Course Syllabus
Instructor: Amy J. Ko, Ph.D. Links to an external site.
Teaching Assistant: Greg Nelson Links to an external site. (Ph.D. Student, CSE)
Office hours: Tuesdays 2:50-3:20, Alumni House
Whether you're a software designer, engineer, or user experience researcher, understanding what user interfaces are, how they're built, and what kinds of interfaces can exist is a critical literacy for collaboration and creativity. After all, user interfaces are a medium, like any other: painters need to understand paint, writers need to understand words, and anyone involved in designing, building, or understanding interactions with software needs to understand user interfaces.
By end of the course you will:
- Be able to describe major user interface concepts and paradigms
- Use a theory of user interfaces to describe, analyze, and critique user interface technology
- Describe major classes of inventions in user interface software and technology
- Identify open questions in user interface software and technology
- Conduct detailed assessments of product opportunities for user interface innovations
Norms
Here is how I expect you to behave in this class:
- Respect each other's humanity. We all have lives, struggles, fears, and goals. You're more than a student, I'm more than a professor, your TAs are more than TAs, and your classmates more more than classmates. Start every conversation remembering that.
- Respect each other's differences. Technology is for people and people are different: learn about each other's different perspectives, experiences, and ideas.
- Focus on learning, not grades. Having knowledge and skills is what gets you into majors, internships, jobs, and graduate school. Grades are imprecise, narrow measures of what you know and can do, so if you optimize for them instead of skills, you'll end up with narrow knowledge and skills.
- Be demanding. I want this course to be great. If you don't like how it's going, give me feedback. The only way I can make it better is if you tell me what's wrong.
- Be skeptical. If you don't believe something I say, demand evidence or a better argument. If you hear about some exciting new technology, probe closely to understand it's true merits.
- Be constructive. Don't just critique ideas; use your knowledge of their limitations to make them better. This is especially important when you collaborate with other people.
- Don't deceive. Tell the truth, even it's hard to share. You didn't do your homework? Admit it, and let's find a way for you get future assignments done on time. You don't understand something? Admit it, and let's help you understand it. You don't want to learn something? Admit, and let's find a way to make it more interesting to you.
These class norms also have some important implications.
- If you cannot easily access material because of a disability, let me know, because that is my failure to respect the broad diversity of abilities that people have, whether you're different in physical, mental, or learning ways.
- If you have a concern about a teammate or classmate not following the norms above, raise it with me.
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Do not plagiarize, as that puts grades before learning and deceives. If you commit any of the following forms of plagiarism in this class, I will use my discretion to either give you no credit for an assignment or in some cases, for the entire class.
- Copying content you did not author and presenting it as your own.
- Copying content and tweaking it to seem like your own, even though it is the same ideas.
- Reusing content you wrote previously, but presenting it as original.
- Citing sources as evidence, even when those sources do not present such evidence.
- Copying someone's answer on a test rather than arriving at the answer yourself.
- Violating copyright law by reusing content without complying with the license on that content.
Workload
Your weeks look like this:
- Monday: Do Tuesday reading
- Tuesday: Come to class ready for discussion and activity
- Wednesday: Do your Thursday reading, finalize homework
- Thursday: Come to class ready for discussion and activity
- Thursday-Sunday: Reading and homework
Stay on top of reading so you have time to focus on homework.
Office Hours
I'm available to talk about jobs, careers, graduate school, research, class, and anything else. My office hours will be after class on Tuesdays until 3:20pm. You can always schedule an appointment with me for other times.
Reading
There are two types of reading you should read before each class: required and selected.
Required readings come from the textbook Links to an external site.. There aren't many textbooks on the subject of User Interface Software and Technology, so I wrote one for this class called User Interface Software and Technology Links to an external site.. It's meant to be concise, accessible, and living, incorporating the latest research. As I teach the course, I'll work on revising the course to improve each chapter before you read it.
Come to class ready to demonstrate your knowledge of everything in the chapter (including any video under 10 minutes) by answering a reading quiz question. Each reading quiz will be free response and submitted on Canvas. If you miss class, you can makeup the missed quiz credit by submitting a response to the quiz with a critique of the chapter containing at least three ideas for improvements. Critiques are due no later than one week after the quiz was due. There's no limit on the number of critiques you write; if you don't ever want to submit a reading quiz response, you can just choose to submit critiques for the chapter.
Selected readings are your choice. You can choose any of the articles cited in the "Further reading" section of a chapter based on your interests, or any other academic article or book you find on the topic of the chapter. Read the article (or if it's a book, a chapter of the book), and distill the key insights of the paper into three sentences:
- Sentence 1: Accurately and succinctly describe the big idea in the paper
- Sentence 2: Explain how the big idea changed your thinking about interfaces
- Sentence 3: Speculate on what impact you believe the big idea might have on society.
Each submission should include the cited paper and then three sentences like this:
This paper described a new pointing device called a "mouse" that maps the movement of a physical device on a flat surface onto the movement of a virtual on-screen cursor. The idea made me realize that input devices can greatly determine what types of interfaces are possible; for example, the idea of pointing has shaped nearly everything in graphical user interfaces. I predict the mouse will lead to many people sitting in front of flat surfaces staring at screens pointing at virtual things.
For selected readings, we will be evaluating the pithiness of your writing ("pith" is the essence of something; pithy writing means the summary concisely and forcefully distills the key idea of a paper into a small number of words. The example above is pithy enough for full credit. We will grade the readings on this scale:
- 2.0 points. The summary concisely communicates the core idea of the paper.
- 1.5 points. The summary communicates the core idea of the paper, but could have been much more concise.
- 1.0 points. The summary does communicate a key idea from the paper, but not the core one.
- 0.5 points. The summary is incomprehensible.
If you plagiarize from the paper, your summary doesn't follow the three sentence structure, you do not submit a summary, or your summary of the idea is severely incorrect, you will receive 0 points.
To discuss readings in class, the first 30 minutes of each class is organized as follows:
- Required reading (from User Interface Software and Technology)
Links to an external site.
- I ask the class if there are any clarifications they'd like about the chapter.
- I provide clarifications.
- After there are no more questions, I present the reading quiz question.
- After the reading quiz, I discuss the correct answer and resolve any questions.
- Selected reading
- You organize into groups of 3-4, with the goals of 1) describing what you read to each other, and 2) identifying insights, opinions, or questions that you'd like to share with the class
- After 5 minutes, I bring the class back together
- I ask for insights, opinions, or questions, and facilitate a discussion about the topic.
Homeworks
Whereas the readings in the course will give you a strong conceptual foundation for user interfaces, the homeworks will help you practice two key skills in interaction design, user experience research, and front-end engineering: analyzing and communicating design opportunities. You'll do this over the course of several homeworks:
- Homework 1 (5 points): Discovering discoveries
- Homework 2 (5 points): Extracting insights
- Homework 3 (5 points): Analyzing interactions
- Homework 4 (5 points): Assessing maturity
- Homework 5 (5 points): Assessing expressiveness
- Homework 6 (27 points): Specifying interaction
By the end of the course, you'll have deeply analyzed a user interface innovation for product viability.
We will grade homeworks no later than 7 days after they are submitted (sometimes sooner).
To access readings off campus, you can use the UW Libraries Proxy Links to an external site..
Grading
I'm a strong believer that one of the only benefits of quantitative grades is to motivate unmotivated students to learn. Otherwise, I view grades as mostly harmful to learning: they cause students to obsess over optimizing a narrow measurement of their knowledge, rather than all of the knowledge that might matter. Because this is a graduate course, and you're here to learn, I want you to therefore think of the points in this class as just an accounting of the learning you've done and a record of what you have left to learn. I don't expect most of you to receive a 4.0; that would imply that throughout the quarter, you had nothing left to learn. But there's no need to worry: no employer cares about your grade in this class, they care about what you know and what you can do.
To keep the grading scheme from distracting you too much, the grading in this class is simple. There are 100 points you can earn, each reflecting your ability to read and synthesize technical ideas about interface implementation and design:
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Readings. These ensure you read and test your ability to explain the ideas in the reading.
- Required reading quizzes (16 quizzes, 1 point each, 16 points). Extra readings are extra credit.
- Selected reading summary (16 summaries, 2 points each, 32 points). Extra summaries are extra credit.
- Homework (52 points): due each Thursday before class. These evaluate a range of skills in understanding and synthesizing interface ideas.
I'll map your 100 points according to the grading scale in Canvas.
Late work receives 0 points unless you arrange with me in advance or you had some circumstances clearly outside your control. However, our goal is for you to learn the material and skills, so if you're not happy with a reading or homework grade, you can read our feedback and resubmit it for a regrade at any time. We'll give you up to 50% of the credit you lost on your first submission. Or, if you received a 0 for a late submission, we will grade and give you up to 50% of the original points.
Schedule
Below is a rough outline of what will happen in each of our class meetings. Everything here is tentative aside from reading assignments; I may revise our discussion topics and activities as late us just before class.
Week 1 |
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Tuesday, Jan 7 – WELCOME |
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Thursday, Jan 9 – HISTORY |
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Week 2 |
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Tuesday, Jan 14 – THEORY |
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Thursday, Jan 16 – MEDIATION |
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Week 3 |
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Tuesday, Jan 21 – DECLARATIVE INTERFACES |
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Thursday, Jan 23 – INTERACTIVE INTERFACES |
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Week 4 |
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Tuesday, Jan 28 – ARCHITECTURE |
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Thursday, Jan 30 – ACCESSIBILITY |
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Week 5 |
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Tuesday, Feb 4 – POINTING |
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Thursday, Feb 6 – TEXT ENTRY |
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Week 6 |
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Tuesday, Feb 11 – HANDS |
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Thursday, Feb 13 – BODIES |
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Week 7 |
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Tuesday, Feb 18 – 2D OUTPUT |
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Thursday, Feb 20 – 3D OUTPUT |
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Week 8 |
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Tuesday, Feb 25 – PHYSICAL OUTPUT |
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Thursday, Feb 27 – HELP |
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Week 9 |
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Tuesday, Mar 3 – INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY |
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Thursday, Mar 5 – TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER |
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Week 10 |
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Tuesday, Mar 10 – ETHICS
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Thursday, Mar 12 – CANCELLED |
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Finals week |
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No final exam. Homework 6 is due Monday at 5 pm, then you're done! |
Course Summary:
Date | Details | Due |
---|---|---|
Thu Jan 9, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: History | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: History | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Jan 14, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Theory | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Theory | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Jan 16, 2020 | Assignment Homework 1: Discovering Discoveries | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Selected reading: Mediation | due by 1:30pm | |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Mediation | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Jan 21, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Declarative Interfaces | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Declarative Interfaces | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Jan 23, 2020 | Assignment Homework 2: Extracting Insights | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Selected reading: Interactive Interfaces | due by 1:30pm | |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Interactive Interfaces | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Jan 28, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Architecture | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Architecture | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Jan 30, 2020 | Assignment Homework 3: Analyzing Interactions | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Selected reading: Accessibility | due by 1:30pm | |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Accessibility | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Feb 4, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Pointing | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Pointing | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Feb 6, 2020 | Assignment Homework 4: Assessing Maturity | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Selected reading: Text-entry | due by 1:30pm | |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Text-entry | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Feb 11, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Hands | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Hands | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Feb 13, 2020 | Assignment Homework 5: Assessing Expressiveness | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Selected reading: Body | due by 1:30pm | |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Body | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Feb 18, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: 2D Visual Output | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: 2D Visual Output | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Feb 20, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: 3D Visual Output | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: 3D Visual Output | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Feb 25, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Physical Output | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Physical Output | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Feb 27, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Help | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Help | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Mar 3, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Intellectual Property | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Intellectual Property | due by 1:45pm | |
Thu Mar 5, 2020 | Assignment Homework 6: Pre-submission | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Selected reading: Technology Transfer | due by 1:30pm | |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Technology Transfer | due by 1:45pm | |
Tue Mar 10, 2020 | Assignment Selected reading: Ethics | due by 1:30pm |
Assignment Required reading quiz/critique: Ethics | due by 1:45pm | |
Mon Mar 16, 2020 | Assignment Homework 6: Envisioning interaction | due by 5pm |