Spring 2018
This seminar covers methods for conducting research in human-computer interaction (HCI). These topics will be pursued through independent reading, assignments, and class discussion. The seminar comprises three assignments that not just apply HCI research methods but push the envelope of what has been done before. The assignments are designed to be meaningful and have the potential to be widely visible or to be published, and each student will participate in writing a group paper for one of the assignments. We will have readings that teach HCI research methods and provide examples of valuable contributions, sometimes reading reviews of those papers as they were evaluated for publication.
The goal of this course is to provide students with the background necessary to perform research in HCI and the skills required to conduct human-centric research. Students who take this course should have a particular interest in HCI research, or wish to learn fundamental skills that will help them with a user interface design or usability evaluation career. Programming experience is highly desirable but not absolutely necessary (students who do not program may have to be especially creative for some assignments). There will be little or no content in this course about interface design, but students will find other topics in CSCI 1300 (User Interfaces) relevant. Enthusiastic students who have not taken CSCI 1300 should have independently gained HCI experience or be a graduate student studying a related topic.
The prerequisite for this course is CSCI 1300: User Interfaces and User Experience. The course will be capped at 15 students. The Collaboration Policy should be read and signed in class on January 30.
Instructor: Jeff Huang, 407 CIT, jeff at cs dot brown dot edu
Teaching Assistant: Nediyana Daskalova, 409 CIT, nediyana at cs dot brown dot edu
1:00pm-2:20pm Tuesdays and Thursdays in 477 CIT. Office hours by appointment with the instructor or TA.
We will read a few excerpts from Ways of Knowing in HCI (WOK) by Olson and Kellogg that you can find online and can read freely if you are on the Brown network (or accessing through VPN). It's recommended that you download a copy while you're on the Brown network so you can read it offline at your leisure. The remaining readings will be papers linked from the website.
Total time spent in and out of class for this course is estimated at 180 hours. Over the 15 weeks of this course, students will spend 2 and a half hours in class each week (or 37.5 hours total). Although specific out-of-class time investments may vary for individual students, a reasonable estimate to support this course's learning outcomes is 145 total out-of class hours, or on average, about 10 hours weekly over a 15-week term. Out-of-class preparation will regularly include about 1-2 hours per class of reading and writing the comments addressing the reading (about 70 hours total). In addition to this ongoing preparation time, students are expected to allocate about 70 hours over the course of the term to writing the three assignments and final group paper.
Brown University is committed to full inclusion of all students. Please inform me early in the term if you have a disability or other conditions that might require accommodations or modification of any of these course procedures. You may speak with me after class or during office hours. For more information, please contact Student and Employee Accessibility Services at 401-863-9588 or SEAS@brown.edu. Students in need of short-term academic advice or support can contact the Dean of the College office.
(C)rowdsourcing Try different crowdsourcing models for collecting data and validating a university faculty dataset.
(S)ocial Analysis Analyze how social relationships affect the messages sent and received.
(A)ugmented Reality Interaction Study through participatory design how users can comfortably manipulate virtual objects.
(F)itts' Law Study Perform a variant of the classic Fitts' Law experiment to study the relationship between looking and pointing.
(G)roup Paper Work in a small group to extend one of the assignments into a research paper draft.
Grading is done solely by the instructor.
* We will look at the corresponding reviews in class to see what reviewers had to say about the paper.