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Course Description

Informatics 132 is a project-based course focused on the user interface design process and evaluation. It is oriented towards practical methods for approaching design problems. In this class, you will develop an appreciation for the nature of design and the challenges to creating and evaluating good designs. You will learn specific skills for studying and designing interactive systems. This course involves collaboration in teams, including the presentation of the project results in oral and written form. At the end of this class, you should have a suite of tools available to you to help you design interactive systems that are both usable and useful.

Course Goals

1. Develop an appreciation for the theory and sensibilities of user-centered design and human-computer interaction
2. Develop skills in the use and application of a variety of design methods, specifically applicable to user-centered design
3. Improve individual and collaborative skills in design-based problem solving

Objectives

On the successful completion of this course, you should be able to:

1. Given a problem setting, critically discuss the appropriateness of potential design methods such as contextual design, scenario-based design, participatory, etc.
2. Describe the issues and challenges to achieving a human-centered design process
3. Gather useful information about users and activities through observation or systematic inquiry
4. Use, adapt and extend classic design standards, guidelines, and patterns
5. Employ selected design methods at a basic level of competence: affinity diagrams, card sorting, scenarios of use, personas, storyboarding, sketching, and usability evaluation
6. Create a low-fidelity prototype and plan and perform a usability evaluation

Schedule (Overview by Week)

1.  Introduction
2. Fundamentals of Interaction
3. User Research
4. User Research II
5. Storyboarding & Sketching
6. Brainstorming and Rapid Prototyping
7. Prototyping
8. Evaluation
9. HCI in the Real World
10. Project Demos, Wrapup

Contacting the Instructor and Teaching Assistant

Jed Brubaker

• Email and in-person office visits are the most preferred method of communication. However…
• Email is broken, but it is the best tool we have. Please include “INF132” in your subject lines. This will allow me to track your email and make sure that I have responded.
• I work in LUCI, a shared office space. Please be considerate of others when visiting my office.

Yiran Wang (Teaching Assistant)

Course Design Credit

Many course materials are adapted from those of instructors from similar courses, including Julie Kientz, Bruce Walker, Elaine Huang, Gregory Abowd, Beth Mynatt, Jacob Wobbrock, Dave Hendry, Batya Friedman, Andrew Ko, Mark Zachry, Jen-nifer Turns, Gillian Hayes, and Don Patterson. Please do not distribute materials without the instructor’s consent.