EBoard 01: Getting Started
This class will be recorded! Its use will be limited to members
of the class. Please do not share with others.
Approximate overview
- Lots of administrative stuff, including attendance
- Some course background
- Break
- Exercise on usability issues
- Exercise on group formation
Administrative stuff
General Notes
- Happy second day of Spring Term 2!
- Hi, I’m Sam (or SamR).
- Mai Phuong Vu is our awesome class mentor.
- A class mentor is a person who exists as a resource for the topic
and the class.
- The class Web site is (or will be) at
https://rebelsky.cs.grinnell.edu/Courses/HCI232/2021SpT2/.
- Sam: Don’t forget to put that link in the chat.
- The class Web site is (always) a work in progress.
- We are using Microsoft Teams for this class. You can (should?) use Teams
for other communication, too.
- I’d like to see your face during class (as much as Teams allows),
but I do not require it.
- The ellipses button (three dots) at the top lets you set a background.
- You can use the chat how you’d like. I’ll check it from time to time,
but you should feel free to use it for snarky comments about
my teaching, greetings to each other, comments about pets
that wander onscreen, etc.
- Feel free to raise your hand using the Teams “raise hand” feature.
I probably won’t notice, but others will and will tell me.
- I will forget to share my screen. Please remind me.
- I type our online class notes in a format called “markdown”. You should
find it relatively readable. It permits me to make nice Web pages.
- Sam: Don’t forget to show off today’s eboard. Done!
- Don’t just rely on mine; evidence suggests taking your own notes
helps you learn.
Upcoming Activities
- CS Table, Monday. Addiction By Design, Introduction to Part II and Chapter 4, “Matching the Market: Innovation, Intensification, Habituation”.
- Get Vaccinated!
Work for Monday’s class
Attendance
Yes, I realize that this takes some time. But we’ll be working as a
community, so I think it’s important to get to know each other.
- I will (attempt to) call you by first name.
- You will respond with
- “Hi, my name is FULL NAME.
- (Optional pronouns.)
- If you must call me by last name, please call me Mr./Ms./Mx./Scholar
FAMILY NAME. (Warning: Sam may default to Scholar NAME.)
- I’m taking HCI-232 because …
- I bring … to the class
- This term, I am excited about ….
- (Optional question for me. You’ll also have another chance later.)
Stuff from attendance
Taking HCI-232 because …
- HCI is an incredibly aweseome field and I want do do work related to it.
- Wants to see overlaps between Psych and CS.
- Tech studies! [+1]
- Job prep. [+2]
- Learn about the human aspects of computing; it’s not all technichal
(or so I hope)
- Nice to get outside of the coding and theory and required stuff.
- So that I don’t hate the things I create.
- So that others don’t hate the things I create. [+3]
- I don’t want to be just a coding monkey.
- Excited about Understanding good design. [+2]
- Fixing accessibility issues in CSC-326 made me think more about the
user experience.
- Took Karla Erickson’s amazing course and wanted to take a followup. [+1]
- CS without programming.
- Shocked by how bad I was at these things when I tried.
- Frustrated bad UI in the real world.
- Masochist. Wants a Sam class.
- To graduate.
- I like humans, I like computers. I want to see how they interact.
- Wants to understand what makes good design from not.
- Sounds relevant and interesting.
- Never took CS at Grinnell.
- Branch out a bit.
- We shouldn’t ignore the human part of computer science.
Your Mad Skilz
- A psychologist’s deep understanding of how you study human beings.
- A willingness to say “I’m not sure, I need to think about it.”
- Love for Tech studies and Digital humanties
- A sense of humor [+1]
- “The computer side of computer science”
- Experience building things. [+2]
- A different background. [+1]
- Laughs at jokes.
- Collaboration.
- Can share failures. [+1]
- Senior burnout! [+1]
- Willingness and ability to criticize.
- Experience.
- An outsider’s perspective.
- Enthusiasm.
- A joy of learning (to offset those burnt-out seniors)
- Knowledge of AI.
- A cat (or lawyer). [+2]
- Knowledge of cultural differences. i18n (internationalization)
- Philosophy.
- Has been on development projects with intentional design.
- Ethics of technology.
- Excited about working with people. [+2]
- Good vibes!
- Unique perspective.
Excited About
- Take classes that are in interesting subjects, rather than my majors. [+1]
- Explore campus. Meet second-and-fourth years.
- Being on campus! [+1]
- The class.
- Graduate! [+6]
- Escaping the isolation of the bubble.
- Taking fewer credits.
- Taking some really interesting classes.
- Interacting with people in person. [+1]
- The Fall, which will be in person.
- Spend time with friends in nice weather.
- Weather.
- Getting vaccinated. [+2]
- Sleeping in.
- The end of online classes.
- Last term
- Cello lessons!
- Drowning in reading!
Q&A
How are you Sam?
Great. Or at least alive.
Behind.
What does “TPS” stand for?
“Think, Pair, Share”, a standard mechanism for ensuring that every
student thinks about a topic and can contribute. I often use TPS
of trios and quartets, two.
Exercise 0: About the topic
A TPS exercise.
Questions
- What is HCI?
- How does HCI relate to UI, to UX, to Design, to …?
- How do those other things relate to each other?
- How would you fix the sign, particularly for Noyce, South Campus, and HSSC?
Process
- Think: Five minutes answering the questions.
- Yes, you can do Web searches. (Is there a verb for “DuckDuckGo”?)
- Yes, you should write or type your answers.
- Pair: Discuss for three minutes with another person.
- Sam will randomly pair students.
- Share: Discuss with the broader group.
A graphic about HCI
- We understand Venn diagrams, and assume things that look like
Venn diagrams are Venn diagrams.
- Isn’t it sad that a site about HCI does this?
- That undermines anything about the site.
What is HCI? (Human-Computer Interaction)
- Definition: The study of how humans and computers interact.
- Intended to be a a fairly big umbrella term.
- Includes lots of other things: UI, UX, psychology, human factors, etc.
- The parts can be examined separately.
- Establishes a framework.
- Like most broad/umbrella terms (e.g., Psychology, CS), it encompasses
a lot of different things.
- Careful study of the efficiacy of a user interface. (A-B test.)
- Development of new tools for interacting with a computer.
- Study of how people use computers, often using careful tracking.
- Design (and perhaps assessment) of the broad “user experience”
- …
- You said: “I want to be able to design better interfaces.”
- One strategy: Study (users), ideate, build/prototype, study, iterate
- Another strategy: Checklists
How does HCI relate to UI, to UX, to Design, to …?
- A predecessor to UI/UX. HCI is more on the research side? A way to
back up the UI/UX.
- Don’t just design things without knowing something about what
makes a good design.
- Anything done correctly relies on research.
- You can/should do research on UIs
- You can/should do research on UXs
How do those other things relate to each other?
- UX comes before UI: Think about the overall experience and then
think about how to achieve it. Design connects the two.
- A good UI leads to good UX. A good design leads to a good UI.
- The UI for threads on Twitter is pretty mediocre, but the overall
UX is fairly immersive.
- UX is more about processes and flows; UI is how those processes and
flows are presented to the user.
- Can you save a bad UX with a good UI?
How would you fix the sign, particularly for Noyce, South Campus, and HSSC?
About the course
Theme
- Get you to be a more informed conformed/builder of user interfaces.
Structure
- Bi-weekly two-hour meetings.
- Synchronous and semi-interactive. (Lots of breakout and report back.)
- Learn and demonstrate learning through
- Reading journals (read, think, answer qustions in Teams channel)
- “Tasks” (think/do, post in Teams channel)
- “Investigations”: practice applying the steps/process of good
design
- Discuss, think, etc.
Workload
- Grinnell says “a two-credit course represents 90 hours of work”
- 90/7 = 12 hours per week. If you are taking two other 4-credit courses
that’s 60 hours per week. That’s inappropriate.
- “90 hours for who and for what grade?”
- My goal: “12 hours per week for students who work slowly and want an A+++”
- Let me know if I screw up.
- Twelve hours per week is
- Four hours in class
- Three-four hours reading and writing journal responses
- 30 min per journal response
- One hour of reading per class
- Three-four hours per investigation
- It should be fun. So we’ll call it “fun load” instead of workload.
- Grading: You can redo anything.
Some Disclaimers
- 24 students, one Sam, grading will be slow.
- Sam is behind on getting the class set up.
- HCI is not my research specialization.
Questions?
Break for the weekend
Exercise 1: Identifying common themes
A TPS exercise.
a. Make a list of things that reflect good UI design. [2 min]
b. Discuss with your team. [4 min]
c. Make a list of things that reflect poor UI design. [2 min]
d. Discuss with your team. [4 min]
e. Read through the responses to Task 0 and see what other themes appear [5 min]
f. Discuss with your team. [5 min]
g. Return to the class and be prepared to share. [n min]
Exercise 2: Groupthink
Another TPS exercise.
You likely come to this class with different experiences in group work.
I will tell you that experience and evidence suggest that assigning roles
in groups can help. For example, you might have one person responsible
for ensuring that everyone talks (an “encourager”) and another person
responsible for summarizing the discussion (a “rapporteur”).
As a group, come up with a list of what you think are the most important
roles and a protocol (or protocols) for assigning those roles.