Subject Guide



Department: Department of Computer Science - City Campus

Course Title: Human Computer Interaction

Course Code: CS 492

Responsible Person: Dr. Ghassan al-Qaimari

Duration: One Semester

Hours (per week): 2 hrs Lectures
1 hr Tutorial
1 hr Laboratory

Contact: 26 hrs lectures, 13 tutorials, 13 laboratory

Non Contact: 52 hrs study/practical work

Credit Points: 12

Prerequisites: Experience in using a graphical toolkit is an advantage.

Corequisites: None

Assessment: Assignment work = 40%
Exam duration = (1 hr mid-term, 2 hrs final)
Exam total = (20% mid-term, 40% final)

 

Assignment Grading: HD,DI,CR,PA,NN,DNS

General Educational Aims:
Theories of human-computer interaction, user interface design techniques, and usability engineering are studied.
The student is introduced to both theoretical aspects as well
as examples of design, implementation, and evaluation of user interfaces.

 

Specific Objective: At the conclusion of this subject, the student should be able to:

- realise the impact of cognitive psychology on HCI.

- realise the importance of user centred design, rapid
prototyping and formative evaluation.

- have attained the ability to design, implement and evaluate
user interfaces.

- possess a working knowledge of Xt OSF/Motif, the common user interface toolkit, or any other graphical toolkit or UIMS. (Students who are familiar with Motif are encouraged to use other toolkits or UIMSs).

- have familiarity with some of the outstanding research problems being studied in the field of Human-Computer Interaction.

 

Lecture Series

Week 1: Introduction to HCI - Components of HCI

Week 2: Cognitive framework of HCI
Perception and Representation

Week 3: Attention and Memory constraints

Week 4: Mental Model,Interface Metaphors,
Conceptual Models, Visual formalisms

Week 5: Social & organisational aspects, CSCW

Week 6: User centred system design, User Modelling,
Task Analysis

Week 7: Conceptual and physical design - User Action Notation

Week 8: (Midterm Exam)

Week 9: Interaction styles, Direct Manipulation, Design guidelines

Week 10: Prototyping, UIMS

Week 11: Usability engineering

Week 12: Formative & summative evaluations

Week 13: Evaluation (continue)

 

Tutorials

Week 1: Not running

Week 2: Colour Lab

Week 3: Metaphor Lab

Week 4: CSCW (Video)

Week 5: Internet (Video)

Week 6: Designing a Personal Electronic Planner.

Week 7: Project

Week 8: Project

Week 9: Project

Week 10: Designing Questionnaire

Week 11: Designing Evaluation Tasks

Week 12: Evaluation session

Week 13: Project Due/Presentation

 

Laboratory

Week 1: Not running

Week 2: Help with project

Week 3: Help with project

Week 4: Help with project

Week 5: Help with project

Week 6: Help with design of planner

Week 7: Help with design of planner

Week 8: Help with project

Week 9: Help with project

Week 10: Help with questionnaires

Week 11: Help with evaluation tasks

Week 12: Evaluation session

Week 13: Project Due/Presentation

 

Texts

Prescribed:

- Preece J., Human-Computer Interaction, Addison Wesley.

- Young D. A., X-Window System Programming and Applications with Xt OSF/Motif Edition, Prentice-Hall.

References:

- Shneiderman, B. Designing the User Interface, Addison Wesley.

- Hix & Hartson, Developing User Interfaces, Wiley.



Ghasson al-Qaimari
Contributors Page