research methods for interaction design IDIA 642

The goal of this course is to learn how to support good interaction design or interface design or application design through effective and focused user research. The course is designed to help you develop practical skills in user research and usability testing by participating in a semester-long, focused, user-research project. We will also explore the principles that underlie research good practice.

You will be responsible for reading between 100-200 pages a week. You will also be participating in on-site observations of users for your particular research project. Written work will include user profiles, task flows, task scenarios, documents used in usability testing such as test scripts and questionnaires used to screen test participants. You will also create a usability test report for a "client" and also prepare a group oral presentation of your research results.

Because all professional user research is done collaboratively, the focus of your work this semester will be a group project spanning a range of user research activities. Successful collaboration involves skills and strategies that can be developed and practiced. You are responsible for being a productive and reliable team member.

Required Texts:

Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt, Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems
JoAnn Hackos and Janice Redish, User and Task Analysis
Jeffrey Rubin, Handbook of Usability Testing
Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things or Jeff Raskin, The Humane Interface

Articles and selected chapters:

Assignments:

user research documents 35%
including user profiles, user goals, task list, user/task matrix, task flows, and summary of client requirements

usability test documents 15%
including test screener, test script, post-test questionnaire

usability test report and highlights video 30%

presentation of research results 20%

Dr. Kathryn Summers

Office: CR 500
Office phone: 410-837-6202
E-mail: ksummers@ubalt.edu.
Office hours: M 1-2, 4-5 pm, Thur 4:30-5:30 pm, and by appointment.

Professionalism

All work for this class is designed for use in a professional context, and thus needs to meet professional standards of content quality, document design, and document production.

You are responsible for being a productive and reliable group member. Any decision on your part that negatively affects your group will also affect your grade, and could affect your right to remain enrolled in the course.

I strongly recommend that you not miss class. You will will miss the lecture for that week, plus your ability to contribute effectively to your group project will be reduced.