6.893 - Lectures & Readings

MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Fall Semester, 2003

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Lectures & Readings

L1: Introduction to Usability (lecture notes)

No readings

L2: Design Process (lecture notes)

A Spiral Model of Software Development and Enhancement by Barry Boehm. IEEE Computer, v21 n5, May 1988.
The 1984 Olympic Message System: a test of behavioral principles of system design by John Gould et al. CACM, v30 n9, 1987.

L3: Human Capabilities (lecture notes)

User technology -- from pointing to pondering by Stuart Card and Thomas Moran. Proceedings of ACM Conference on History of Personal Workstations, 1986.
Using color effectively (or peacocks can't fly) by Lawrence J. Najjar.

L4: Models & Metaphors (lecture notes)

Human error and the design of computer systems by Donald Norman. CACM, v33 n1, 1990.
Design Rules Based on Analyses of Human Error by Donald Norman. CACM, v26 n4, 1983.
Optional: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman.

L5: Heuristic Evaluation (lecture notes)

Heuristic Evaluation by Jakob Nielsen. Read the five articles under "Jakob Nielsen's Online Writings on Heuristic Evaluation".
The Case Against User Interface Consistency by Jonathan Grudin. CACM, v32 n10, October 1989.
Optional: Chapter 5 in Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen.

L6: Paper Prototyping (lecture notes)

Prototyping for Tiny Fingers by Marc Rettig. CACM, v37 n4, April 1994.
Interactive sketching for the early stages of user interface design by James Landay & Brad Myers. CHI '95.
The Perils of Prototyping by Alan Cooper. 1994.

L7: Graphic Design (lecture notes)

Optional: Designing Visual Interfaces by Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano. Prentice Hall, 1995.

L8: Computer Prototyping (lecture notes)

No readings

L9: UI Software Architecture (lecture notes)

Glyphs: Flyweight Objects for User Interfaces by Paul R. Calder and Mark A. Linton. UIST '90.
A Description of the Model-View-Controller User Interface Paradigm in the Smalltalk-80 System by Glenn E. Krasner and Stephen T. Pope. JOOP, v1 n3, 1988.

L10: Input and Output (lecture notes)

Past, present, and future of user interface software tools by Brad Myers, Scott Hudson, and Randy Pausch. ACM TOCHI, v7 n1, March 2000.
The Amulet Environment: New Models for Effective User Interface Software Development by Brad Myers et al. IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v23 n6, June 1997.
Lessons learned from SUIT, the simple user interface toolkit by Randy Pausch, Matthew Conway, and Robert Deline. ACM TOIS, v10 n4, October 1992.

L11: Toolkits (lecture notes)

No readings

L12: User Testing (lecture notes)

Guidelines for user observation by Kathleen Gomoll & Anne Nicol, from
User Observation: Guidelines for Apple Developers, January 1990.
Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users by Jakob Nielsen.
The "magic number 5": is it enough for web testing? CHI 2003.

L13: Controlled Experiments (lecture notes)

No readings

L14: Research Topics: sketching interfaces

Guest lecturer: Prof. Randy Davis

Resolving ambiguities to create a natural sketch based interface by Christine Alvarado and Randall Davis. IJCAI-2001.
Position Statement and Overview: Sketch Recognition at MIT by Randall Davis. 2002 AAAI Spring Symposium on Sketch Recognition.

L15: Research Topics: computer-supported cooperative work

Guest lecturer: Jaime Teevan

Groupware: some issues and experiences by Clarence Ellis, Simon Gibbs, and Gail Rein. CACM v34 n1, Jan 1991.
The notification collage: posting information to public and personal displays by Saul Greenberg and Michael Rounding. CHI 2001.

L16: Research Topics: UIST 2003 trip report

A molecular architecture for creating advanced GUIs by Eric Lecolinet. UIST 2003.
TiltText: using tilt for text input to mobile phones by Daniel Wigdor and Ravin Balakrishnan. UIST 2003.

L17: Research Topics: constraints & automatic UI generation

Ultra-lightweight constraints by Scott Hudson and Ian Smith. UIST 1996.
Generating remote control interfaces for complex appliances by Jeffrey Nichols et al. UIST 2002

L18: Research Topics: programming by example

Programming by example: intelligence in demonstrational interfaces by Brad Myers, Richard McDaniel, and David Wolber. CACM, v43 n3, March 2000.
Interactive simultaneous editing of multiple text regions by Robert Miller and Brad Myers. USENIX 2001.

L19: Research Topics: zooming & transparent UIs

Pad++: A Zooming Graphical Interface for Exploring Alternate Interface Physics by Benjamin Bederson and James Hollan. UIST 94.
Toolglass and Magic Lenses: The See-Through Interface by Eric Bier, Maureen Stone, Ken Pier, William Buxton, and Tony DeRose. SIGGRAPH 93.
Optional: Jazz: An Extensible Zoomable User Interface Graphics Toolkit in Java by Benjamin Bederson, Jon Meyer, and Lance Good. UIST 2000.

L20: Research Topics: information visualization

Visual information seeking: tight coupling of dynamic query filters with starfield displays by Christopher Ahlberg and Ben Shneiderman. CHI '94.
Generalized fisheye views by George Furnas. CHI '86

L21: Research Topics: context awareness & peripheral displays

The computer for the 21st century by Mark Weiser. Scientific American, Sept 1991.
Heuristic evaluation of ambient displays by Jennifer Mankoff et al. CHI 2003