Dr. Craig Miller
Office: 745 CTI Building, 312-362-5085
Email: cmiller@cs.depaul.edu
Web page: http://facweb.cs.depaul.edu/cmiller
Office Hours: Announced on Web page
Wednesday 5:45-9:00 or Online
Lewis 1009, Loop Campus
Handbook of Usability Testing, by Jeffrey Rubin. First edition (ISBN 0-471-59403-2) or second edition (ISBN 0-470-18548-1).
Task-Centered User Interface Design A Practical Introduction by Clayton Lewis and John Rieman. This is an online text.
Usability Inspection Methods, edited by Jakob Nielsen and Robert L. Mack. ISBN 0-471-01877-5.
HCI 440 and Elementary Statistics (e.g. IT 223 or PSY 240).
This course surveys methods for evaluating user interfaces. For projects, students will perform a heuristic evaluation, a cognitive walkthrough, a usability test and a comparison study. Class meetings will also introduce, discuss and occasionally practice additional methods such as user modeling and questionnaires.
Certainly, a primary goal is to learn how to conduct various methods for evaluating user interfaces. However, the course also practices skills with broader application. These include:
| 40% (80 points) | 4 Projects (20 points each) |
| 15% (30 points) | Take-home midterm quiz |
| 35% (70 points) | Final Exam |
| 10% (20 points) | Individual contribution |
Students receiving more than 90% of possible points are guaranteed at least an A-, more than 80% at least a B-, more than 70% at least a C-, and more than 60% at least a D.
There is no formal attendance requirements, but all students are expected to either attend the live class or view the recorded online presentation. Furthermore, some class activities require active student participation. These activities include in-class exercises for the live students and comparable exercises for online students. Examples include running pilot usability tests and collecting usability data. While these activities may not be formally graded, successful completion of the course depends on student involvement. Failure to participate in these course activities could result in reductions to the contribution score or respective project scores.
The first project may be completed individually, but remaining projects will be typically completed in teams of three to four for the live section and teams of two to three for the online section. While students will have some control on team selection, the instructor reserves the right to modify teams in order to meet course objectives. While the team may assign a primary role to each team member, all team members are jointly responsible for the entire assignment. Generally, each team member will receive the same score on each project. However, in some cases, additional credit may go to those who make an exceptional contribution to a project and reduced credit to those who contribute little to a project. Any adjustement will be based on a variety of indications including team participation in class, contribution summaries in reports, and student feedback at the end of the quarter. At the end of the quarter every student is expected to submit a completed form for assessing individual contributions to the team projects.
Exams can only be made up with a serious documented excuse (e.g. illness, death in the family). A make-up exam must be arranged as soon as possible and always before the student attends the next class meeting. Arrangements involving other excuses require prior permission from the instructor.
Late projects will be accepted without penalty until 2pm the day following the due date. Projects turned in later than 2pm the day following the due date will not be accepted.
Team presentations occur in the last week of class. Distance Learning students will create an online presentation.
All grade challenges must be submitted in writing and include an explanation why the given score or grade should be reconsidered.
Individual assignments, midterm quiz and all portions of the final exam must be individual efforts. When re-using materials, citing examples or using quotes, it should always be clear to the instructor when relying on the work or results of others. If in doubt, be explicit in your assignments and reports.
The project on usability testing requires online students to record and submit at least one video of a usability test that they conduct. For this, online students will either need to use a video camera or screen recording software. I must be able to review the video using common computer software.
During the quarter, the live section will conduct in-class exercices, sometimes meeting in a lab. Some of these exercises may not be recorded, but online students will receive instructions for completing the exercises with the expectation that they do the exercises on their own.
| Week | Topic | Text Reading | Exam or Due Project |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 10 | Course overview, usability principles, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough | Rubin ch. 1, Lewis and Rieman ch. 4 (except 4.2) | Pick applications for evaluation |
| Sep 17 | Other walkthroughs | Lewis and Rieman ch. 4 (except 4.2), course notes | |
| Sep 24 | Prep for usability testing and Testing materials | Rubin ch. 5-8 | Project 1 |
| Oct 1 | Conducting the usability test | Rubin ch. 8-10 | |
| Oct 8 | Pilot testing (meet as teams) | Project 2 | |
| Oct 15 | Writing Findings and Recommendations | Take-home Midterm quiz (Part I answers) | |
| Oct 22 | Comparison studies and statistical inferencing | Course notes and handouts | |
| Oct 29 | Subjective measures and User modeling | Course notes and handouts; Lewis and Rieman section 4.2 | Project 3 |
| Nov 5 | KLM lab and user modeling | Lab worksheet, online notes and articles | |
| Nov 12 | Presentations, overview, additional techniques | Course notes and discussion | Project 4 |
| Nov 19 | Final Exam (proctored) |