COMS W4170 Syllabus and Assignments

Fall 2009, Tu/Th 1:10–2:25pm, 327 SW Mudd

Prof. Steven Feiner 
feiner [AT] cs [DOT] columbia [DOT] edu 
212-939-7083


Schedule is subject to change.  (S n = Shneiderman and Plaisant, 5th Edition, Chapter n)

 
  Date    Topics/chapters covered    Assignment    Due date 
  Tue Sep 8   Course intro; UI background (S 1)
 

   
  Thu Sep 10   UI background 2; UI theory (S 2; US Rehabilitation Act Section 508 web page)
 

   
  Tue Sep 15    UI theory 2; UI principles
 

   
  Thu Sep 17   UI principles 2 (J. Nielsen, Ten Usability Heuristics)
 

       
  Tue Sep 22    UI development and evaluation (S 3)

 


  Download CogTool and Flex Builder Professional    
  Thu Sep 24    UI development and evaluation 2; Case Study: Piles (S 4; J. Nielsen, Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation Barrier, 1994; R. Mander, G. Salomon, and Y. Wong, A `Pile' Metaphor for Supporting Casual Organization of Information, Proc. CHI '92, Monterey, CA, May 3–7, 1992, 627–634)
 

  Assn 1   Oct 6
  Tue Sep 29    Lo-fi prototypes; Command languages  (S7; Marc Rettig. Prototyping for Tiny Fingers. Communic. of the ACM, 37(4), April 1994, 21–27; Mackay, W.E., Ratzer, A., and Janecek, P. Video artifacts for design: Bridging the gap between abstraction and detail. Proc ACM DIS 2000 (Conference on Designing Interactive Systems), August 2000, Brooklyn, NY)

For optional additional information about paper prototypes, see the references at http://www.paperprototyping.com/references.html and browse through the articles in the ACM Interactions special issue on the art of prototyping, January–February 2006.


 

 
  Thu Oct 1    Command languages 2; Menus (S 6)
   
  Tue Oct 6   Case Study: Prototypes
       
10    Thu Oct 8   Menus 2; Case study: Marking menus (M. Tapia and G. Kurtenbach, Some design refinements and principles on the appearance and behavior of marking menus, Proc. UIST '95, Pittsburgh, PA, November 15–17, 1995, 189–195)
 

  Assn 2 (and guidance on creating use scenarios and personas)   Oct 29
11    Tue Oct 13   Direct manipulation (S 5; B. Myers, A brief history of human computer interaction technology, ACM interactions, 5(2), March/April 1998, 44–54)

For optional additional information about some of the most influential early work in direct manipulation user interfaces, see  D. Engelbart et al., Augmentation Research Center Demo, Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco, 1968 and HCI research by the Lincoln Lab TX-2 group.


       
12    Thu Oct 15   Direct manipulation 2; Icons
   
13    Tue Oct 20   Flex application development
 

   
14    Thu Oct 22   Flex application development 2 (Example 1; Example 2)
 

   
15    Tue Oct 27    Midterm exam Will cover all material discussed in class and assigned up to this point. You will not be expected to demonstrate your knowledge of low-level language syntax or the details of methods and the IDE. The exam will be closed book, closed notes, with essay questions instead of true/false or multiple choice questions. All answers will be written on the exam itself, where the space provided will give an idea of the length expected.
 

       
16    Thu Oct 29   Icons 2; Interaction devices (S 8; C. Matias, I.S. MacKenzie, and W. Buxton, Half-QWERTY: A One-Handed Keyboard Facilitating Skill Transfer from QWERTY, Proc. INTERCHI '93, Amsterdam, NL, April 24-29, 1993, 88-94; P. Dietz, Pressure-sensitive multitouch keyboard and example applications from UIST 2009 Student Innovation Contest)
 


       
    Tue Nov 3    No class: University Holiday (Vote if you're eligible!)
 

       
17    Thu Nov 5    Interaction devices 2

  Assn 3   Nov 21
18    Tue Nov 10   Interaction devices 3 ; Programming by demonstration (S 5.3.4; Skim lightly through A. Cypher (ed.), Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993, and then read the chapters by Smith on Pygmalion and Halbert on SmallStar; next, read the chapter by Myers on Peridot, but instead of the missing figures for this chapter in the online version of the book, look at the corresponding figures in B. Myers, Creating user interfaces using programing by example, visual programming, and constraints, ACM Trans. on Programming Languages and Systems, 12(2), April 1990, 143-177; then read D. Kurlander and S. Feiner, A history-based macro by example system, Proc. UIST '92, Monterey, CA, November 15-18, 1992, 99-106 instead of the chapter by Kurlander and Feiner)
 

       
19    Thu Nov 12   Programming by demonstration 2
 

       
20    Tue Nov 17   Computer-supported cooperative work (S 9; J. Donath and F. Viégas, The chat circle series- Explorations in exploring abstract graphical communication interfaces, Proc. DIS 2002, London, England, 359-369)
 

       
21    Thu Nov 19   Guest lecture: Brad Paley (didi) (Please read W. Paley, Interface and mind — A “paper lecture” about a domain-specific design methodology based on contemporary mind science, it—Information Technology, 51(3), May 2009, 131–141 and think about questions to ask)

 


 

  Project   Dec 15 (teams due Nov 22, design concept due Dec 1)
22    Tue Nov 24    Programming by demonstration 3; Computer-supported cooperative work 2; Information visualization (S13–14, NIH/NSF Visualization Research Challenges, January 2006)
 

       
    Thu Nov 26    No class: Thanksgiving
 

   
23   Tue Dec 1   Information visualization
 

       
24    Thu Dec 3    Information visualization; Two-handed UIs; Scaling up and down: From wall-sized to hand-held
 

   
25    Tue Dec 8   Preview of COMS W4172: 3D User Interfaces and Augmented Reality; Scaling up and down: From wall-sized to hand-held
 

     
26    Thu Dec 10    UIs now and next: Ubiquitous, tangible, sketchy, calm, wearable (S Appendix 1)
 

   
    Tue Dec 15   Final project presentations 7:00pm–10:00pm in Mudd 327. Each group will give a presentation (including a question-and-answer session). Please see the project description for the time breakdown.
 

   
  Tue Dec 22   Final exam 1:10pm–3:00pm (110 minutes, not 170 minutes) in Mudd 327. Will start at the officially scheduled exam time and cover all material discussed in class and assigned, with an emphasis on material covered after the midterm. You will not be expected to demonstrate your knowledge of low-level language syntax or methods and IDEs. The exam will be closed book, closed notes, with essay questions instead of true/false or multiple choice questions. All answers will be written on the exam itself, where the space provided will give an idea of the length expected.