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Human Computer Interaction: CPSC 544
UBC Computer Science - Fall 2005


 
Professor Joanna McGrenere, joanna@cs.ubc.ca

Office ICICS X665

Day /Time/Location Tuesdays & Thursday 9:30 - 11:00 AM
Dempster Pavilion 201 
First Class Tuesday September 13 (second week of the term)
Office Hours There are no formal office hours. Please book a meeting with me via email.
Prerequisites Graduate standing.

An undergraduate course in Human-Computer Interaction (comparable to CS444), or permission of the instructor.

A background in Computer Science is not required to take this course, although the class size is restricted and there are a limited number of positions available for non-CS students.

The most important prerequisite for this course is an ability to write, speak, and understand English.

Overview This is intended to be an advanced course in Human-Computer Interaction. 

This course will provide a deeper treatment of some topics that are typically found  in an undergraduate HCI course. For example: design methodologies, evaluation methodologies (both quantitative and qualitative), human information processing, aspects of human movement, cognition and perception.

This course will also introduce students to research frontiers in HCI. For example: groupware and computer-supported cooperative work; customizable and adaptive systems; small screen, large screen, and tabletop displays; hypertext and multimedia; virtual and augmented reality.

The specific topics to be covered during the term will be announced during the first week of the course. 

Course Materials

Survey and research articles will be the primary text for the course, chosen from a collection of readings.

Some of the readings can be found in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the Year 2000 by Ronald M. Baecker, Jonathan Grudin, William A.S. Buxton, and Saul Greenberg (Morgan Kaufmann, 1995, ISBN 1-55860-246-1). There are four copies of this text available in the ICICS/CS Reading Room for use in the RR (three copies) or short term loan (one copy).

Some of the readings are available on-line in the ACM Digital Library. You have access to this through the UBC Library proxy server. Set your browser to use the proxy portal.ubc.ca:8000 (portal.ubc.ca and port 8000) and then login using your UBC library card number as your name and the last five digits of your card as your password.

Selected articles not available in either of these will be on reserve in the ICICS/CS Reading Room (for copying only).

Evaluation Students will complete two to three individual assignments which include a short report and presentation on an advanced HCI topic. In addition there will be a project that is done in groups of three to five students.
HCI Lab X360 The HCI Lab is available to CPSC 544 students for their group project work. The lab provides an excellent environment for teams to work together; it contains 6 round tables with one workstation per table. The workstations are equipped with prototyping and video editing software.

CPSC 544 students have priority use of the lab on M, W, F: 15:30-17:00 PM, and T, R: 12:30-14:00 and 17:30-19:00. (Priority use means that you can ask a non-544 student to leave if there is insufficient room or resources.) Please consult the schedule posted on the lab door for further information about when the lab is available.