CSC 211: Introduction to HCI [Spring, 2022][4 Credits]
Class Projects:
Push
UR music [website]
SLOW [website]
Contact information:
- Instructor: Dr. Zhen Bai (address as Dr. Bai)
- E-mail: zbai (at) cs (dot) rochester (dot) edu
- Office: Wegmans Hall 3007
- Office hour: Thu 2-3pm
- Teaching Assistant: Ekram Hossain
- E-mail: ehossai2 (at) ur (dot) rochester (dot) edu
- Office hour: Mon 11:15am-12:15pm
- Teaching Assistant: Masum Hasan
- E-mail: m (dot) hassan (at) rochester (dot) edu
- Office hour: Tue 2-3pm
Prerequisites and Target Audience:
The course is suitable for undergraduate students with basic programming skills (CSC 172 - required), and mobile or application development experience (CSC 214 - desired).
Course overview:
The goal of this course is to provide an introductory overview of the concepts, principles, methods and special topics of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). This course will help students to build a frame of reference of HCI approaches and apply them in conducting design practices for real-world problems. It contains a combination of lectures, seminars and group projects. The lectures will cover origins of HCI and interaction design, user-centered design methods, usability evaluation and user experience. The seminars will be a combination of instructor and guest speaker led talks and discussions that introduce special topics in HCI, which may include Augmented and Virtual Reality, technology-enhanced learning and assistive technologies depending on the speakers’ availability. The group project will take place throughout the course and provide an opportunity for students to apply user-centered design methods (e.g., contextual inquiry, prototyping, evaluation) in designing and developing a working application or interaction technology that address authentic real-world problems.
Learning objectives:
- Understand the history, concepts, and principles of HCI
- Become familiar with user-centered design processes
- Understand cognitive, social and emotional aspects of HCI
- Become familiar with state-of-the-art categories of user interface and interaction
- Learn user requirement, prototyping, and evaluation techniques
- Obtain hands-on experience in applying HCI methods in building applications that solve authentic problems
- Obtain teamwork and presentation skills
- Obtain knowledge of special HCI topics
Schedule:
| Week | Date | Lecture |
| 1 | 1/13 | Class Intro |
| 2 | 1/18 | Interaction Design Overview |
| 1/20 | Universal Usability | |
| 3 | 1/25 | User-Centered Design Process |
| 1/27 | User Requirement (1) | |
| 4 | 2/1 | Project Brainstorm and Team Formation |
| 2/3 | User Requirement (2) | |
| 5 | 2/8 | User Requirement Data Collection (1) |
| 2/10 | User Requirement Data Collection (2) | |
| 6 | 2/15 | User Interfaces |
| 2/17 | Design Prototyping | |
| 7 | 2/22 | Prototyping Workshop (project prototyping) |
| 2/24 | Prototyping Workshop (physical prototyping) | |
| 8 | 3/1 | Mid-term Project Proposal Presentation (1) |
| 3/3 | Mid-term Project Proposal Presentation (2) | |
| 9 | 3/8 | Spring Break |
| 3/10 | Spring Break | |
| 10 | 3/15 | Understand Human - Cognition 1 |
| 3/17 | Understand Human - Cognition 2 | |
| 11 | 3/22 | Design Guidelines and Principles |
| 3/24 | Evaluation - 1 | |
| 12 | 3/29 | Evaluation - 2 |
| 3/31 | Guest Talk on Computer-Supported Collaboration | |
| 13 | 4/5 | Understanding Human - Social Interaction and Communication |
| 4/7 | Project Development Session -1 | |
| 14 | 4/12 | Working Prototype Presentation |
| 4/14 | Special Topic - AR/VR Interfaces | |
| 15 | 4/19 | Project Development Session -2 |
| 4/21 | Final Presentation - 1 | |
| 16 | 4/26 | Final Presentation - 2 |
Grading:
Homework is due midnight (11:59pm). Each day late will result in a 20% deduction (maximum 60% off).
The mid-term and final examinations will take place in the form of a term project. The project will include 3-4 students, and will go through a complete cycle of user-centered design processes for an application or interaction technology that solves a real-world problem. The final course grade will be based on:
- In-class activities (10%)
- Students will take part in lecture discussion, seminar presentation, and design workshops
- Assignment and in-class quiz (40%)
- Students will complete various writing, design and analytics assignments, and in-class quiz
- Mid-term group project (10%): group presentation and report
- Final Project: 40% + 10% bonus
- Low-fidelity prototype
- Working prototype
- Evaluation
- Final presentation
- Project report
- Media: website, video demo
- (Optional) Students are encouraged to submit their work as a poster or work-in-progress paper to HCI related juried-reviewed conferences (e.g. CHI student research competition), or local, regional or national student research consortiums
Attendance:
- Synchronous Learning (Zoom or in-person (TBD))
- If a student cannot attend the class due to a planned event (e.g. conference), s/he has to notify the instructor one week ahead of time. For unforeseen reasons (e.g. illness, family emergency), the student should let the instructor know before 9am on the day of the class or as soon as possible. In both cases, the student may be asked to submit assigned in-classroom activities for course make-up.
- Asynchronous Learning:
- For students who need to watch the lecture video asynchronously due to remote learning constraints (e.g. time zone), the instructor will maintain a list of the students’ names and they may be requested to submit assigned in-classroom activities after the lecture.
Students with special needs:
- Please set up a meeting with the student disability service office and meet with the course instructor to discuss necessary accommodations within the first two weeks
Technology used in classroom
- Zoom: synchronous lecture
- Blackboard: course announcement, course information and materials, lecture recordings, assignment submission and grading
- Slack: all other communications (with instructor, TAs, classmate)
- E-mail: only for urgent communication
Academic honesty:
- All assignments and activities associated with this course must be performed in accordance with the University of Rochester's Academic Honesty Policy. More information is available at: www.rochester.edu/college/honesty
- For individual course assignments, students can discuss with classmates for questions related to the assignments. However, all written reports and coding for individual projects must be done independently, represent your own work and not be completed in collaboration with others.
- For the group project, the team report is required to provide a clear statement of the contributions of each member of your group to the group activities. The mid-term and final project report will be graded based on individual’s contribution. If you feel that problems are developing in your group project, you should come to see the instructor as soon as possible, so that the instructor can provide general guidance to group members to set your activities on the right course. Students are permitted and encouraged to share project materials with group members and write the report as a group effort. Therefore, it is important to understand that you are responsible for the academic integrity of the entire report, including contributions of other group members. To avoid potential problems with academic honesty (and to more fully engage in the project), student should be involved in various aspects of writing the report and verify that citations are correct and that all text is accurately cited and not plagiarized. All team members are responsible for the entire assignment, it is incumbent upon each of you to ensure the integrity of the project.
- Sharing/posting course material online without notifying/obtaining permission from instructors is strictly prohibited.
Classroom requirement
- Don’t use laptops and mobile phones in classroom (except for certain in-class activities).
- COVID-19 related requirements:
- All students must comply with COVID-related requirements: University policy requires students to wear a mask and sit at least 6 feet apart from other students. This requirement helps protect everyone in the class.
- Complete Dr. Chatbot on the day of the lecture
- Failure to comply with the COVID-related reequipments is a violation of course requirements and the COVID-19 Community Commitment. The instructor can ask the student to leave the class if they are unwilling to comply, and a COVID-19 Concern Report will be submitted. The student may be subject to disciplinary action through the Student Code of Conduct.