User-centric Computing For Human-Computer Interaction

Human-computer interaction is an emerging field of study at present, due to the proliferation of large number of consumer electronic products. The key issue in this field is to make the products usable to lay-persons. In order to do that, we need to take care of the (creative) design aspects (the look-and-feel of the interface) and also the system design aspect (both software and hardware). The field is interdisciplinary with inputs required from various other fields. However, the computer science and engineering plays the central role in the design of such systems (as per SIGCHI of ACM). In this course, we will introduce the engineering and computational issues in the design of human-computer interfaces for laypersons. The topics covered in the course includes the engineering life cycles for design of interactive systems, computational design framework (as part of the life cycle), components of the framework including the computational models of users and systems, and evaluation of such systems (with or without users).INTENDED AUDIENCE : UG/PG/PhD students (also people from industry may benefit)PREREQUISITES :None. However, knowledge in basic subjects of Computer Science and Engineering/IT (Data structures, Algorithms, FLAT, Software Engg, Operating Systems,Databases, Computer Architecture) preferableINDUSTRY SUPPORT : Industry/companies that deal with consumer electronics and user-interface design and development

Week 1 : Introduction to user-centric design – case studies, historical evolution, issues and challenges and current trend
Week 2 :Engineering user-centric systems – relation with software engineering, iterative life-cycle, prototyping, guidelines, case studies
Week 3 :User-centric computing – framework, introduction to models, model taxonomy
Week 4 :Computational user models (classical) – GOMS, KLM, Fitts’ law, Hick-Hymans law
Week 5 :Computational user models (contemporary) – 2D and 3D pointing, constrained navigation, mobile typing, touch interaction
Week 6 :Formal models – case study with matrix algebra, specification and verification of properties, formal dialog modeling
Week 7 :Empirical research – research question formulation, experiment design, data analysis, statistical significance test
Week 8 :User-centric design evaluation – overview of evaluation techniques, expert evaluation, user evaluation, model-based evaluation with case studies