Professor of Record Dr. Kellogg Booth, Professor, ksbooth@cs.ubc.ca

Office: Room X861, ICICS Building (former CICSR/CS Building)

Assisted by (first point of contact): Dr. Kirstie Hawkey, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, hawkey@ece.ubc.ca

Office: Room 4044, Kaiser Building

Day / Time / Location First class only: Friday, 9:30-11am; Regular time: Thursdays, 11am-12:30pm
Room
x521

530b details in the UBC calendar

First Class January 23, 2008
Office Hours There are no formal office hours. Please book a meeting with Kirstie via email.
Prerequisites 1. Graduate standing, with an undergraduate course in Human-Computer Interaction (comparable to CS344 or CS444) or permission of the instructor.

- OR -

2. Undergraduate standing, with CS344 or CS444, and permission of the instructor and satisfaction of FOGS requirements for undergraduates registering in graduate courses. Follow the procedure for undergraduates.

In addition:

A background in Computer Science is not required to take this course, although the class size is restricted and there are a limited number of positions available for non-CS students.

Graduate students from departments other than Computer Science can register in the course. A number of slots are reserved for students from Psychology (PSYC), Commerce (COMM), EECE, Education (EDUC), Interdisplinary studies (INDS), and the School of Library and Information Science (SLAIS). When those slots are full, or for students from all other departments, an Add/Drop form is required. Follow the procedure for graduate students from other departments. These students will be admitted on a space-available basis at the first class meeting.

Graduate students who have the pre-requisite, or who require this course for their graduate research (including those participating in the MAGIC HCI Specialization in HCI), will be given priority.

The most important prerequisite for this course is an ability to write, speak, and understand English.

Overview This is intended to be an advanced Human-Computer Interaction course with a focus on user centered research including field research methodology. 

This course augments the NECTAR Social Sciences Winter Course led by Susan Dray and David Siegel which will be delivered remotely. A brief overview of topics in the NECTAR component is:

  • Introducing the Challenges of Qualitative Field Research and Placing It in Its Intellectual Context
  • Planning the Research Strategy
  • Data Gathering: What Makes for Credible Interpretable Field Data?
  • Interviewing and Contextual Inquiry
  • Artifact Walkthroughs and Naturalistic Usability Evaluation
  • Analysis: Clustering, Affinities, Dimensions
  • Wrap-up

This course will also examine how field research is used understand end user behaviours and to study the impact and use of new technologies in HCI sub-areas such as usable privacy and security, personal information management, and computer supported coooperative work.

The specific topics to be covered during the term will be announced during the first week of the course. 

Schedule

Course Materials

Survey and research articles will be the primary text for the course, chosen from a collection of readings, including those for the NECTAR Social Sciences Winter Course reading list

Some of the readings are available on-line in the ACM Digital Library. You have access to this through the UBC Library proxy server. Set your browser to use the proxy portal.ubc.ca:8000 (portal.ubc.ca and port 8000) and then login using your UBC library card number as your name and the last five digits of your card as your password.

Evaluation Students will complete two to three individual assignments which include a short report and presentation on an advanced HCI topic. In addition there will be a project in which you will apply field research methodology to your own research area.
HCI Studio (X360) The HCI Studio is available to CPSC 544 students for their group project work. The studio provides an excellent environment for teams to work together; it contains 6 round tables with two workstations per table. The workstations are equipped with prototyping and video editing software.

Further details about the availability of the studio as well as access instructions and its resources can be found here.