General Info
| Course-code | 0H620 |
| Target Group | IN5-4.2 |
| Study-points | 3 |
| Teachers | Panos Markopoulos and Mathilde Bekker |
| Location | Aud. 6 |
| Time | Thursdays, hours 5 and 6 (13:30-15:15) |
| Number of lectures | 9 lectures |
This course follows the course Introduction to User Interface Design (0H600), by Jacques Terken. Together with the courses on Cognitive Ergonomics (OH040), Design of Speech Interfaces (OH210, OH230), Agents and Interfaces (OH610), and Evaluation (OH420), they offer a package of practical orientation courses for students of TU/e (primarily Informatics students).
This course focuses on a number of techniques that have been developed in the field of Human-Computer Interaction for analysing and modelling user requirements and supporting the interaction design process. These techniques complement software development methods and mainstream software engineering approaches to requirements solicitation and specification. The aim is to support a user centred design of interactive systems: putting users and their usage of systems at the heart of the design and development processes, something that is not sufficiently handled by pure software engineering processes.
The course offers an in depth look at some of the topics covered in the introduction, such as user modelling and task modelling. It focuses on a range of techniques that are valuable in practice and package scientific knowledge about human computer interaction and craft knowlege for designng this interaction.
We hope to show that user requirements cannot be dreamt up by putting ourselves in the shoes of users and working for imaginary people. It will try to show how complex and diverse user requirements may be and how to be systematic in analysis, modelling and design for use.
| Course | Instructor | Date | ||
| 1 | Early requirement analysis techniques | Bekker | 13/12 | |
| 2 | User profile and usability goal-setting | Markopoulos | 20/12 | |
| 3 | Contextual Inquiry | Markopoulos | 17/1 | |
| 4 | Work Modelling | Markopoulos | 31/1 | |
| 5 | Work re-engineering | Markopoulos | 7/2 | |
| 6 | Detailed Interaction Specification | Markopoulos | 21/2 | |
| 7 | Architectures and architectural requirements | Markopoulos | 28/2 | |
| 8 | Project Presentation and Discussion | Markopoulos | 7/3 |
Coursework will be a mini project done in teams. The project will be broken down to 4 components, following broadly the phases of a design project: (capturing user requirements in two parts, envisioning problem solution, specification of solution).
A hard copy of the coursework should be submitted on the date due and should be e-mailed to the assignor.
NB. Please revisit this page to check for changes.
| Assignment | Date Due |
| 1. User Profiling (in pairs) | 17/1 |
| 2. Task Analysis and Goal Setting (in pairs) | 21/2 |
| 3. Work modelling (using the models of contextual
design and ConcurTaskTrees)
Note the change in coursework: Those who have not done the task modelling with use cases and task hierarchies (2nd part of assingment 2 - described at lecture 3), can skip it. You only need to submit the work models and the concurTaskTrees described at the end of lecture 4 (for this assignment). |
21/2 |
| 4. User Interface Specification (based on lectures 5
and 6).
Note the changes (7/3 instead of 14/3 and no presentation required) |
Present on 7/3 (cancelled)
Hand-in report by 7/3 |
| 5. User Interface Design metrics | Hand in report by 14/3 |
| 6. Software architectures: MVC assignment | Hand in report by 14/3 |
1. User Profiling and Role Modeling
2. Contextual Task Analysis and Usability goal specification
3. Modelling work and tasks
4. Work re-engineering
5. Specifying the 'Feel' of Interaction with UAN and UML
6. User Interface Design Metrics
7. Software architectures for UIs (MVC and PAC)
[1] Beyer and Holtzblatt, "Contextual Design - Defining Customer-Centered Systems", Morgan Kaufmann, 1998.