CS 5724

Instructor: J.M. Carroll, 636 McBryde Hall, 231-8453, carroll@cs.vt.edu,
office hours Tuesday & Wednesday 2-3

Texts: There is a textbook for the course: J.M. Carroll (Ed.), 1991, Designing Interaction: Psychology at the human-computer interface. New York: Cambridge University Press. Unfortunately, this book has just gone out of print and is difficult to find.  The chapters you will need to read are available in the bookstore as a coursepack.  There is also a coursepack of readings for the course, available in the bookstore. In addition, there are two readings on reserve at Newman Library.

Grading: Students will be graded on class participation, two homework assignments, one in-class "conference" presentation, a group project, and a final exam.  The intention of having a variety of graded work is to make each piece of graded work less crucially important. The intention of having explicit limits on the number of words you can use for various assignments is to encourage you to focus your ideas and present only the sharpest arguments and backing you can come up with (which is a critical skill for the rest of your life), and also to protect all of us from the temptations of writing more words just in hope of discovering the answer (something all of us need to struggle against).

Class participation 6%
Class participation includes all aspects of participation not explicitly mentioned below, the obvious one being volunteering ideas and perspectives in class discussions.  I think it is important for graduate students to learn to take the initiative to raise or pursue important questions in class; I know this sounds a bit hokey, but when you do so, please help me remember by giving me a note after class or sending me an email. Particularly if the class has 35 or so people I will have trouble with names. There will be a few "extra credit" suggestions to allow students who do not want to speak up in class to still participate.  One of these is to contribute pointers to the course Resource page, or to provide critiques of the resources already listed there (so we can delete them). Submit (by email to the GTA, Thierry Perraut, tperraut@vt.edu) a URL with a brief indication (on the order of 25-50 words) of what principle of information design is illustrated at that site. Another way is to submit good quiz/exam questions (good questions are specific but not picky, and can be answered in less than 50 words); to do this, submit by email to me carroll@cs.vt.edu.

Homeworks 27% (9% for assignments 1 and 4, 5% for assignment 3, and 2% for assignments 2 and 5)
There will be five homework assignments. Assignments 1 and 4 are intended to take not more than 4 hours each (that is, not counting the time for reading assignments they depend upon). They should be typed/printed, and should be no more than 1500 words each (about three pages). Assignment 3 should take half this much time, should be type/printed, and no more than 750 words (about 1.5 pages).  Students will also write peer evaluations of other students' assignments 1 and 4, constructively critiquing the homework assignments in less than 250 words (1/2 page). These critiques, assignments 3 and 5, are intended to take not more than 1hour each.

In-class "conference paper" presentation 12% (8% for the presentation itself, and 4% for a discussant presentation of another student's presentation)
Each student will make a 15-minute presentation during the semester. These may be presentations of an assigned reading, or they may be presentations of solutions to homework assignments. Specific assignments for this will be made as early in the semester as possible. Students will also make 5-minute presentations discussing the presentation of another student.

Group Project 35% (3% for project proposal document; 4% for project progress report; 15% for Web-site, 8% for in-class presentation, 5% for group peer evaluation of another class project)
Students will work in groups of three to create design case analyses. They will use scenario-based analysis of usability tradeoffs (claims analysis) to assess a significant chunk of user interaction. Projects will be presented in class at the end of the semester and via a Web-page presentation. Each group will submit an initial project proposal, a progress report, and create a Web-site presentation of their project.  They will also make an oral in-class presentation.  Each group will create a peer evaluation of another group's Web-site; a constructive critique of 500 words, less than one page.

Final Exam 20%
There will be a final exam in this course.

Honor Code: All students are responsible for reading this Honor Code statement.