50.006 User Interface Design and Implementation

Course Description

The course will introduce the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Interaction Design and Usability in the context of today’s diverse interactive products. The course will cover usability principles, design guidelines and heuristics, user-centred design, usability engineering, user experience and evaluation techniques, and will include a series of mini design exercises and design-implementation projects. Students who successfully complete the course will be well-equipped with the concepts and language to argue and discuss how well a system’s front-end (e.g. a website, a mobile app, a museum kiosk, etc.) is designed and be able to design usable, easy-to-use, intuitive, attractive user-interfaces informed by the concepts and knowledge learned during the course.

Prerequisites

• 10.009 The Digital World (For AY2019) or 10.014 Computational Thinking for Design (For AY2020 and subsequent batches)

Learning Objectives

1. Understand the concept of usability, design principles, guidelines, heuristics and other fundamentals of Human-Computer Interaction.
2. Analyze a set of requirements in terms of its user-interface implications.
3. Develop a usage scenario for a given set of user requirements and available technologies.
4. Construct a user-interaction strategy for a given problem.
5. Sketch a series of user-interfaces for a given use scenario.
6. Implement a designed user-interface to demonstrate its functionality and usability.
7. Employ a set of usability engineering methods to refine a designed user-interface.
8. Evaluate a user-interface using suitable evaluation methodology.

Measurable Outcomes

1. Apply design principles, guidelines and heuristics to create a user-interaction strategy that solves a real-world problem.
2. Design a usable and compelling user-interface given a set of requirements and available technologies.
3. Communicate effectively the designed user-interface to relevant stakeholders using design rationale and a sketching/presentation tool in an informed, reasonable and persuasive way.
4. Conduct an evaluation of a user-interface by employing a series of evaluation methods available in usability engineering.

Topics Covered

• User classification and user centred design
• Information visualisation and interactivity
• Usability principles and guidelines, UI prototyping tools
• Anthropomorphism and framing the interaction strategies; metaphor
• Personal and social impact of technology and experience design; ethical issues of interaction design
• Usability evaluation techniques

Textbook(s) and/or Other Required Material

• Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant, Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction, 5th ed. Boston, MA: Addison-Wesley, 2010.
• David Benyon, Designing Interactive Systems: A Comprehensive Guide to HCI, UX and Interaction Design, 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson, 2013.
• Jennifer Preece et al., Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction, 3rd ed. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, 2011.
• Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering, 1st ed. San Francisco, CA: Morgan-Kaufmann, 1993.
• Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano, Designing Visual Interfaces: Communication Oriented Techniques. New York, NY: Prentice Hall, 1994.

Course Instructor(s)

Prof Simon Perrault

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