Human-Computer Interaction
Teaching
| Lecturers: | Russell Beale |
| Andrew Howes |
|
| Guest lecturers | Alan Dix |
Introduction
This is the HCI/Advanced HCI course website.
This course is designed for students with a background in Computer Science and some previous exposure to HCI. It covers topics as listed on the module web page, but in more depth than in earlier courses.
Teaching format
The course is taught using a mixed-methods approach
- lectures cover core material and concepts, setting out the basic structure of the material. You are then expected to follow up these areas by doing some targetted reading to supplement their understanding and extend their knowledge as required.
- topic research and argumentation: in groups, you study a number of topics in more detail, engaging with the primary sources (research papers, book chapters) and collating information, presenting it on a group website
Lectures
- Introduction to the course and to HCI
- Adaptive Interaction & Perceptual Motor Control
- Adaptive Interaction & Human Decision Making
- Adaptive Interaction & Trust in Online Markets
- Design - Understanding the User (also Listen Again to BBC Radio 4 Digital Human Series 2 episode 4 of 7 which discusses value-centric approaches)
- Design - examples, logos, guidelines
- Beyond the desktop: Physicality I - Alan Dix. Material: General overview of physicality | Properties of physical things
- Physicality II - Alan Dix
- Design and prototyping (includes creativity approaches, not covered in lecture)
- Evaluation techniques
Group Research
Research topics
Task 1 - engaging with original research
Each group will undetake research in one of the topic areas. This entails reading the given key paper, understanding the main parts of the argument, and then finding additional sources of material to support or contradict that argument. Suggestions for how to do this are given here.
This material needs to be collated and presented as a condensed, clear piece of work that summarises the main aspects of work in the field. Some areas have relatively coherent complementary findings, whilst others have divergent perspectives. You are writing these pages to address the other students in the class: so you can assume that they are intelligent, aware of basic HCI and Compuer Science, but not an expert in your particular topic. You are aiming to create a digestable set of notes on the topic.
This is presented using WordPress - each group will have a wordpress blog that they can edit and alter. A typical set of noteson a topic will be structured as a series of pages containing the core material, probably as static pages, and a typical group submission will be 3-8 pages of material. Since this is an HCI course, some marks will be given for the design and presentation of the material, as well as the content, so you should consider using diagrams, animations, videos and other materials to explain your topic as clearly as you can. You can choose to present the material in blog form if you prefer, but the suggested format is a blog that outlines the main work done, linking to the core material on the static pages.
The second strand of this work is that you are expected to read the work of the others - this is a reasonably significant task, and you must allow yourself time to do this. All the material covered is, potentially, examinable (though in less depth than the lecture material, and we will keep the topics reasonably close to work covered in lectures). You are also expected to engage with the work of others by commenting on their work in the comments section of their blogs - comments should be intelligent, reasoned criticisms or arguments relating to the material. If you comment early, then people may improve ther own work by using your input; if you comment on more finished work, you can highlight issues with it, or discuss concepts that are specifically interesting (and why).
When you receive comments on your work, take time to read them and either respond with a comment of your own, or alter your material (and acknowledge this in a comment): this allows all the work to develop into higher quality pieces, and means that you can all help each other understand the topics more effectively.
Task 2 - thinking deeply
The work on physicality requires you to think deeply and in detail about aspects of systems or devices that you might ordinarily take for granted. It encourages detailed examination of an interactive object and requires you to gain a nuanced understanding of both its behaviour and its more aesthetic, fundamental qualities as well.
Task 3 - evaulations with tools
The exercse gets you used to using some of the tools that evaluations utilise, and encourages you to properly engage in the evaluation process.
Lab feedback and advice sessions
To support you in these exercises, there is a lab session weekly in which lecturers and demonstrators will be availableto discuss the topic with you, give you feedback on how your work is progressing, and answer queries you may have on a topic. It is strongly advised that your group comes along to these sessions so that you can be assured you're on the right track. We sugest that you work in your group, with either one or two computers per group and discussion about what you're doing, but you are also expected to spend further time yourself working on the material. It is not likely that you will cover the material in sufficient depth if you only undertake this work during the scheduled lab session.
In order to give you individual attention and to ensure enough lab space:
- Advanced HCI (Level M) students should attend the 1500-1600 lab session on Mondays.
- HCI (level 3) students should attend the 1200-1300 lab session on Tuesdays.
Assessment
This topic work forms 30% of the module assessment - 10% for each topic.
For task 1: 5% will go on content, 2% on page structure and design, and 3% on comments. Content and presentation are group marks; comments are individually marked. Sign up for your assessment and feedback slot here.
Please have a page where you have permalinks to your comments so we can see them and assess them quickly.
Assessment will be done by presenting your group work to a demonstrator or one of the module lecturers in a lab session. You will have 10 minutes maximum to show your group work, and show your comments.You'll be given direct feedback at the time as well as a mark. We wil also be reviewing the blogs as they develop over the weeks, and may comment on them outside of lab sessions.
For tasks 2 and 3: the work will be assessed as per the detailed assignments.
Page maintained by Russell Beale. Last update: