SE 3830 - Human-Computer Interaction

2 lecture hours 2 lab hours 3 credits

Course Description
This course is intended to provide students with a basic set of skills in the area of user interface and user interaction design. Topics include designing user interfaces to take advantage of users’ prior knowledge, using engineering models of cognitive behavior to make design tradeoffs, and evaluation techniques for user interfaces. While the emphasis is on conventional graphical and Web user interfaces, examples will also be given of application of these techniques to mobile and embedded interfaces. The main objective of the course is to provide students with a minimum set of useful skills in the area of user experience and user interaction design. It is intended to support situations in which students are called upon to provide a user interface for an application and there are no other user interface design resources available. It is not designed to be the first course in a sequence of courses in this area nor is it intended to provide an overview of the field of human-computer interaction. (Some optional readings may be provided that give more of an overview.) (prereq: MA 262, CS 2852, SE 3821)

Course Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be able to:

Understand the benefits of user interfaces that behave and can be operated in familiar ways
Review an application for compliance with a published style guide
Develop a basic style guide for a platform for which no published standard exists by reviewing existing, widely used applications
Given a sequence of steps that make up an operation in a user interface, be able to use the Keystroke Model to derive a time estimate for the operation
Given the geometry of a user interface, understand how to apply Fitt’s law to assess pointing or movement actions
Explain the components of the Model Human Processor
Explain the constructs of a GOMS Model. Develop a GOMS model for a simple task
Conduct a cognitive walkthrough
Design and follow the procedures for a heuristic evaluation
Design and quantitatively assess the procedures to carry out a usability study
Conduct a research survey of current methods in human computer interaction

Prerequisites by Topic

A fundamental understanding of structured programming languages
A fundamental understanding of data structures and algorithms
A fundamental understanding of probability and statistics

Course Topics

Usability of interactive systems
Guidelines, principles, and theories
Evaluating interface designs
Software tools
Direct manipulation and virtual environments
Menu selection forms, and dialog boxes
Command and natural languages
Interaction devices
Collaboration
Information search and visualization
Societal and individual impact of user interfaces

Coordinator
Dr. Jay Urbain

Announcement

The Raider Return

Milwaukee School of Engineering

Connect With MSOE

SE 3830 - Human-Computer Interaction