Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Introduces topics in human perception, cognition and embodied action as a foundation of design for human use. It explores the practical application of techniques for analyzing diverse interactive situations and designing effective user interfaces. Students will engage in the analysis and design of a simple user interface, gaining detailed knowledge and experience with the standard basic techniques for interface specification, prototyping and evaluation.

COURSE DETAILS:

This course takes a scientific approach to understanding human cognitive abilities and how they can inform the design and evaluation of interactive technologies. This includes the cognitive processes of the designer (design thinking) and of the user of the technology (human-computer interaction). 

Our approach to understanding “design thinking” is based on theories and models in educational psychology— Bloom’s Taxonomy, Perry’s Scheme, and Schön’s Reflective Practitioner model. Our goal is to understand multiple perspectives on design and to reconcile them in our own design processes. The challenge in this part of the course is to be able to build your own approach to design, to make informed design decisions, and to be able to discuss the pros-and-cons with colleagues.

Our approach to information technology design comes from Herbert Simon, W. Brian Arthur, and Donald Norman’s cognitive engineering approaches. Computers, smartphones, and intelligent devices have evolved to support a wide variety of human activities. In the future, devices such as 3D displays and wearable computers and advanced interaction methods using speech, gesture and multi-touch surfaces will further increase our immersion in an all-encompassing “internet of things”. As the diversity of uses of computing technology increases the design goals for applications must focus on aspects of human life that go well beyond usability. Understanding the psychology of human motivation, communication, learning, and reasoning will enable designers to better support this broad range of applications. 

The course begins with an in-depth discussion of human information processing psychology as the scientific basis for interaction design. We will explore natural human abilities such as perception, thinking, learning and remembering. We then introduce other voices from ecological perception and distributed cognition perspectives. Students are asked to take a critical perspective on how these perspective can be part of technology design processes. Our goal is to create a strong scientific foundation for design, preparing students for upper level SIAT courses and a rapidly evolving job market.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Learning Outcomes 

• Become a reflective design practitioner, able to use "design thinking" in a broad range of contexts and applications. 
• Build an understanding of key concepts, theories, and methods in the study of human information processing psychology (HIP): 

 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING: