INLS 818 – Human-Computer Interaction Seminar – Fall 2010

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

School of Information and Library Science

Thursdays, 2:00pm – 4:30pm, Manning 208

Schedule | Assignments | Projects | Blackboard

Instructor:

Rob Capra

email: rcapra3 at unc dot edu

web: http://www.ils.unc.edu/~rcapra/

office: Manning 214A

Brief Course Description

This seminar will address research and development issues related to the design and evaluation of user interfaces that support information seeking and information use. The seminar will investigate the nature of interactivity, user needs assessment, query and browse interactions, iterative design and maintenance, and usability testing. Participants will read/view and discuss documents (text and video) and work in a small team to develop an interface prototype or conduct a usability study of an existing interface.

The Fall 2010 seminar is problem-based, rooted in ongoing work and specific research interests. Ongoing work relates to the nature of interactivity, browsing and interactive search, and digital libraries. Case studies related to these themes will be used to illustrate principles and skills. Some themes and problem areas this semester will include: multi-session, exploratory, and collaborative search, personal health record usability, management of personal digital collections and personal digital information, and video retrieval and annotation with emphasis on multimedia surrogates. Ongoing development of systems will be linked to the research projects above. This year, the seminar will have a special focus on search interfaces that support multi-session information seeking, information sharing from search, and collaborative search.

Course Materials

No specific textbook is required for this course. All required readings/videos are available on-line or through the library.

Laptop computers are required for some class sessions.

Important Online Resources

Online Books:

Hearst, M. (2009). Search User Interfaces. Cambridge University Press. http://searchuserinterfaces.com/

White, R., and Roth, R. (2009). Exploratory Search: Beyond the Query-Response Paradigm. Morgan & Claypool. http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/icr/1/1

Tunkelang, D. (2009). Faceted Search. Morgan & Claypool. http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/icr/1/1

Information Seeking Support Systems: Workshop papers http://ils.unc.edu/ISSS/ISSS_final_report.pdf (see also special issue of IEEE Computer, March 2009)

Websites:

Reading List from Previous INLS 818: http://www.ils.unc.edu/courses/2009_fall/inls818_001/818_reading_viewing_list.html

Interaction Design Lab: www.ils.unc.edu/idl

HCI Bibliography: http://www.hcibib.org/

UMD HCIL http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/

Usability.gov http://www.usability.gov

Nielsen’s Alertbox: www.useit.com/alertbox

Boxes and Arrows: http://www.boxesandarrows.com/

Assignments and Evalution

Semester project (40%) – students will work on a group project with deliverables throughout the semester (more details TBA)

Individual assignments (35%) – there will be four or five individual assignments during the semester

Interface “tours” (10%) – each student will present a walkthrough of a user interface and lead an in-class discussion about it

Participation (15%) – this is a seminar course, so reading and contributing to the class discussion is important

TENTATIVE SCHEDULE

Week 1: August 26 – Introduction, HCI, and HII

Readings/Viewings:

Review: Preece, Rogers, and Sharp, Chapter 6.4, “Lifecycle Models”

Class notes: inls818f10-week1.pdf

Assignments:

Other resources:

Norman, D. (2008). Waiting: A Necessary Part of Life. Interactions 15(3): 36-37. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1353782.1353790

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Week 2: September 2 – Information, Augmentation and Information Seeking

Readings/Viewings:

Marchionini, G. (2010). Information Concepts, Chapter 1, “The Many Meanings of Information” (posted in the Course Documents section of the course Blackboard site)

Engelbart, D. (1962). Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework (sections I, IIA, IIB) http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html

Hearst, Chapter 1, “The Design of Search User Interfaces” http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch1_design.html

Hearst, Chapter 3, “Models of the Information Seeking Process” http://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/sui_ch3_models_of_information_seeking.html

Class notes: inls818f10-week2.pdf

Assignments:

Due Sept 9: Form project groups formed and develop initial project concept

Other resources:

White, R., and Roth, R. (2009). Chapter 3, “Related Work”. http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/pdfplus/10.2200/S00174ED1V01Y200901ICR003

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Week 3: September 9 – Usability, Assessment, and Evaluation

Readings/Viewings:

Flanagan, J. (1954). The Critical Incident Technique. Psychological Bulletin 51(4): 327-358. http://eresources.lib.unc.edu/ejournal/

Nielsen, J. and Molich, R. (1990). Heuristic Evaluation of User Interfaces. ACM CHI 1990. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/97243.97281

John, B. and Kieras, D. (1996). The GOMS Family of User Interface Analysis Techniques: Comparison and Contrast. ACM TOCHI 3(4): 320-351. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/235833.236054

Class notes: inls818f10-week3.pdf

Assignments:

Due Sept 16: Revised project overviews

Individual assignment #1, Evaluation of a search interface

Additional resources:

Card, S., Newell, A., Moran, T. (1983). The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction. Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ.

Castillo, J. C., Hartson, H. R., and Hix, D. (1998). Remote usability evaluation: can users report their own critical incidents? ACM CHI 1998. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/286498.286736

Teevan, J., Alvarado, C., Ackerman, M. S., and Karger, D. R. (2004). The perfect search engine is not enough: a study of orienteering behavior in directed search. ACM CHI 2004. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/985692.985745

Evans, B. M. and Chi, E. H. (2008). Towards a model of understanding social search. ACM CSCW 2008. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1460563.1460641

Akers, D., Simpson, M., Jeffries, R., and Winograd, T. 2009. Undo and erase events as indicators of usability problems. ACM CHI 2009: 659-668. DOI= http://doi.acm.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1145/1518701.1518804

Hertzum, M. and Jacobsen, N. E. (2003). The Evaluator Effect: A Chilling Fact About Usability Evaluation Methods', International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 15:(1) 183-204. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/S15327590IJHC1501_14

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Week 4: September 16 – Exploratory Search, Faceted Interfaces

Readings/Viewings:

White, R., and Roth, R. (2009). Chapter 2, “Defining Exploratory Search”. http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/pdfplus/10.2200/S00174ED1V01Y200901ICR003

Marchionini, G. (2006). Exploratory Search: From Finding to Understanding. Communications of the ACM 49(4): 41-46. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1121949.1121979

Tunkelang, D. (2009). Faceted Search. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services. Morgan and Claypool. http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/pdf/10.2200/S00190ED1V01Y200904ICR005

Class notes: inls818f10-week4.pdf

Assignments:

Due Sept 23: Group projects – come to class prepared to talk about stage 2 deliverable

Due Sept 30: Group projects – stage 2 (evaluation / design requirements, task analysis)

Other resources:

Wilson, M., Kules, B., schraefel, m.c., Shneiderman, B. (2010). From Keyword Search to Exploration: Designing Future Search Interfaces for the Web. Foundations and Trends ® in Web Science 2(1): 1-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1800000003

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Week 5: September 23 – Collaborative and Multi-Session Search

Readings/Viewings:

Morris, M. and Teevan, J. (2009). Collaborative Web Search: Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Synthesis Lectures on Information Concepts, Retrieval, and Services. Morgan and Claypool. http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/pdfplus/10.2200/S00230ED1V01Y200912ICR014 (focus on Chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5)

Golovchinsky, G., Qvarfordt, P., Pickens, J. (2009). Collaborative Information Seeking. IEEE Computer 42(3): 47-51.

Capra, R. et al. (2010). Tools-at-Hand and Learning in Multi-Session, Collaborative Search. ACM CHI 2009. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1753326.1753468

Class notes: inls818f10-week5.pdf

Assignments:

Due Sept 30: Group projects – stage 2 (evaluation / design requirements, task analysis)

Other resources:

Morris, M. (2008). A Survey of Collaborative Search Practices. ACM CHI 2008. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1357054.1357312

Evans, B., and Chi, E. (2008). Towards a Model of Understanding Social Search. ACM CSCW 2008. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1460563.1460641

Twidale, M., Nichols, D., Paice, C. (1997). Browsing is a Collaborative Process. Information Processing and Management 33(6) 761-783.

Morris, M., and Horvitz, E. (2007). SearchTogether: An Interface for Collaborative Web Search. ACM UIST 2007. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1294211.1294215

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Week 6: September 30 – HCI & HII Models and Theories

Readings/Viewings:

MacKenzie, S., and Buxton, W. (1992). Extending Fitts’ Law to Two-Dimensional Tasks. ACM CHI 1992. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/142750.142794

Furnas, G., et al. (1987). The Vocabulary Problem in Human-System Communication. Communications of the ACM 30(11): 964-971. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/32206.32212

Pylyshyn, Z. (1991). Some Remarks on the Theory-Practice Gap. In Carroll, J. (Ed.), Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface. Cambridge University Press. (read the sections available using Google books)

Ware, C. (2003). Design and Applied Perception. In Carroll, J. (Ed.), HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science. Elsevier. (read the sections available using Google books)

Class notes: inls818f10-week6.pdf

Assignments:

Due Oct 7: Individual assignment #2, Exploratory and Collaborative Search

Additional resources:

Marchionini, G. (2010). Information Concepts, Chapter 5, Section 1 (Shannon Information Theory)

Carroll, J., Rosson, M.B. (1987). Paradox of the Active User. MIT Press.

Carroll, J., Kellogg, W., Rosson, M.B. (1991). The Task-Artifact Cycle. In Carroll, J. (Ed.), Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface. Cambridge University Press.

Hollan, J., Hutchins, E., Kirsh, D. (2000). Distributed Cognition: Toward a New Foundation for Human-Computer Interaction Research. ACM TOCHI 7(2): 174-196. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/353485.353487

Halverson, C. (2002). Activity Theory and Distributed Cognition: Or What Does CSCW Need to DO with Theories? Computer Supported Cooperative Work 11(1-2): 243-267.

Kaptelinin, V., and Nardi, B. (2006). Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design. MIT Press.

Nardi, B. (1995). Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interaction. MIT Press.

Suchman, L. (1987). Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication. Cambridge University Press.

Value-Sensitive Design (Friedman, B. 1996) http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/242485.242493

Common Ground (Clark & Brennan, 1991; Monk, 2003)

Treat Computers Like People (Reeves and Naas 1996)

Shechtman & Horowitz 2003 Media Inequality

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Week 7: October 7 – Representations: Overviews, Previews, and Manipulation

Readings/Viewings:

Marchionini, G., Geisler, G., and Brunk, B. (2000). ASIS 2000. http://ils.unc.edu/~march/agileviews/Agileviews.pdf

Cockburn, A., Karlson, A., Bederson, B. (2008). A Review of Overview+Detail, Zooming, and Focus+Context Interfaces. ACM Computing Surveys 41(1). http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1456650.1456652

Watch:

Filmfinder (HCIL 2000) http://www.ibiblio.org/openvideo/video/hcil/hcil2000_18.mpg

WebBook and WebForager (CHI 96) http://open-video.org/details.php?videoid=4572

Hyperbolic Browser (CHI 96) http://open-video.org/details.php?videoid=4567

Class notes:

Assignments:

Due Oct 14: Initial work on Group Project, Deliverable #3

Additional Resources:

Furnas, G. (1986). Generalized Fisheye Views. ACM SIGCHI Bulletin 17(4): 16-23. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/22339.22342

Bederson, B., and Hollan, J. (1994). ACM UIST 1994. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/192426.192435

Ahlberg, C., and Shneiderman, B. (1994). ACM CHI 1994. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/259963.260431

Watch:

ManyEyes Project

OpenVideo Surrogates

Pad++

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Week 8: October 14 – Help, Training, and Interaction Trends

Readings/Viewings:

Plaisant, C., and Shneiderman, B. (2005). Show Me! Guidelines for Producing Recorded Demonstrations (VL/HCC'05) http://hcil.cs.umd.edu/trs/2005-02/2005-02.pdf

Weiser, M., and Brown, S. (1995). Designing Calm Technology. http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/calmtech/calmtech.htm

Want, R., and Schilit, B. (2001). Expanding the Horizons of Location-Aware Computing. IEEE Computer 34(8): 31-34. http://sites.google.com/site/schilit2/Want-Computer-2001.pdf

von Ahn, L. and Dabbish, L. 2008. Designing games with a purpose. Commun. ACM 51, 8 (Aug. 2008), 58-67.

Class notes:

Assignments:

Due Oct 26: Individual assignment #3, Calm Technology and Games with a Purpose

Additional resources:

Dominick et al. Portal Help: http://ils.unc.edu/ils/research/reports/TR-2003-01.pdf

View Ambient rooms (CHI 98 video)

View Digital jewelry (CHI 01 video)

Aesthetics: Norman (ACM DL)

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Week 9: October 21 – FALL BREAK, NO CLASS

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Week 10: October 28 – Speech and Audio Interfaces

Readings/Viewings:

Sawhney, N., and Schmandt, C. (2000). Nomadic Radio: A Speech and Audio Interaction for Contextual Messaging in Nomadic Environments. ACM TOCHI 7(3): 353-383. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/355324.355327

Resnick, P., and Virzi, R. (1995). Relief from the Audio Interface Blues: Expanding the Spectrum of Menu, List, and Form Styles. ACM TOCHI 2(2): 145-176. http://doi.acm.org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1145/210181.210183

Brewster, S., et al. (2003). Multimodal ‘Eyes-Free’ Interaction Techniques for Wearable Devices. ACM CHI 2003. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/642611.642694

Class notes:

Assignments:

Additional resources:

Hindus, D., Schmandt, C., and Horner, C. (1993). Capturing, structuring, and representing ubiquitous audio. ACM TOIS 11(4): 376-400. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/159764.159761

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Week 11: November 4 – Pen, Touch and Gesture Interfaces

Readings/Viewings:

Oviatt, S. (1999). Ten myths of multimodal interaction. Communications of the ACM 42(11): 74-81. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/319382.319398

Hinckley, K., Yatani, K., Pahud, M., Coddington, N., Rodenhouse, J., Wilson, A., Benko, H., and Buxton, B. (2010). Pen + touch = new tools. ACM UIST 2010. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1866029.1866036

Class notes:

Assignments:

Additional resources:

Li, Y. (2010). Gesture search: A tool for fast mobile data access. ACM UIST 2010. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1866029.1866044

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Week 12: November 11 – Physiological Data Collection and Computing: Eye Tracking, Biometrics, and Biofeedback

Readings/Viewings:

Jacob, R.K., and Karn, K. (2003). Eye Tracking in Human-Computer Interaction and Usability Research. http://www.cs.tufts.edu/~jacob/papers/ecem.pdf

Biometrics, Physiological & Affective Computing

Class notes:

Assignments:

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Week 13: November 18 – Digital Audio/Video and Surrogates

Readings/Viewings:

Christel, M. et al. (1998). Evolving Video Skims Into Useful Multimedia Abstractions. ACM CHI 1998. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/274644.274670

Song, Y., Marchionini, G. (2007). Effects of Audio and Visual Surrogates for Making Sense of Digital Video. ACM CHI 2007. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.1240755

Class notes:

Assignments:

Additional resources:

Arons, B. (1997). SpeechSkimmer: A System for Interactively Skimming Recorded Speech. ACM TOCHI 4(1): 3-38. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/244754.244758

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Week 14: November 25 – THANKSGIVING, NO CLASS

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Week 14: December 2 – Project Presentations