Description and Objectives

This course acquaints students with professional methods for creating and evaluating useful, usable, and effective user interfaces and with strategies for designing more complex interactions and user experiences with online resources.

By the end of this course, students will have a broad understanding of interfaces and interactivity. They will have analyzed and measured the efficiency of existing interfaces, developed ideas for and prototyped alternative interfaces, researched one or more aspects of interaction for a group project, and built a prototype of that project.

Specific Learning Objectives include:

• Learning to structure applications and interfaces for specific audiences
• Learning to specify the content and/or features of an application or interactive system
• Learning to employ sound principles of User-Centered Design
• Learning to conduct appropriate research (quantitative, qualitative, literature review)

Course Requirements and Policies

Students are expected to attend every scheduled class, complete the reading assignments, and participate actively in discussion. A statement of general academic policies appears on my Web site. That statement is an extension of this document. See http://iat.ubalt.edu/kaplan/policies.htm. Please also read the University's policies in the Student Handbook.

Required Texts

Preece, Rogers, and Sharp. Interaction Design. Wiley and Sons, 2002. ISBN: 0471492787. On Amazon's site: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471492787/qid%3D1042834534/sr%3D11-1/ref%3Dsr%5F11%5F1/002-0057648-2844076

Raskin, J. The Humane Interface. Addison Wesley, 2000. ISBN: 0201379376. On Amazon's site: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201379376/qid=1042834686/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/002-0057648-2844076?v=glance&s=books

Student membership in the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) with the Student Portal package ($42) -- or you can choose the Student Portal and Print Package ($62) if you really love recycling chores and want to pay extra for the privilege. Joining the ACM will give you all access to the Association's extensive digital library (virtually all ACM publications for the past decade or so) and also bibliographies of other relevant research literature. I will be assigning some readings from this library. Visit the Web site to register: http://www.acm.org/membership/student/

Plus handouts and on-line assignments TBA

Assignments and Grading Scheme

There are three major and one smaller assignment for this course. Two of the major assignments are individual work and these account for 65% of your course grade.The other two assignments are group work and account for 40% of your grade.