COMS W4170 Syllabus and Assignments

Fall 2012, Tu/Th 1:10–2:25pm, 602 Hamilton

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


Schedule is subject to change.  (S n = Shneiderman and Plaisant, 5th Edition, Chapter n)

 
  Date    Topics/chapters covered    Assignment    Due date 
  Tue Sep 4   Course intro; UI background (S 1)
 

   
  Thu Sep 6   UI background 2; UI theory (S 2; US Rehabilitation Act Section 508 web page; an example accessibility problem close to home)
 

   
  Tue Sep 11    UI theory 2
 

   
  Thu Sep 13   UI theory 3; UI principles (J. Nielsen, Ten Usability Heuristics; D. Pogue, A device sold before its time, New York Times, September 15, 2010)
 

       
  Tue Sep 18    UI principles 2; Introduction to CogTool

 

 


  Download CogTool 1.2.1 and one of the IDEs linked to the class web page
   
  Thu Sep 20    UI development and evaluation (S 3)
 

  Assn 1   Oct 4
  Tue Sep 25   Introduction to HTML5/JavaScript (Bring your laptop with an IDE installed if you can) (S 4)

 

 
  Thu Sep 27    UI development and evaluation 2; Case Study: Piles (J. Nielsen, Guerrilla HCI: Using Discount Usability Engineering to Penetrate the Intimidation Barrier, 1994; 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)

   
  Tue Oct 2   Lo-fi prototypes (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)

For optional additional information about paper prototypes, see the references at http://www.paperprototyping.com/references.html.

Multi-touch technologies (Get an idea of the rich history and breadth of multi-touch devices by skimming through Bill Buxton, Multi-Touch Systems that I Have Known and Loved)


       
10    Thu Oct 4   Command languages (S 7); Menus (S 6)

 

 



  Assn 2 (and guidance on creating use scenarios and personas)   Oct 9 (team name), 18 (tests run), 30 (submitted)
11    Tue Oct 9   HTML5/JavaScript 2 (Bring your laptop with an IDE installed if you can)

       
12    Thu Oct 11   Menus 2; Case study: Radial and marking menus (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, Pittsburgh, PA, November 15–17, 1995, 189–195; T. Moscovich, Contact Area Interaction with Sliding Widgets, Proc. UIST 2009, Victoria, BC, 2009, 13–22 and associated video)

   
13    Tue Oct 16   Case study: Radial and marking menus 2; Direct manipulation (S 5)

For optional additional information about some of the most influential early work in direct manipulation user interfaces, see  D. Engelbart et al., Augmentation Research Center Demo, Fall Joint Computer Conference, San Francisco, 1968 and HCI research by the Lincoln Lab TX-2 group
 


   
14    Thu Oct 18   Direct manipulation 2; Interaction devices (S 8; P. Dietz, Pressure-sensitive multitouch keyboard and example applications from UIST 2009 Student Innovation Contest; Adaptive keyboard and example applications from UIST 2010 Student Innovation Contest; Multitouch mouse from UIST 2011 Student Innovation Contest; Pressure-sensitive multitouch touchpad from UIST 2012 Student Innovation Contest)
 

   
15    Tue Oct 23    Interaction devices 2
 

       
16    Thu Oct 25   Midterm exam Will cover all material discussed in class and assigned up to this point. You will not be expected to demonstrate your knowledge of low-level language syntax or the details of methods and the IDE. 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.
 

       
17    Tue Oct 30    Interaction devices 3 [Canceled by Sandy]
 

  Assn 3   Nov 15
18   Thu Nov 1   HTML5/JavaScript 3
 

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

       
19    Thu Nov 8   Collaboration (S 9) [Guest lecture by Prof. Mamykina]
 

  Assn 3   Nov 20
20    Tue Nov 13   Collaboration 2
 

       
21    Thu Nov 15   Interaction devices 3
 

 

 


  Project   Dec 11 (teams due Nov 18, design concept due Nov 27)
22    Tue Nov 20    Programming by demonstration (S 5.3.4; 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 [but 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, 12(2), April 1990, 143-177; then read D. Kurlander and S. Feiner, A history-based macro by example system, Proc. UIST '92, Monterey, CA, November 15-18, 1992, 99-106 instead of the chapter by Kurlander and Feiner; finally, read about a current research system that builds on these ideas: F. Grabler, M. Agrawala, W. Li, M. Dontcheva, and T. Igarashi, Generating photo manipulation tutorials by demonstration, ACM Trans. on Graphics, 28(3), August 2009, article 66 [see the video and examples] and see a downloadable experimental app based on this research project: Adobe Labs Tutorial Builder)
 

       
    Thu Nov 22    No class: Thanksgiving
 

   
23   Tue Nov 27   Programming by demonstration 2; Information visualization (S13–14, NIH/NSF Visualization Research Challenges, January 2006)
 

       
24    Thu Nov 29    Information visualization 2
 

   
25    Tue Dec 4   Two-handed UIs; Preview of COMS W4172: 3D User Interfaces and Augmented Reality; Scaling up and down: From wall-sized to hand-held
 

     
26    Thu Dec 6    Scaling up and down: From wall-sized to hand-held 2; Predicting the future (S Appendix 1; Apple Knowledge Navigator video, Sun Starfire video, NTT DoCoMo Vision 2010 video, NTT mobile life video, HP Labs mscape concept video, Microsoft Office Labs Future Vision 2019 Montage video; Office Vision video; Keiichi Matsuda, Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop video)
 

   
    Tue Dec 11   Final project presentations 7pm–10pm in 602 Hamilton. Each group will give a presentation (including a question-and-answer session). Please see the project description for the time breakdown.
 

   
  Tue Dec 18 (the official exam date)   Final exam 1:10pm–3:00pm (110 minutes, not 170 minutes). Will cover all material discussed in class and assigned, with an emphasis on material covered after the midterm. 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.