Human Computer Interaction (COMP352/552)

Recommended Texts:

C. Faulkner's The essence of Human Computer Interaction, Prentice Hall, 1998.
This is a nice (and reasonably cheap!) introductory book which will give you the basic notions, well suitable for a short course like this. It will cover the first 3 lectures of the course.
B. Shneiderman's Designing the User Interface, Addison-Wesley, 1998 (3rd edition).
It is a well known book, in its newest edition, which will give you a complete introduction to user-interface design. What's more, it has an associated Web site!! We will use it for the main part of the course (9 lectures).
I. Horrocks's Constructing the User Interface with Statecharts, Addison-Wesley, 1999.
This book will give you a sound technique for developing event-driven software, as user interfaces are. It will cover 3 lectures of the course.

Additional material will be made available here as long as the course progresses.

Courseworks:

Yes, you're absolutely right: there are no courseworks for this module!! Nevertheless, each week there will be some food for thought for those of you who like going practical. You may try to solve the problems proposed yourselves, or discuss your answers with me via e-mail, or coming to see me (in office 1.10). Just to make things clear: the exercises are NOT compulsory, and will NOT give you any extra-mark. Nor will influence your exam mark, apart from the fact that if you try to solve them you might get more insight about the exam questions... ;-)

Detailed Timetable

Here is an approximate timetable, with the slides of the lectures.

1st week (Week 7)

Topics: Principles of HCI

1 - Introduction. The User.

2 - Designing systems for people: User Models

3 - User Modelling issues
Food for thought.
Case study
Readings: Faulkner, Chs 1-2-3, 4-5-6. Warning: material in lecture 3 is not covered by any of the recommended books: if you'd like some extra readings on this subject, please e-mail me.

2nd week (Week 8)

Topics: Guidelines for designing and evaluating the user interface

4 -	Task analysis: the GOMS model
5 -	Guidelines: The 8 golden rules of interface design (the examples can be found here)
6 -	Evaluation and Usability Engineering.

Food for thought
Case study
Readings: Shneiderman, Ch. 2. Faulkner, Ch. 7.

3rd week (Week 9)

Topics: Interaction styles

7 - Introduction + Menu selection
8 - Form fill-in and Command language
9 - Natural Language
Food for thought.
Case study
Readings: Shneiderman, Chs. 7, 8.

4th week (Week 10)

Topics: Visual information

10 -	Direct manipulation (the examples of metaphors can be found here)
11 -	Icons
12 -	Information visualisation. (The examples of applications shown at the lecture, and many more, can be found in Shneiderman, ch.15)

Food for thought.
Case study
Readings: Shneiderman, Chs. 6, 15, 16.

5th week (Week 11)

Topics: Interface design

13 - User Interface: an Event driven SW
14 - Using Statecharts for interface design
15 - Example
Food for thought.
Case study
Readings: Horrocks, Chs. 1 to 15.

AID TO REVISION:

Past exam papers

1 -	Introduction. The User.
2 -	Designing systems for people: User Models
3 -	User Modelling issues

7 -	Introduction + Menu selection
8 -	Form fill-in and Command language
9 -	Natural Language

13 -	User Interface: an Event driven SW
14 -	Using Statecharts for interface design
15 -	Example