|
Psychology 409/640
Methods in Human-Computer Interaction
Fall 2004
Instructor: David Lane
Meeting times: Tuesdays and Thursdays 10:50AM - 12:05PM SH 460
This course covers the practical issues in designing and testing human-computer
interfaces. In addition to the readings, the class will consist of a series
of projects desigining and evaluating interfaces.
If you have a documented disability that will impact your work in this
class, please contact me to discuss your needs. Additionally, you should
register with the Disability Support Services Office in the Ley Student
Center.
Before testing any subjects you must be certified.
PROCEDURES FORTRAINING AND CERTIFICATION IN THE
PROTECTION OF HUMAN RESEARCH PARTICIPANTS
Merlot Image
Connexions Image
Survey Questions
Heuristics analysis
Yahoo Group
Sorting study
Texts
Johnson, J. (2003) Web
Bloopers: 60 Common Web Design Mistakes and How to Avoid Them.
Kuniasky, M. (2003) Observing
the User Experience
Nielsen, J. (1999) Designing Web Usability
Williams, R. (2003) The
Non-Designer's Design Book, 2nd Edition.
Supplementary Texts
Brinck,
T, Gergle, D, & Wood,
S. (2001) Usability
for the Web: Designing Web Sites that Work. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers
Mayhew,
D. J. (1999) The usability engineering
lifecycle. Morgan Kaufman
Articles
Andre, A.D., and Wickens, C.D. (1995, October). When
users want what's not best for them. Ergonomics in Design, 10-14.
Blustein, J., & Webber, R. Using LSI to evaluate the
quality of hypertext links. Presented at ACM SIGIR IR and Automatic Construction
of Hypermedia a research workshop Maristella Agosti and James Allan (Eds)
July 1995. PDF
Card, S., Moran, T, and Newell, A. (1980) The keystroke level model for user performance time and with interactive systems. Communications of the ACM, 7, 396-410. PDF
Landauer, T., 1991, Let's get real: A position
paper on the role of cognitive psychology in the design of humanly
useful and usable systems. In J.M. Carroll (Ed.) (1991)
Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface, pp.60-73.
(New York: Cambridge University Press)
Landauer, T. K., Foltz, P. W., & Laham, D. (1998).
Introduction to Latent Semantic Analysis. Discourse
Processes, 25, 259-284. PDF
Nardi, B. and Miller J. (1990). An ethnographic study
of distributed problem solving in spreadsheet development. Proceedings
CSCW'90. 7--10 October, Los Angeles, CA. Pp. 197--208.
Millen, D. R. (2000) Rapid ethnography: time
deepening strategies for HCI field research. Proceedings of the conference
on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and
techniques. New York City, New York, United States, 280 - 286.
PDF
Nielsen, J. and Landauer, T. K. (1993). A mathematical
model of the finding of usability problems. Proc. ACM INTERCHI'93 Conf.
(Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 24-29 April).
Rieman, J. (1993). The diary study: A work-place-oriented research tool
to guide laboratory efforts. Proceedings of INTERCHI 93, 321-326.
New York, NY: ACM.
Tullis, T.S. (1993), Is user interface design just common sense? Proceedings
of the 5th International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction,
9-14.
Tullis, T. S. (1985) Designing a Menu-based
Interface to an Operating System. Proceedings of CHI'85 Conference on Human Factors in
Computing Systems, San Francisco, CA, April 1985.
Zhang, Z., Basili, V. and Shneiderman, B. Perspective-based
usability nspection: An empirical validation of efficacy. PDF
Web sites
Alert Box
The top ten
new mistakes of web design (May 30, 1999)
When
bad design becomes the standard (November 14, 1999)
Is navigation
useful? (January 9, 2000)
Voodoo
usability (December 12, 1999)
Why
you only need to test with 5 users (March 19, 2000)
Drop-Down
Menus: Use Sparingly (November 12,2000)
Usability
Metrics (January 21, 2001)
The
3Cs of Critical Web Use: Collect, Compare, Choose (April 15, 2001)
First Rule
of Usability? Don't Listen to Users (August 5, 2001)
Field
Studies Done Right: Fast and Observational (January 20, 2002)
Kids'
Corner: Website Usability for Children (April 14, 2002)
Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003 (December
22, 2003)
Risks
of Quantitative Studies (March 1, 2004)
Change
the Color of Visited Links (May 3, 2004)
Guidelines for
Visualizing Links (May 10, 2004)
Card Sorting: How Many Users to Test (July
19, 2004)
Usability
Evaluation
Yale Web
Interface Guidelines
Stanford Poynter Project
Top
Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design
Banner
Blindness: Web Searchers Often Miss "Obvious" Links
Evaluation
Design/Planning and Methodology for the NIH Web Site—Phase
I
Cluster Analysis by David Stockburger
Usability Testing of World Wide Web Sites
Assignment 1: Read
- Evaluation
Design/Planning and Methodology for the NIH Web Site—Phase I
- Perspective-based
Usability Inspection: An Empirical Validation of
Efficacy.pdf
Assignment 2 (9/2/04):
- Voodoo usability
- Usability
Metrics
- First Rule
of Usability? Don't Listen to Users
Do heuristic evaluation of Connexions site
with regard to creating courses from existing modules. Username:
testuser, password (look at your classnotes)
This assignment does not have to be handed in but we will discuss
the heruristic evaluations in class. Make a list of possible usability
problems and categorize then according
the the coding scheme in "Evaluation
Design/Planning and Methodology for the NIH Web Site—Phase
I."
While testing the interface, you can experiment with making up a
course and prviewing it. Make sure not to publish the course because
I don't think there is a way to unpublish it.
Assignment 3 (9/7/04):
Group report on assessment of Connexions and Merlot home pages. The
idea is to write a report based on the findings that would be as useful
to Connexions as possible concerning the effectiveness of their home
page. It could have some suggestions but need not include a rewrite
of the page itself. It should answer the question "How well does
the home page convey they purpose of the site and its value to potential
users?"
Data
Statistics
Written descriptions
Feedback
Assignment 4 (9/9/04)
Read chapters 1-5 in the Web Bloopers book. Relate problems found in the heuristic analysis to these bloopers.
Read Chapters 1 and 2 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 5 (9/14/04):
Prepare for usability test of Connexions course creation
Assignment 6 (9/16/04):
Read Risks of Quantitative Studies and consider what parts you agree with and what parts you disagree with.
Read chapters 6-8 in the Web Bloopers book.
Plan usability testing.
Assignment 5 (9/21/04):
Begin usability testing
Read Chapters 3 and 4 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 6 (9/23/04):
Begin usability testing
Read Chapters 5 and 6 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 7 (9/30/04):
Complete usability testing
Read Chapters 7 and 8 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 8 (10/05/04):
Complete usability testing
Read Chapters 9-12 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 9 (10/07/04):
Card Sorting: How Many Users to Test
Do the card sorting exercise.
Assignment 10 (10/16/04):
Home page report and usability testing report due.
Read Chapters 13-14 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 11 (10/21/04):
Do comparison task
Read Chapters 15-18 of "Observing the User Experience."
Assignment 12 (10/26/04):
Read the graphic design book by Robbin Williams
Mert with your group and decide on a topic for your report. We will discuss the topics in class.
Work on your projects!
Websites Discussed in Class
Texas Medical Center Map
|