Saul Greenberg > courses > lecture topics in HCI > introduction to HCI

Introduction to the Course and to Human Computer Interaction

The course starts with a brief administrative overview, indicating its purpose, structure, objectives, and so on. 

Overheads

• Course Introduction: [Pdf] or [Powerpoint] 

Topics Covered

• Administrivia
  • Interface design and usability engineering
  • Course structure, objectives and evaluation
  • Course resources

Required Readings

• How to design usable systems. Gould, J. (1988) In Readings in Human Computer Interaction: Towards the Year 2000 (2nd Edition). Baecker, R., Grudin, J., Buxton, W., and Greenberg, S. (1995). Morgan-Kaufmann.

Additional Readings and Presentations

1. Absorbing and Squeezing Out: On Sponges and Ubiquitous Media. Buxton, W. (1996) Proceedings of the
   International Broadcasting Symposium, November 13-16, Tokyo, 91-96. Bill Buxton's fun to read article presents a vision of future computing.
2. A Taxonomy of Human Computer Interaction, ACM (1992) adapted excerpt from Section 2 of the ACM SIGCHI Curricula for HCI, ACM Press, gives details of the HCI taxonomy
3. Overview and Taxonomy of HCI: [Adobe Pdf] or [Powerpoint] collects slides I created related to the above taxonomy

Videos

Videos are used in the first few classes to show futuristic and visionary interfaces. They not only inspire and motivate, but also illustrate how many major problems in Computer Science (outside of HCI) must be solved before these visions can be realized. For example, I ask students to write down all the innovations displayed in the Apple video. We then list them on the board, and relate them to computer science problems (here is an example list). I then use Ishii's delightful video because it goes beyond business users, showing kids and artists as well.

1. 2020, by Apple Inc. (~1992, distributed with the video set from the Apple Developer's Conference)
2. Seamless Media Design, by NTT - Ishii (1994, SGVR Issue 106)