CS 352: Introduction to Usability Engineering

Instructor: Prof. Carlos Jensen Email: cjensen@eecs... Office hours: MW 11-1pm, or by appointment Office: KEC3061 TA: Carrie Chung (chung (at) eecs) Office hours: M 2-4, W 1-3 Kelley Atrium.

Mailing list: cs352-W09@engr. Website: http://classes.engr.oregonstate.edu/eecs/winter2009/cs352 Location: Kear 305 Meeting time: TR 16:00 - 17:20

Course Description

This class will give you hands-on experience with usability evaluation and user-centered design. In this class you will not learn how to implement user interfaces, but rather how to design these based on the needs of users, which you will determine, and learn how to evaluate your designs rigorously. This is a class for those who wish to know more about usability, human-computer interaction, the psychological aspects of computing, evaluation, and/or experimentation.

The bulk of your grade will be based on a group project, where you will propose, prototype, and evaluate your own solutions. These projects will be presented to the whole school at the end of the term. 

Course Objectives

The goal of this class is to teach, in a hands-on manner, how to properly design a computer product.-
- Learn how to do requirements gathering and interpretation
- Learn how to do prototyping and iterative design
- Learn how to apply usability testing methods legal and ethical requirements
- Learn about the evolution of user interfaces

Learning Objectives

At the completion of this course, students will be able to:
1. Describe the human centered design process and usability engineering process and their roles in system design and development.
2. Discuss usability design guidelines, their foundations, assumptions, advantages, and weaknesses.
3. Describe basics of human subjects research.
4. Complete a basic human subjects research certification form.
5. Design a user interface based on analysis of human needs and prepare a prototype system.
6. Assess user interfaces using different usability engineering techniques.
7. Make an oral presentation that justifies design decisions.

Learning Resources

- Interaction Design by Sharp, Rogers & Preece 2nd Ed. (required) (Amazon)
- Usability Engineering by Nielsen (optional)
- The Design of Everyday Things by Norman (optional)
- Human-Centric Computing Educational Library (http://hcc.cc.gatech.edu/) (optional)
- IRB training (http://cme.cancer.gov/clinicaltrials/learning/humanparticipant-protections.asp)

Course Description

This class is meant to be a hand-on course. This means that you will be required to work on group projects (3-4 person groups) and class-work (in addition to doing readings) outside of class time. This class will also be very interactive. Participation will count towards your final grade, and I want a healthy discussion in each class session.

You are responsible for having done the reading before attending class that day and be ready to participate in the discussion. To ensure that everyone keeps up with the reading, there will be a summary due every week. I may not go over all the reading material in class, preferring to spend that time elaborating or discussing that material with you. This does not mean the assigned reading is not important, or will not be covered in a test.

The grading breakdown will be as follows:

- Participation         10%
- Assignments        15%
- Midterm 1            20%
- Midterm 2            20%
- Project                  35%
---- Proposal                            20%
---- Prototype                           25%
---- Evaluation Plan                 25%
---- Evaluation                         20%
---- Presentation                       10%

Schedule (subject to change)

	Tuesday		Thursday
Week 1	1/6	Welcome & intro Lightning History Round	1/8	Project discussions Design Exercise
			Ch 1 & 2
Week 2	1/13	Understanding Users	1/15	User-Centered Design Process Summaries
	Ch 3, 5		Ch 9
Week 3	1/20	Human Subjects  IRB Certification Due	1/22	Data Gathering Summaries
			Ch 7, 10
Week 4	1/27	Data Analysis Review	1/29	Midterm 1 (sample) Observation Assignment Due (Sun 24:00, through Teach)
	Ch 8
Week 5	2/3	Design and Prototyping Project Proposals Due	2/5	Design Gallery Summaries
	Ch 11
Week 6	2/10	Design Guidelines	2/12	Intro to Evaluation Summaries
	Ch 6 OSX guidelines		Ch 12
Week 7	2/17	Usability Testing	2/19	Analytical Methods Summaries
	Ch 14		Ch 15
Week 8	2/24	Evaluation Plan Due Design Gallery Review	2/26	Midterm 2
Week 9	3/3	Evaluation Session	3/5	No class *
Week 10	3/10	Special topics	3/12	Project Presentation

Project Ideas:

- Better input for ultra mobile (different virtual keyboards)

- Multi-touch gestures (memorability, dexterity)

- Kelley Information System (large-screen awareness system)

- EECS webpage Usability

- Beaversource Usability

- Beaversource Social Networking Enhancements

- Moncle (visualizing privacy in browsing)

Project Proposal:

• Name of team members
• Project description (what do you want to do)
• This should include a description of this problem as a USABILITY problem
• A justification why this is a good/interesting project
• Brief description of who the target population is
• A useful use-case/scenario to help illustrate the problem and/or potential solution
• Reasons you think you are the best team for this, and why you’ll be able to complete this before the end of the term

1-2 pages typically

Evaluation Plan:

You need to prepare an evaluation plan. Your evaluation plan should include two distinct evaluation sessions; one based on expert review (heuristic analysis or cognitive walkthrough), and an experimental session. The expert review is to be completed by your team, whereas the experimental session will be completed with the help of subjects from class. For your test plan you need to identify the exact task you intent to evaluate, the techniques you intend to use (remember, you need to pick two), the data you will be collecting during those tests, and what your threshold for determining the success of the system are. I am looking for a detailed description of all the above, and all the questionnaires or other materials to be used in the evaluation. 

The evaluation plan will be evaluated independently of the evaluation results, which must be reported in a separate written report, and will be evaluated on their adherence to the evaluation plan and the richness and completeness of the analysis performed.