Course Outline for CIS*4300 (F'10)
Human-Computer Interaction

Class time: Tuesday & Thursday 2:30-4:20 PM (Sept. 9 start)

Location: Tuesday:Mack 235 & Thursday:Mack 233 (these may change)

Overview

This is an introductory course covering human-computer interaction concepts, theory, and practice. It focuses on both human needs and technological opportunities in the design of interactive system. Effort is placed on understanding requirements, developing suitable designs, and becoming good evaluators. Paired assignments and a group project will be used to achieve these goals.

Students entering this course are expected to have a solid background in team-oriented design and production of software systems in addition to strong organizational and problem solving skills. It is assumed that the students are able to program in a variety of paradigms (procedural, object-oriented, etc.) although this will not be the focus of the course. Please see calendar description for additional information (including prerequisites).

Text Books:

required

• Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems by Steve Krug

recommended

• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
• Designing Interfaces Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell
• Interaction Design, Preece, Rogers and Sharp: former text for this course
• GUI Bloopers, by Jeff Johnson: packed with practical down to earth advice
• Design of Everyday Things, by Donald Norman: an amazing and informative rant
• Usability Engineer, by Jakob Nielsen: a classic on usability that continues to be very worthwhile and will continue to be so
• User and Task Analyses for Interface Design, by Hackos and Redish: an authoritative text that covers just about every aspect of task analysis

Course Web Page

http://www.uoguelph.ca/~nonnecke/courses/cis4300f10/

Announcements

Students are responsible for regularly checking the announcements section of the Web page.
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~nonnecke/courses/cis4300f10/announcements.html

Marking Scheme (subject to change)

• group project (35%)
• paired assignments (30%)
• quizzes (35% - best 8/10 - see the schedule page for quiz dates - these are tentative)

Late Policy

Work submitted after the due date receives a grade of zero. If written documentation of extenuating circumstances is provided, then marking criteria or relative weighting may be adjusted.

Posting of Grades and Requests for Remarks

Requests for remarking of course work should be made to the course instructor. Any requests for remarks must be made within a week of marking. If a student requests a re-grade, the entire work will be remarked, and the new grade may be higher or lower than the original grade received.

Grades will be posted on the course Web site. It is a student's responsibility to verify that the posted grade corresponds to the grade actually received and notify the instructor of any error within one week of the posting.

Academic Misconduct

Please read and understand the University's regulations and procedures on academic misconduct. Faculty are provided with no leeway in this matter.