User Interface Design Course

Starting in April, I’ll be teaching assistant for a 10-weeks User Interface Design course given to UPF undergraduate students. I’ll be in charge of the labs and hopefully be lecturing week 8 on UI design in the context of ubicomp.

Objectives:
This course gives students in software engineering an adequate base for the design and prototyping of user interface. They will be exposed to the relation between the human-user and the computer (device, graphical elements, …). They will understand the engineering process of design. Student will learn:

• The context of design interface: the science and technique of Human-Computer Interaction, software engineering and the context of usability engineering
• The variety of the interfaces and the relation with the users characteristics.
• Implementation of development methodologies and ideas on programming/implementing user interfaces

The objective of the labs are to practically learn how to design and evaluate the prototype of an interface by using the techniques and methodologies of interface design.

Week 1
Theory: Introduction. The quality of an interface and its evaluation; user-centered design
Lab: Preparatory work: select an interface to design, and one similar that already exists

Week 2
Theory: The quality of an interface quality and the evaluation; user-centered design (cont.). Contextual design methodology
Lab: Development of a user questionnaire; evaluation of a similar interface; preparation of the results analysis.

Week 3
Theory: Contextual design methodology (cont.), User-centered design methodology
Lab: Contextual design, observe the user at work, contextual survey, work modeling. Contextual requirements

Week 4:
Theory: User-centered design methodology. Variety of interfaces.
Lab: Apply the user-centered design methodology: Model of the role, task and content. Keystroke-Level Model. Usage requirements according the user’s task and system responses.

Week 5:
Theory: Variety of interfaces (cont.)
Lab: Model of the proposed design and application of measures. Choose between the design alternatives. Qualitative criteria: the user’s cognitive workload.

Week 6:
Theory: Variety of interfaces (cont.)
Lab: Design the first prototype of the interface. Adapt to work with compromise. Use of prototyping tools.

Week 7:
Theory: Evaluation revisited. Tools for interface programming
Lab: Design development (cont.)

Week 8:
Theory: Future aspects of user interface design
Lab: Experimental evaluation of the design

Week 9:
Theory: Project (tutoring)
Lab: Project (tutoring)

Week 10:
Theory: Project presentation
Lab: Project presentation