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:

Our approach to human-computer interaction begins with Herbert Simon’s Sciences of the Artificial and cognitive engineering approaches from W. Brian Arthur and Donald Norman, applying them to the challenges of modern software design. As the diversity of interfaces and uses of computing technology increase, interface design must take into account aspects of human psychology such as perceptual learning, visually-enabled reasoning, emotion, and interpersonal communication. The course will review human information processing psychology as a scientific basis for interaction design. Using that perspective we will discuss human cognitive abilities such as perception, thinking, learning and remembering. We then introduce alternative perspectives from ecological perception and distributed cognition.
Our approach to understanding “design thinking” uses theory and methods from design and educational psychology, including Bloom’s Taxonomy, Perry’s Scheme, and Schön’s Reflective Practitioner approach. Learners are called upon to reflect upon their own personal approach to design, to learn how to make informed design decisions, and to be able to discuss the pros-and-cons with colleagues. They then apply their approach to human-computer interface design problems. Our overall goal is to support learners to build a reflective interface design process, grounded in an understanding of human cognition, that can be used to design stand-alone applications and complex software ecosystems.

COURSE-LEVEL EDUCATIONAL GOALS:

Learning Outcomes 

• Consider reflective interface design practices that are grounded in cognitive science
  
  • Understand and explain psychological science perspectives on human perception and cognition:
    • Human Information Processing approaches to understanding human perceptual, cognitive and social capabilities.
    • Ecological approaches to understanding perception and action in the environment
  • Use these perspectives to evaluate designs with regard to support for human capabilities and context of use.
• Understand new ecological, embodied, and distributed cognition approaches from the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science
  
  • Describe these approaches and understand how they differ.
  • Understand how these approaches can be used in design of technologies for distributed and extended cognition

• Overall, begin to develop your own individual reflective design approach with an evolving personal "design manifesto".

 

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING:

RECOMMENDED READING: