CMSC 838G - Spring 2003
Prof Guimbretiere

Advanced usability: People, paper and computer

Topics

• Affordances of paper
• Paper as a social medium
• Paper based user interfaces
• User interfaces for digital paper

• User study fundamentals 
• Basic experimental designs
• Non-traditional experimental designs
• Interpretation of experimental results

A significant part of the course will involve your participation. Classes will frequently involve discussion and exercises in addition to lectures. Turned in material might be used (anonymously) as a starting point for discussion.

Students will be expected to give several presentations to the class during the semester. Presentation topic will includes: bibliography search report, review of a selected paper, discussion of the assigned reading. 

This is a project class. Students are encouraged to form small multi-disciplinary groups who will conduct one research project throughout the semester. While there will be 4 project checkpoints during the semester, only the final version of the project will be graded. At each checkpoints, the current status of each project will presented and discussed in class.

Projects can take a variety of forms, ranging from conducting an ethnographic study, running a control experiment, or designing and evaluating a new user interface.

All project checkpoints and the final project are due at the beginning of the class on the day that they are due. The paper part (if any) must be turned in at class, and the electronic part (if any) must be submitted by the time of the beginning of class. Late assignments will be strictly penalized. Exceptional circumstances will be considered only if discussed with me in advance. All late assignments will have points deducted as follows:

• Project checkpoints

  -5% on the final project grade up to 24 hours late
  -10% on the final project grade up to 48 hours late
  -25% on the final project grade for more than 48 hours late

• Final project

If you wish to contest a grade, please do so by sending the grader an e-mail explaining why you think the grading was inaccurate. Your work will then be graded again and a new grade issued. Please note that the new grade might be lower than the original grade.

The project is a group assignments, and each member of the group is expected to accurately represent their contribution. Any attempts to circumvent deadlines or rules will be considered incidents of academic dishonesty. Exams are individual works and a student may not look at another student's exam, or refer to any notes (unless exceptions are stated in advance), during the exam period. Any student violating any of these or general University academic honesty rules you will get an immediate F for the course, and will be reported to judicial programs for a hearing.

Network usage in class

Our classroom has Internet connectivity. Internet usage may be monitored for educational and/or research purposes as it relates to our class.