Analyse, modélisation et conception
Design of interactive software

Yves Pigneur
Information Systems Institute

Spring 2008.
Tuesday 8:15 - 12:00.
Room 237 (Internef)

Projects (blog):

• one1 (blog)
• myunitouch (blog)
• campusrabbit (blog)
• attila (blog)
• unilife (blog)
• narip (blog)
• nammi (blog)
• alibaba (blog)

ANNOUNCEMENT

Welcome in this course!

We will have several visitors in the course:
. Steven Ritchey (Pictet) on user-centered design.
. Julia Borkenhagen (BI) on web design and usability.
. Yvon Le Roux (Skyguide) on air traffic control.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

This course mainly provides the participants with human-computer interaction concepts, theory, and practice, for analyzing the user requirements, designing interactive software and evaluating usability. The course mainly deals with requirement analysis, design, prototyping, usability evaluation, and documentation. The framework, adopted from [Rosson and Carroll, 2002], ”is founded on the use of scenarios as a central representation for the analysis and design of use. A scenario describes an existing or envisioned system from the perspective of one or more users and includes a narration of their goals, plans, and reactions”. Learning will be accomplished through lectures, case studies, group projects, and research. The course also aims at making sensitive the students in the science of design.

>>> printed version of the syllabus (PDF)

COURSE OBJECTIVES

Upon completion this course, the participants will

• have a general understanding of the human-computer interactions and usability engineering,
• be aware of the scenario-based design,
• be familiar with the science of design.

COURSE MATERIALS

Course materials are provided on the web site (http://www.hec.unil.ch/yp/HCI). Weekly reading materials will acquaint the participants with the topic to be covered in the upcoming class. Students are required to read all of them for the course. The assigned reading list is provided in the "Course Schedule" section of this syllabus.

The Visual user interface design Education Supported by a computer-Aided Learning Environment (VESALE), from the university of Namur (Prof. F. Bodart), is also available, as complementary materials to this course.

Required text

Rosson, M., Carroll, J. 2002. Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction, Morgan Kaufmann, and its case studies (web).

suggested: Moggridge, B. (2006). Designing Interactions. The MIT Press (web)

COURSE REQUIREMENTS

Class preparation, attendance and participation are vital to a productive and stimulating learning environment. Allow ample time to read and reflect on the assigned readings prior the class period.

PROJECT

The students will conduct, by group of three, a project and a scenario-based design of a human-computer interaction, with the three main phases: requirement analysis, design and prototype, and usability evaluation. 

This year the project takes the form of a "HCI Challenge 2008" which will harness the creativity and energy of the participants to address different issues facing the students living on the Unil campus. The challenge will focus on the design of IT artefacts supporting different exchanges between students and Unil; the solution will be mainly based on portable, nomadic and "post-modern" gadgets (iTouch and Nabaztag) .

The deliverables have to be uploaded on the group web site. This project will produce the three following sets of deliverable:

First Deliverables - Requirements analysis

In this first phase, your main goal is to present a shared understanding of the needs, concerns, and opportunities reflected in your customers’ current activities. You will synthesize and present this understanding in a description of the organizations’ stakeholders and their tasks, as well as a set of problem scenarios and claims.

• Project proposal (due March 4)
• Requirements and scenarios (due March 11)
• Task analysis (due March 18)

Deliverable 2 - Second Deliverables - Design

During this phase, you will design and prototype a simple interactive tool that will meet the needs of your client. This process will include the exploration of metaphors and technologies as an aid in generating activity, information, and interaction design ideas.

• Activity design (due April 1)
• Information design (due April 8)
• Interaction design (due April 15)

Deliverable 3 - Prototypes and usability evaluation

During this phase, you will develop three (progressively more refined) prototypes and gather empirical data regarding the usefulness, ease of use, and user satisfaction associated with the prototype you will have built. You will be conducting a think-aloud evaluation and a cognitive walkthrough of the prototyped scenarios. You will run the usability test on six different users, three who are relatively experienced with computers, and three who are relatively inexperienced.

• Paper prototype (due April 22)
• Usability specifications (due April 29)
• Interactive prototype (due May 6)
• Usability tests (due May 13)
• Interactive prototype - 2nd version (due May 20)
• Final comments (due May 27)

Further details on the objectives, contents, and the report structure will be presented during the course.

FINAL EXAM

There will be a two-hour written closed-book exam, which will consist of ten short essay questions.

For grading purpose, activities will be issued based on the following scheme:

• 20% for the class participation
• 30% for the project (paper)
• 50% for the final exam.
  

COURSE SCHEDULE

Requirement analysis

This first part discusses the problem in software development that motivate the use of scenario-based design (SBD). It provides an overview of the scenario-based framework that form the basis of this course [Alexander and Maiden, 2004] [Carroll, 2000] [Rosson and Carroll, 2002]. This chapter also introduces the goals and the methods of requirements analysis, the phase of software development in which the needs of clients with respect to a proposed project or technology are analyzed.

In this course, we present the tool CTTE (web) that provides support for defining, decomposing, and analyzing the tasks of the various stakeholders.

Design (activity, information, and interaction)

This second part introduces the concepts and methods of activity design, in which the problems and opportunities of current practice are transformed into new way of behaving. It also introduces the concepts and techniques of information design, in which the objects and actions are represented and arranged in a way that facilitates perception and understanding. The goal of interaction design is to specify the mechanisms fro accessing and manipulating task information.

In this part, we present the tool DENIM (web) that provides support for defining storyboards for designing user interfaces through informal interaction such as sketching.

Usability evaluation

A logical entailment of iterative design is that prototypes, concrete but partial implementations of a system design, are constructed and evaluated to guide redesign and refinement. Usability evaluation is any analysis or empirical study the usability of a prototype or software. The goal is to provide feedback in software development, supporting an iterative development process.

In this part, we present the tools DATALOGGER (web) and GLEAN (web) that provides support for reporting and evaluating the usability. 

Issues in design

This part concerns advanced topics in designing information systems (groupware, data visualization and system integration).

Design science

This last part mainly deals with topics related to the science of design in management and information systems.

CLASS POLICIES

Classroom participation

Students are expected to attend all classes and group meetings; class participation grades will be significantly reduced for absences. Individual contributions to class sessions are very important and will be evaluated for the course grade.

Group project

Collaboration within groups is encouraged for project work. However individual contribution in the project has to be specified for each member.

Plagiarism

Copying work form the Internet or other sources without reference or acknowledgement is considered plagiarism and subject to disciplinary action, as enforced by the University of Lausanne.

REFERENCES

[Alexander and Maiden, 2004] Alexander, I. and Maiden, N. (2004). Scenarios, Stories, Use Cases: Through the systems development life-cycle. John Wiley.

[Boland and Collopy, 2004] Boland, R. and Collopy, F. (2004). Managing as Designing. Stanford Business Books.

[Carroll, 2000] Carroll, J. (2000). Making Use: Scenario-based design of human-computer interactions. The MIT Press.

[Hevner et al., 2004] Hevner, A., March, S., Park, J., and Ram, S. (2004). Design science in information system. MIS Quarterly, 28(1).

[Judelman, 2004] Judelman, G. (2004). Knowledge visulaization: Problems and principles for mapping the knowledge space. Msc thesis dissertation. University of Lübeck.

[Moggridge, 2006] Moggridge, B. (2006). Designing Interactions. The MIT Press.

[Nielsen, 2000] Nielsen, J. (2000) Designing web usability. New Riders.

[Mori et al., 2002] Mori, G., Paterno, F., and Santoro, C. (2002). Ctte: Support for developing and analyzing task models for interactive system design. IEEE Transaction on Software Engineering, 28(9):1–17.

[Nielsen, 2000] Nielsen, J. (2000). Designing web usability. New Rider.

[Norman and Draper, 1986] Norman, D. and Draper, S. (1986) User Centered System Design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction. Lawrence ErlbaumAssociates.

[Rosson and Carroll, 2002] Rosson, M. and Carroll, J. (2002). Usability Engineering: Scenario-based development of human-computer interaction. Morgan-Kaufmann.

[Winograd, 1996] Winograd, T. (1996). Bringing Design to Software. Addison Wesley.

The students can access the BCU digital library (http://dbserv1-bcu.unil.ch/dbbcu/cds/menu.php), for consulting many useful databases (ABI/Inform, Business Source Premier, ScienceDirect, Blackwell, Ingenta, Kluwer, JSTOR, ...).