Clayton State University

Department of Information Technology

 

Human Computer Interaction

(ITSD 4303)

Fall 2007

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

 

Instructor:                                                      E-Mail/Website/Phone:        

Jon A Preston                                                  jonpreston (at) clayton.edu

                                                                        678-466-4415

Office/office hours:                                       Class Hours/Location:           

UC 306                                                           Tue, Thu 3 pm-4:15 pm (UC 314)

Tue, Thu 4:30pm-7:30pm                                CRN: 86108

 

 

Prerequisite

ITFN3314; ITFN3134; ITFN3601; ITFN2411; and ITFN2211 or ITFN2511

Co-requisite

None

Prerequisite For

None

Offered in Semester

Fall

Credit Hours

3 Hrs (2-2-3)

Contact Hours

3 Hours/week

 

CATALOG DESCRIPTION

Fundamentals of human-machine interfaces, both cognitive and physical. Learning styles and effects of short-term memory on cognition and reaction will affect hardware and software development. Students will design a prototype interface.

 

TEXTBOOK/REFERENCES

The Design of Everyday Things by Norman (Currency Doubleday, 1988)

 

COURSE OUTCOMES

Students are expected to refine their mastery of software development and interface design skills to a proficient level as they apply them to device analysis and programming projects.  Students will attain a maturing level of skills with regard to cognition (1, 6), learning styles and mental models (4), hardware (2) and software interface development, and error avoidance techniques (3).  Students will demonstrate the ability to integrate knowledge of programming and software development in a final interface design and development project (7, 12).  In addition to working independently on device analysis tasks (5, 8, 9, 10, 11), students will develop communication skills via in-class presentations about their device analysis.

 

Objectives

Students coming out of this class will have understanding of:

  1. Conceptual models and cognition
  2. The design of physical interfaces
  3. Designing for error avoidance and recovery
  4. User-centered design techniques
  5. Palm/handheld interfaces
  6. Interface Unfolding
  7. Common GUI Components
  8. Wearable computing
  9. Future Computing Interfaces
  10. Software Agent Design and Interaction
  11. Data Visualization
  12. Universal Design

TOPICAL OUTLINE

 

Week

Topic

1 - 4

Design of Everyday Things

5

Test 1

6

Portable and Game Interfaces

7

Wearable Computing

8

Locus of Attention

9

Agent Design

10

Future Computing Interfaces

11

Universal Design

12

Task Analysis

13

Test 2

14 - 16

Research Paper and Final Project

 

ASSIGNMENTS

Reading assignments serve as an aid to the class lecture topics.  They will be given in class and are expected to be completed before the next class.  Unannounced quizzes may be given on reading assignments as well as other course material.

 

GRADING

No MAKEUP or ALTERNATE exams are expected in this course. Arrangements must be made IN ADVANCE if for some valid reason allowed by the university you cannot take an exam at the scheduled time. Examples of such reason could be a medical emergency (with valid documentation).

 

Projects                                               25% (5% each)

In-class Presentation                           5%

Final Project                                        20%

Research Paper                                    20%

Tests and Quizzes:                              30% (15% each)

 

As a general guideline for letter grade, following table will be used:

 

Letter Grade

Percentage

A

90-100%

B

80-89%

C

70-79%

D

60-69%

F

Below 60%

 

Please be advised that no credit will be given for late assignments.  If you have a problem that arises during the course of the semester, please contact me as soon as possible.

Midterm Grade

Given the schedule and when midterm falls (see schedule), the first 2 projects and the first test will be graded; thus 25% of your overall grade will be determined by midterm.

 PORTFOLIO

Since this course has you build solutions that demonstrate your knowledge of core-IT skills, I advise you to keep a copy of everything you submit to be later placed into your portfolio.  This portfolio is a requirement for the ITFN2001 and ITFN4003 course, and if you keep a copy of your submitted solutions, you will be more easily able to fill this portfolio showing your work and IT skills.

ACADEMIC STANDARDS and ATTENDANCE

Clayton State University does not condone cheating, plagiarism, or other forms of academic dishonesty. The student handbook contains further information and guidelines.

Students are expected to uphold the school's standard of conduct relating to academic honesty. Students assume full responsibility for the content and integrity of the academic work they submit. The guiding principle of academic integrity shall be that a student's submitted work, examinations, reports, and projects must be that of the student's own work. Students shall be guilty of violating the honor code if they:

1. Represent the work of others as their own.

2. Use or obtain unauthorized assistance in any academic work.

3. Give unauthorized assistance to other students.

4. Modify, without instructor approval, an examination, paper, record, or report for the purpose of obtaining additional credit.

5. Misrepresent the content of submitted work.

The penalty for violating the honor code is severe. Any student violating the honor code is subject to receive a failing grade for the course and will be reported to the Office of Student Affairs. If a student is unclear about whether a particular situation may constitute an honor code violation, the student should meet with the instructor to discuss the situation.

Students must abide by policies in the University Catalog, Student Handbook, and if applicable, program handbook.  Academic misconduct will not be tolerated. 

Students should read and understand the Basic Student Responsibilities policy posted at

http://adminservices.clayton.edu/registrar/BasicUndergraduateStudentResponsibilities.doc.  These responsibilities should be considered part of this class syllabus and should be adhered to.

Students must activate their CCSU email account and are expected to check their email on a regular basis

 Religious Observance

Religiously observant students wishing to be absent on holidays that require missing class and/or exam should notify the instructor at least two weeks in advance and discuss acceptable ways of making up any work missed because of the absence.

 ITP CHOICE

All students at CCSU are required to state that they have on-demand access to a notebook computer that meets the recommended hardware/software specifications that have been established by Clayton State faculty. Academic penalties may be incurred for not meeting this requirement. Refer to the ITP Choice website for specifications and FAQs: http://itpchoice.clayton.edu/  

DISABILITY STATEMENT

Students with disabilities who require reasonable accommodations need to register with Disability Services (DS) in order to obtain their accommodations. You can contact them at 678-466-5445 or disabilityservices@clayton.edu. If you are already registered with DS and are seeking accommodations for this course, please make an appointment with your instructor to discuss your specific accommodation needs for this course and provide your accommodations letter.

Instructor Assessment

In this course you will have the opportunity to evaluate the instructor.  This will be done electronically through the following website, but should be done when the instructor informs you.

MSDNAA - Free Software from Microsoft

All students in an IT, CS, or other IT-taught course have access to free software from Microsoft (Operating Systems, Visual Studio, Visio, Access, Project, OneNote) but not Word/Excel/PowerPoint/

The site for our MSDNAA access is https://msdn06.e-academy.com/clayton_it/

Students log in using their full CSU email address, and the system can email them their passwords (we do not have access to their passwords). As always, students can download the software or order CDroms (for a nominal shipping fee).

If you have logged into MSDNAA and downloaded an ISO file (for example, Visual Studio 2005 Professional), you may not know what to do with such a file once acquired.

You can use Roxio or Nero or some other CD/DVD burning tool if you have one to burn this ISO to disc (don’t just copy the file to the disc – you need to process it first), but if you don’t have software to handle ISO files or don’t want to use a CD/DVD burner, you can use a free program called ISORecorder.

ISORecorder extracts ISO file contents to a directory on your hard drive (similar to a ZIP extraction program); from there, you could run the SETUP file to install the needed software.

To get ISORecorder, search the internet, or go download the XP (sp2) version at http://cims.clayton.edu/jpreston/ISORecorderV2B2.zip

COURSE COORDINATOR

Jon A Preston

Email: jonpreston (at) clayton.edu