Tutorials

• T1: Introduction to Usability Testing
    (10:30-5pm)
• T2: Designing Interfaces with Cognition in Mind
    (1-5pm)

Workshops

• W1: Temporal Event Sequence Analysis & Eventflow and Coco user group meeting
    (10:30-4pm)
• W2: Crafting Successful Learning Technology Proposals
    (1-5pm)
• W3: Design for Mobile and Location-Aware Media
    (1-5pm)

T1: Introduction to Usability Testing
10:30-5pm
Bill Killam
Contact: Bill Killam for more information

This is an introductory tutorial on the topic of usability testing. This tutorial is intended for usability practitioners looking to expand their skills, other practitioners (designers, developers, testers, etc.) who may have usability testing interests or responsibilities, and management staff that may be considering incorporating usability into their organization. In the tutorial we will cover both management issues and practical issues of usability testing and discuss what usability testing is (and isn't).

In the module on management issues, we will focus on usability as it related to the organization. We will discuss what makes a product usable, the origins of usability testing, and the relationship of usability testing to the broader areas of Human Factors Engineering and other disciplines (e.g., marketing, design, development, and other types of testing). We will discuss product development models that incorporate usability and discuss such topics as the timing of usability testing in the design and development cycle, how to plan for them, and what ROI there is for usability testing.

In the practical module, we will focus the mechanics doing usability testing. We will discuss the different types of testing (formative versus summative) as well as different protocols that can be used for usability tests (both user-based and non-user-based). We will discuss how to develop a test including the test tasks, test length, participant selection and recruiting, data collection, and analysis. We will discuss ethical issues associated with conducting tests with human subjects. We will discuss what empirical data can be derived from usability testing and what cannot. Finally, we will practice the skills and principles involved in facilitating a user-based test.

T2: Designing Interfaces with Cognition in Mind
1-5pm
Tim Clausner
Contact: Tim Clausner for more information.

Human computer interface research aims to improve information displays and control devices. The purpose of a display is for people to comprehend its meaning, for a visualization to make sense, for a manual gesture to yield an expected outcome. Achieving enhanced interfaces is a research problem situated in the intersection of computer science, psychology, linguistics, and physics (at least). This tutorial will explore the role of theory and experiment as they apply to problems of designing human computer interfaces, measuring performance, designing experiments, and interpreting results. Carefully designed experiments can tell us more than whether one interface is better than another. Experiments can tell us about perceptual, cognitive, and neural processes which enable people to make sense of interfaces. We will consider two design approaches. Top down approaches begin with an extant design and aim to enhance it. Ground up approaches aim to design an interface from first principles. These approaches can yield practical improvements in interface design and performance, as well as yield contributions to theory.

W1: Temporal Event Sequence Analysis & Eventflow and Coco user group meeting
10:30-4pm
Catherine Plaisant, Ben Shneiderman
Visit the workshop webpage for more information.
Contact: Catherine Plaisant

The growing volumes of temporal data available from sensors, social media sources, Web logs, and medical histories present remarkable opportunities for researchers and policy analysts. Research at HCIL has led to the development of a family of tools for the exploration of temporal event sequences, such as EventFlow to summarize and search event sequence paterns and Coco - short for Cohort Comparison - for the comparison of groups of records and their event sequences. This workshop will allow researchers who are using those tools (and others!) to share their finding and strategies for data analysis.

W2: Crafting Learning Technology Proposals
1-5pm
Tamara Clegg, June Ahn
Contact: Tamara Clegg for more information

This workshop will bring researchers and evaluators together from across Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Science, and Education disciplines to facilitate new collaborations and projects that will advance the future of learning. Principal Investigators of several recently awarded NSF Cyberlearning and AISL (Advancing Informal Science Learning) projects will share insights on crafting successful interdisciplinary proposals around new learning technologies. Topics will include collaboration across disciplines, framing project ideas, articulating potential for transformation of new projects, writing evaluation plans, and establishing broader impact and intellectual merit of proposed work. Researchers and evaluators from across disciplines will then work together to craft collaborative project ideas based on participants' research interests and expertise. We will invite groups to pitch their ideas and receive feedback from expert panelists to help them jump start their future proposal development.

W3: Designing for Mobile and Location-Aware Media
1-5pm
Jason Farman
Contact: Jason Farman for more information

The most pervasive digital technology on the planet at the moment is the mobile device. Mobile media are being used in a wide range of ways globally and making tremendous impacts on the ways people communicate, document the world, share news, consume entertainment, live social and romantic lives, and create art (to name a few). How do we design for such a rich ecosystem with different expectations and uses from one region to the next? Howe can we be thoughtful in our approach to mobile design? This workshop looks at a range of big topics - how mobile media change how live in space & place, medium-specificity (i.e., designing for particular devices), location-aware media, participant motivation, gaming, materiality and tangibility, creative misuse, and design challenges for the future - and how theory and practice of mobile design can offer some perspectives on these topics. We will apply these ideas through prototyping innovative designs for the future of mobile and locative media.