COMS W4170 Syllabus and Assignments

Fall 2018, Tu/Th 1:10–2:25pm, 413 Kent

Prof. Steven Feiner 
feiner [AT] cs [DOT] columbia [DOT] edu 
212-939-7083


Schedule is subject to change.  (Recommended reading: S n = Shneiderman et al., 6th Edition, Chapter n; B m–n = Buxton, Sketching User Experiences, pages m–n)

 
  #   Date    Topics/chapters covered    Assignment    Due date 
  1   Tue Sep 4
  Course introBackground (S 1–2) 
 
 
 
  2   Thu Sep 6
  Background 2; Theory (S 3; US Rehabilitation Act Section 508 web page; an example accessibility problem close to home and its resolution
 

 
 
  3   Tue Sep 11   Theory 2
 

     
  4   Thu Sep 13   Theory 3; Principles
 

       
  5   Tue Sep 18
  Principles 2 (J. Nielsen, Ten Usability Heuristics)
 
 
   
      Tue Sep 18, 7:30pm   IA Help Session in Schermerhorn 608 (HTML, CSS, et al. [examples])

 


       
  6   Thu Sep 20
  Principles 3; Design (S 4; B 135–151 and earlier pages if you'd like)
 

  Assn 1   Oct 4
      Thu Sep 20, 7:30pm   IA Help Session in Math 520 (JavaScript, jQuery, et al. [examples])

 


       
  7   Tue Sep 25   Design and Evaluation
 
 

 

 
      Tue Sep 25, 7:30pm   IA Help Session in Schermerhorn 608 (programming for Assn 1)

 


       
  8   Thu Sep 27   Design and Evaluation 2; Lo-fi prototypes(S 5) 
 
 
 
      Thu Sep 27, 7:30pm   IA Help Session in Math 520 (programming for Assn 1)

 


       
  9   Tue Oct 2
  Lo-fi prototypes 2 (Marc Rettig. Prototyping for Tiny Fingers. Communic. of the ACM, 37(4), April 1994, 21–27; articles on prototyping in ACM Interactions special issue on the art of prototyping, January–February 2006; S. Medero, Paper Prototyping, January 2007; D. Nessler, A Guide to Paper Prototyping & Testing for Web Interfaces, March 2016) 
 

       
  10   Thu Oct 4
  Guest lecture: Prof. Lydia Chilton: Design and prototyping (This is a 127MB file!)
 

  Assn 2 (and guidance on creating use scenarios and personas)   Oct 9 (team name), Oct 18 (tests run [nothing handed in]), Nov 1 (submitted)
  11   Tue Oct 9
  Lo-fi prototypes 3; Case study: Piles (R. Mander, G. Salomon, and Y. Wong, A `Pile' Metaphor for Supporting Casual Organization of Information, Proc. CHI '92, Monterey, CA, May 3–7, 1992, 627–634)
 
       
  12   Thu Oct 11   Command languages and menus; Case study: Radial and marking menus (S 8–9)
 

 
 
  13   Tue Oct 16   Guest lecture: Dr. Eddie Ishak (Bloomberg LP): UX@Bloomberg (J. Lazar, J.H. Feng, and H. Hochheiser, Research Methods in Human Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed., Elsevier, 2017, 201–203; H. Beyer and K. Holtzblatt, Contextual Design, ACM Interactions, 6(1), January/February 1999, 32–42)
 

 
 
  14   Thu Oct 18   Guest lecture: Prof. Lena Mamykina (Biomedical Informatics): From personal informatics to personal analytics (L. Mamykina et al., Data-driven health management: reasoning about personally generated data in diabetes with information technologies, J Amer Med Inform Assoc, 23:3, May 2016; D. Feller et al., A visual analytics approach for pattern-recognition in patient-generated data, J Amer Med Inform Assoc, 25:10, October 2018)
 
 
 
  15   Tue Oct 23
 

Case study: Radial and marking menus 2; Direct manipulation (G. Kurtenbach, G. Fitzmaurice, A. Khan, and D. Almeida, Gesture Recognition in Marking Menus; M. Tapia and G. Kurtenbach, Some design refinements and principles on the appearance and behavior of marking menus, Proc. UIST '95; T. Moscovich, Contact Area Interaction with Sliding Widgets, Proc. UIST 2009 and associated video; O. Bau and W. Mackay, OctoPocus: A Dynamic Guide for Learning Gesture-Based Command Sets, Proc. UIST 2008 and associated website/video)
 


       
  16   Thu Oct 25   Direct manipulation 2; Interaction devices (S 7) 
 
       
  17   Tue Oct 30   Lo-fi prototypes 4; Interaction devices 2 (S 10; $1 Unistroke Recognizer) 
 
       
  18   Thu Nov 1  

Interaction devices 3
 


       
      Tue Nov 6   No class: University Holiday (Vote if you're eligible!)
 

       
  19   Thu Nov 8   Interaction devices 4 
 

  Assn 3   Nov 27
  20   Tue Nov 13   Interaction devices 5; Collaboration (S 11) 
 

       
  21   Thu Nov 15   Collaboration 2


 


  Project   Nov 20 (teams due), Nov 29 (design concept due), Dec 11 (deliverables due)
  22   Tue Nov 20    Collaboration 3; Programming by demonstration (Begin by skimming lightly through A. Cypher (ed.), Watch What I Do: Programming by Demonstration, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1993, and then read the chapters by Smith on Pygmalion and Halbert on SmallStar; next, read the chapter by Myers on Peridot, replacing the missing figures for this chapter in the online version of the book by looking at the corresponding figures [with no need to read the accompanying text!] in B. Myers, Creating user interfaces using programing by example, visual programming, and constraints, ACM Trans. on Programming Languages and Systems,1990; then read D. Kurlander and S. Feiner, A history-based macro by example system, Proc. UIST '92;  following that, read about a research system that builds on these ideas: F. Grabler et al., Generating photo manipulation tutorials by demonstration, ACM Trans. on Graphics, 2009 [see the video and examples] and see a downloadable experimental app based on this research project: Adobe Labs Tutorial Builder; finally, read about a crowd-powered approach to programming by demonstration: S. Lee et al., SketchExpress: Remixing animations for more effective crowd-powered prototyping of interactive interfaces, Proc. UIST 2017
 

       
      Thu Nov 22    No class: Thanksgiving 
 
 
 
  23   Tue Nov 27   Programming by demonstration 2 (S 15–16)
 

       
  24   Thu Nov 29    Programming by demonstration 3; Information visualization 
 

 
 
  25   Tue Dec 4   Information visualization 2; Scaling up and down: From wall-sized to hand-held 
 

     
  26   Thu Dec 6     Scaling up and down 2: From wall-sized to hand-held; Predicting the future (past and present) 
 

 
 
      Tue Dec 11 6:30pm in 413 Kent   Final project presentations 6:30pm–10:30pm in 413 Kent. Each group will give a nine-minute presentation (including a question-and-answer session). Please see the project description for the time breakdown. 
 

 
 
 
  Tue Dec 18 1:10pm-4pm (our official exam date/time)   Final exam 1:10pm–4pm in 702 Hamilton. Will cover all material discussed in class and assigned. You will not be expected to demonstrate your knowledge of low-level language syntax or methods and IDEs. The exam will be closed book, closed notes, with essay questions instead of true/false or multiple choice questions. All answers will be written on the exam itself, where the space provided will give an idea of the length expected.