Welcome to SE3830  
Human Computer Interaction
This course is intended to provide students with a basic set of skills in the area of user interface and user interaction design. Topics include designing user interfaces to take advantage of users' prior knowledge, using engineering models of cognitive behavior to make design tradeoffs, and evaluation techniques for user interfaces. Application of HCI techniques to graphical, web, mobile, and natural interfaces.
The main objective of the course is to provide students with a minimum set of useful skills in the area of user experience and user interaction design. It is intended to support situations in which students are called upon to provide a user interface for an application and there are no other user interface design resources available. It is not designed to be the first course in a sequence of courses in this area nor is it intended to provide an overview of the field of human-computer interaction. (Some optional readings may be provided that give more of an overview.)
Prerequisite: SE-1020 and junior Standing
Course structure: 2-2-3 (class hours/week, credits).
Required Materials:
Shneiderman, Ben, Plaisant, Catherine. Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, 4th Edition, Addison Wesley.
Upon successful completion of this course, the student will:
  • understand the benefits to users of user interfaces which behave and can be operated in familiar ways.
  • be able to review an application for compliance with a published style guide.
  • be able to develop a simple style guide for a platform for which no published standard exists by reviewing existing, widely used applications.
  • given a sequence of steps that make up an operation in a user interface, be able to use the Keystroke model to derive a time estimate for the operation.
  • write one or more of the formulations of Fitt's Law and explain each of the terms. Given the geometry of a user interface, explain the implications of Fitt's Law for pointing or movement actions.
  • be able to explain the components of the Model Human Processor.
  • be able to explain the constructs of a GOMS model. Develop a GOMS model for a simple task.
  • be able to conduct a cognitive walkthrough.
  • be able to follow the procedures for a heuristic evaluation. (It is not expected that the students will be able to carry out evaluation at an expert level.)
  • be able to describe the principle and procedures for carry out a usability study.