionnaire.
  4. A discussion of the reasons for each question or set of questions in your questionnaire.
  5. The final questionnaire.
  6. A one page sheet describing why you changed any questions you changed on the final questionnaire.
  7. Results written as in handouts

Part 2:

The objective of this assignment is to give you practice in evaluating human-computer interfaces since a large part of your future work will be directed at building such interfaces. This practice is intended to help you in developing evaluation criteria appropriate to the interface. The evaluation, in turn can guide your design decisions.

Because the purpose of the exercise is to develop skills which later can be applied to interface design, you are expected to focus on the very detailed issues that arise in design;

The assignment also has three sub-objectives for CS students:

1)Practice in the detailed observation of users at work with interfaces.

2)Alert computer scientists to very basic differences in user behavior and to the multiple ways users will interpret information presented to them and generate what is to them, very intelligent guesses about what is needed to use the interface.

3)Give students practice in distinguishing between the functionality of a computer system and its usability.

This assignment will have 5 steps. They are:

  1. Develop at least 8completely different purpose tasks for evaluating your interface’s usability according to the target user’s (5-7 users) needs.
  2. Conduct the evaluation of the interface based on what we discussed in class.
  3. Analyze the results of the evaluation.
  4. Write up the evaluation indicating what was good and what was bad about the evaluated interface.

You report be based on the book “Usability Testing” by Dumas and Redish.