Human Comupter Interaction

Lecturer:

Jan Schmidt

Tutor:

Jan Schmidt

Supervisor:

Department of Computer Science and Engineering

Synopsis:

Students of this course develop awareness of social, ethical, cognitive and psychological problems of information technology. Multiple viewpoints to these problems are offered, together with a choice of rational methods of design, evaluation, and user research. Thus, the students are prepared to collaborate with specialists like information designers, graphic designers, and cognitive scientists, as well as perform the design themselves if required.

Requirements:

Active participation at the seminars. All practical appointments done. An essay documenting critical thinking of the student and her ability to employ the viewpoints, methods and knowledge offered in the course. The essay is to be defended at the exam.

Syllabus of lectures:

1. Design and society, information design, the role of designer in the society

2. User research - data gathering methods, experimental methods, interpretive evaluation methods. Ethical aspects.

3. Predictive evaluation

4. Information technology supporting work process

5. User investment versus gain: cognitive, motor, sensory load. Mental models. Conceptual model

6. Lessons learned from linguistics for the construction of conceptual models

7. Classification, classification systems, domain analysis and other sources for conceptual model construction

8. Formal languages: command, scripting and descriptive languages

9. Visual cognition. Visual elements of user interface expressing conceptual relationships

10. User interface design based on conceptual model. Standards in user interface

11. User support 9help, manuals). Technical document design. Language

12. Structure and organization of Web sites

13. Typography and the user: connotations, expectations, and tradition

14. Graphic design

Syllabus of tutorials:

1. Professional profile of the participants. What analogies can be drawn between applications and other objects

2. Practice: performing ergonomics experiments with workstation operation

3. Evaluation of the experiments

4. Practice: gaining user experience with a pilot application, for analysis and redesign in further seminars

5. Evaluation by cognitive walkthrough and heuristics

6. Practice: icon design

7. Conceptual model of the pilot application, acquisition of basic terms from communication protocol

8. Practice: icon evaluation

9. A toy classification system. Analysis of some phenomena in command and descriptive systems

10. Practice: setting color set of a user interface. Part I - getting started

11. Design of a windowed interface of the pilot application using conceptual model

12. Practice: setting color set of a user interface. Part II - rational design

13. Laying out a technical document using conceptual model

14. Practice: an attempt at typographic design

Study Objective:

Study materials:

1. Preece, J., ed.: Human-Computer Interaction. Wokingham (UK), Addison-Wesley, 1998.

Note:

Time-table for winter semester 2011/2012:

	06:00–08:0008:00–10:0010:00–12:0012:00–14:0014:00–16:0016:00–18:0018:00–20:0020:00–22:0022:00–24:00
Mon
Tue	roomKN:E-127 Schmidt J. 14:30–16:00 ODD WEEK (lecture parallel1) Karlovo nám. Kotkova cvičebna K4
Fri
Thu
Fri

Time-table for summer semester 2011/2012:

Time-table is not available yet

The course is a part of the following study plans:

• Computer Technology - Software Engineering- structured studies (compulsory course of the branch)