1. What does the word "Affordance" means? Can you think about a couple of example from your everyday life?
2. What does the author mean when saying that features should be visible? Why are not all the feature in a typical cell-phone visible?
3. What is a conceptual model? How does it influence how we interact with the world around us?
4. Can you think about a couple of good mapping examples in your everyday life. Can you think about a couple of difficult to understand mappings?
5. Can you think about a couple examples of poorly designed feedback from your everyday life? How causality influence feedback design?
6. Pick one product you are using on an everyday basis and propose 5 to 10 ways to improve it.

1. What was the key target population for the Xerox Star?
2. What are the key technologies that made Xerox Alto/Star possible?
3. Give the advantage/disadvantage of time-shared systems and stand-alone PC. What did Xerox do to take advantage of these two apparently different types of systems.
4. What are the key aspect of the Desktop Metaphor? How does it differ from the a simpler windows based interface? What are the key elements that make the metaphor work?
5. What is direct manipulation? What are the key characteristic of a direct manipulation system? What are the key direct manipulation features of your favorite drawing program (or presentation program)?
6. Why are mode considered harmful in interface design? How could Star avoid the use of modes? In what situations should the modes be allowed?
7. How does the progressive disclosure strategy works? Give specific examples. What kind of users will benefit most from progressive disclosure?
8. Provide several examples in which the Star system relied on good graphic and screen design.
9. What is the Tool metaphor? Why and how did the Star system departed from it? What metaphor is used in Windows XP or Mac OS X?
10. Do you think that a better understanding of users desires during the design process might have help avoid the system shortcomings? Provide a detailed explanation for at least one of the lessons learned from experience

1. What are the differences between designing and engineering  claimed by David Kelly? Do you agree with him? Why or why not?
2. Why successful design should be done by team not by individual? Compare the advantages/disadvantages of a big group and a small group in the design process.
3. What is the benefit of making extra effort at the beginning stage such as design (rather at the development or the production stages)?
4. What is the role of failure in design?
5. What is a good environment for conducting design?
6. What is a leading question? Provide a couple of examples from everyday life.

1. What are the 7 steps of the design cycle proposed by D. Koberg and J. Bagnall? Write a 1 paragraph description of each step.
2. Why is it important to keep ideation and idea selection distinct?
3. Why is implementation only step #6 in this process?
4. What is the role of evaluation in the design process?
5. Why is iteration and essential part of the design process?

1. What are the key steps of a successful interview?
2. Criticize the questions below and change them if needed:
   • "Do you think this keyboard is better than the traditional ones because it reduces the long-term wrist pain?"
   • "Is adding a sliding bar on MP3 player is a good idea for selecting a song to listen?"
   • "Do you think this functionality is good for students or businessmen?"
   • "When you purchase a digital camera, what is the most important factor in your decision?"
   • "Please choose your favorite design from the pictures below."
   • "Are you willing to pay more (around 10%) for products from well-known companies?"
3. Why is it useful to use artifacts during an interviews?
4. What are the key techniques one can use to be sure that an interview is nondirected?
5. What are typical tools you should bring with you during a user interview?
6. What are the commons problems during an interview?
7. What kinds of information can be acquired by videotaping that could not be captured on audio?  

1. Which experience level (beginners, intermediates and experts) tends to change rapidly and why?
2. Among the tools listed below, which tool is more effective for each experience level (beginners, intermediates and experts)? why?
   • Guiding dialog box, shortcut, tooltip, online help
     
3. What is does the author mean by Contextual Inquiry?

4. Why does the author believe that designers should focus on Perpetual Intermediates?

5. What is the difference between a domain expert and a technical expert?

6. It often said that designer often has to serve several masters. What does that means? Provide an example from the reading, and one from your everyday life. How can personas help addressing this problem?

1. Compare the archetypes vs. stereotypes and personas vs. user profiles.
2. You can't always get users' goals directly since they might be inaccurate or unable to articulate their goals. Then how can you obtain them?

3. Make a context scenario from a primary persona for a portable MPEG-4 Video player. Create a narrative, and present your narrative to a friend to see if it is complete.

4. In the early stage of the design, why is it important to focus on goals, instead of tasks?

5. What are the different kind of goals presented in this reading?
6. Why is it important to distinguish between persona types?
7. What is an elastic user?
8. Why is it the case than a design project can be sidetracked by flexible specifictions? Provide one example from your everyday life.
9. What are the key steps in establishing the key personas for a given design?
10. Considering all the students on College Park campus, which persona best describe yourself?

1. What are the differences between a brainstorm and a regular meeting?
2. Do you think "How can we improve the usability of MP3 player of our company?" is a good topic for brainstorming? If yes, why? If no, why not?
3. What are the expected results of a brainstorm?
4. You found a person who seldom speaks during brainstorming. What is the best strategy to address this problem?

1. Why is "UMDMSNBC" much easier to remember than "MCUSMBDN"? How can you apply this fact to UI design?
2. What are the 2 big assumptions in Dorak keyboard calculation?
3. Among the physical match, name match and class match, which matching has the lowest reaction time?
4. What are the factors that reflect hidden constraints in the Rationality Principle (P8) on page 86?
5. Provide a 3 sentences description for each of the 3 sub-systems of the Human Information Processor (Henceforth, HIP).
6. Describe the basic steps in the human Perceive - Recognize - Act loop. For each steps, describe which sub-systems are involved in this step.
7. What is Fitts' law? How can it be empirically derived from the HIP model? How could it be used while designing new computer interfaces (both hardware and software).
8. According to the HIP model, what are the key steps necessary to "understand" that a number presented of the screen is odd?
9. What is a perception quantum? How can the length of the quantum can be measured?
10. How can one explain figure 2.5 page 35?
11. What is the working memory? How does it differ from the long term memory? Which everyday interface was designed with the limitation of the human working memory in mind? How did these limitations shape the system?
12. What is a chunk? Explain the effect of chunk-interference. What is the difference between interference and spontaneous decay over time?
13. Is the HIP serial or parallel? How do human do several things at once?
14. Who are the Slowman, the Middleman and the Fastman?
15. Explain how the HIP can be used to understand the limit of human performances? Provide one example. What are the limitations of the models?
16. How can the HIP used to derive an optimal rate for motion movie pictures?
17. How two events should be related to appear causally related? What is the implication for HCI in term of system performance?
18. The HIP model states that the basic Perceived - Recognize - Act loop is around 240ms. Then, how comes that a pianist can play so fast?
19. What is the power law of learning? How does it relate to the statement by Alan Cooper that most interfaces should be designed for perpetual intermediates users?
20. What is Hick's law? How could it be applied to the actual UI design

Skill Acquisition
Book: "Learning and Memory", by J. Anderson

1. What are the stages of skill acquisition? Using your favorite sport, illustrate each stage. What kind of knowledge is used at each stage?
2. What are the key experimental results that lead us to infer the existence of motor programs?
3. Not all motor controls involve cognitive control. For example imagine that while cooking, your hand touch a very hot plate. What will happen next? At which stage do you think your higher cognitive functions got involved?
4. What are production rules? Provide two examples drawing from your personal experience.
5. In figure 9.6 subjects often have difficulty moving from state 6 to 7. How does the reading explain this fact? Can you think about a similar example which happened to you?
6. What are the key concepts used to describe human problem solving? Explain them. As an example, contrast the problem solving description page 330 and page 331.
7. How flexible are motor programs? Provide example(s) of how they can or cannot be re-targeted.
8. What is the role of feedback in skill acquisition? Which experiment seems to validate Schmidt schema theory? Why?
9. Provide two examples in which the theory of skill acquisition could help interaction designers (one for which it will predict how a feature will improve performance or comfort, and one for which it will predict a possible problem).
10. Compare recall memory and recognition memory and explain how do they interact. Which one is more difficult: recognition or recall?

1. What does Don Norman mean by Cognitive Engineering?
2. What is the gulf of execution? What is the gulf of evaluation? Using everyday life example describe for each gulf a case in which the gulf is narrow and the case in which the gulf is wide.
3. How can computer interface help in reducing these gulfs? Why isn't automation always the answer?
4. Some well known and accepted interface has been voluntary designed with a large Gulf of Execution. In which class of tasks a wide gulf of execution might be a desirable feature?
5. How can expertise (or training) "reduce" the gulf of execution and evaluation. Give one example in each case.
6. What is the System Image? How does it relate to the Design Model and the User Model? How can a designer evaluate the proper matching of the User Model and the System Image?
7. How can tools influence the users interaction with a given system?
8. What is the concept of engagement? What are the key interface characteristics that will promote engagement? Is this concept task or expertise specific?
9. Why does the author think that the HIP model can be useful for designer despite its shortcomings?
10. What is the role of tradeoffs in design? Illustrate this by commenting on the VISICALC interface.

1. What is Direct Manipulation? What are the key aspects of a direct manipulation interface? Provide some examples from an operating system you are using on an everyday basis.
2. What are the claimed benefits of direct manipulation interfaces? Do you agree with them?
3. What are semantic and articulatory distances? How can one reduce semantic distances? How can one reduce articulatory distances?
4. What is the concept of inter-referential I/O? How does it relate to direct manipulation?
5. Do you think that a direct manipulation interface is always the best solution? Justify your answer.
6. Give a class of tasks for which a textual interface might be faster than a direct manipulation interface.
7. What is the Turing tar-pit? How does it apply to the design of human computer interfaces?
8. Classify these interfaces in the space of interfaces in Figure 5.8.
   • Deleting a file by drag-and-drop to the trash can icon on the computer desktop;
   • Changing the current directory by typing "cd" in Unix terminal when the prompt shows the current directory;
   • Handling an icon of a file with no extension and no linked application
   • Deleting a file by "rm filename" in Unix;
   • Mounting a disk at a specific mount point in your Unix directory structure;
   • Programming a complex interface using a visual programming environment;
9. Looking at a typical word processor, when do you think the direct manipulation approach breaks down?

1. Do you agree with the idea that paper prototyping is obsolete since we can easily get Wysiwyg editors (such as the modules in Frontpage, VB or Flash) ? Defend or criticize the idea.
2. For a web page design, which components could be omitted from the background in paper prototyping testing and why?
3. Assume you want to develop a DVD rental service (such as NetFlix). You also want your service to be accessible on PC and mobile phones. Read the opinions of two experts in page 78 and decide whether or not to consider the size constraints during a paper prototyping phase.
4. Is it a good idea to fake images of photos when you design a web site for digital photo albums? why or why not?
5. What kinds of interactions would be hard to simulate perfectly in paper prototyping ? Give 2 ~ 3 examples not written in pp.85~87.

1. Describe in a short paragraph the typical use of the following features of the Flash CS3 interface:
   1. The stage;
   2. The timeline;
   3. The layers;
   4. The property bar;
   5. The library system;
2. How does one create a new layer (with a given name)? How important is the ordering of layers for creating an annimation like the Moorise over Lake Nanagook?
3. How does one create a color gradient?
4. How does one add the following element in a movie:
   1. Text;
   2. A geometric shape (circle, rectangle, polygon);
   3. A hand drawn shape;
5. How does one tranfer graphical elements from one layer to the other?
6. What are the key steps in creating a simple keyframed annimation?
7. How does one create an annimation showing a ball bouncing of the ground?
8. How do you add a sound track to a movie?
9. How does one create a new symbol? Why are they so useful?
10. How will you create a simple animation of an clock (with a hand for the seconds)?
11. How do you test your movies?

1. Describe in a short paragraph each of the following concept used by the ActionScript programming language:
   1. Class;
   2. Class properties;
   3. Class methods ;
   4. Events;
   5. Variables;
   6. Functions;
   7. Operators and their precedence;
2. How do objects and classes relate to each others?
3. How does one assign a value to the property of an object on the timeline?
4. Why does using types will help developping even a simple script?
5. How can one find help about a given type or an ActionScript feature?
6. What is a conditional statement? How does it works (provide one example)?
7. How does one add a comments to explain the meaning of a given segment of a script?
8. How can one check the syntax of a given script?
9. How does one control the timeline from a script?
10. How does one attach an event handler to a given object? Provide one example and explain how the object will behave given the proposed handler.

1. How can a designer change the appearance of a button (or other UI components) in Flash CS3? What is the difference between Skinning and Styling?
2. What is the Component inspector used for? Give one concrete example using the UI components of your choice.
3. How are "Event Listener" being used to react to users interactions with UI components. Write a small program illustrating this mechanism.
4. What is the difference between a CheckBox and a RadioButton? How does one create a RadioButton group?
5. In a ComboBox, how does one create the initial setting of the UI component? How does one assign a given value to a given label?
6. In the ComboBox example on page 406, how does the script change the appearance of the shape on the screen?
7. How can one create a list component? Is it possible to have several contiguous items selected at any given time in a list? What about non-contiguous items? How does one recover the selected elements?
8. What is a NumericStepper and when is it used? How does it differ from a Slider?
9. What is ScrollPane? Is it possible to use the cursor to move the image inside a ScrollPane (i.e. without using the scrollbars)? Can a ScrollPane display a Flash movie?
10. Can a TextArea component display HTML content? What are the limitation?
11. How will one create a password entry field using the UI components?

Organization and visual structure,
Book: "Design Visual Interfaces", by Kevin Mullet and Darrell Sano

1. Briefly explain key benefits introduced by structure.
2. What is the meaning of Gestalt? Briefly describe the Gestalt principles.
3. First, look at Figure 97 on page 92. Can we say similarity is more important than proximity in grouping ? If yes, why? If no, why not?
4. How can asymmetric layout achieve balance (not producing a sense of instability) and equilibrium? How can you balance the window in Figure 114 (page 104)?
5. List the advantages/disadvantages of symmetry.
6. What are the two most important tools for constructing visual hierarchies? And which one of the two is the most important (perceptually powerful and immediate) means of establishing relationship among elements?
7. How can we produce optically equivalent scaling for circles, squares and diamonds when we design icons ?
8. What is negative space? What is the use of negative space? Isn't it a waste of expensive space? Should we consider this technique even when we design UIs of handheld devices (such as Palm pilot)?
9. Using the techniques described in this chapter, how can one influence the way users will naturally scan a display. Pick two ads in a magazine and analyze their layout. What is the author of the ad is trying to do?
10.  Propose a new design for Figure 119 or Figure 120a.

1. Answer the 5 questions on page 118.
2. What are the differences between the discovery and the validation process? Are both equally methodical?
3. What does Albert Szent Gyorgyi mean by: "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"?
4. What is the role of failure in the discovery process? Should a failure be seen as a negative or a positive part of the discovery process? Explain your answer.
5. What does it mean to set the stage for discovery? How could you change you everyday routine to enhance your chance of making a discovery?
6. Compare and contrast the commonly believed story about Pasteur discovery of immunization and the way it really happened.
7. What is the role of playfulness in the discovery process? How a playful mind might help seeing what others have not seen?
8. What is the definition of "intuition" by this reading? What is the meaning of the sentence "The reward for the internalization (personal engagement) of subject matter is intuition"? What's the role of intuition in the discovery process? Does the use of intuition mean that the discovery process is mostly random and influenced by chance events?
9. Criticize the claims below:
   
   "Since in many cases, by no means all, the main activities related to discovery are not acknowledged by the prevailing views of how scientists use logic and reason, the process of discovery is illogical by nature"
   
   "The noble discovery can be found only through the anomaly or unexpected results"

1. When and why is it useful to perform software evaluation without users?
2. Compare the 3 approaches for evaluating an interface in the absence of users. Can we find the same problems with each approach or each approach uncover different problems? What is the authors' recommendations on how to use these approaches in the design process?
3. What are the risks associated with any of the "without users" evaluation techniques? How could one alleviate such risks?
4. How can the design of personas help a designer to perform a effective walkthrough? Provide one or two examples. How can a paper interface help a designer during a walkthrough evaluation?
5. Given a 2 columns by 4 row table in Excel (or any other spreadsheet program), perform a cognitive walkthroughs for creating a bar-graph based on this data. Perform a heuristic analysis for the same task.
6. How much can the designer experience (both in general and with respect to a specific group of users) influence the result of "without users" evaluation? Why? Does it depend on the technique?
7. Looking at these techniques, how useful will it be for a young designer to be attentive to every mishap that happen to him/her and people around him/her? Explain your answer.
8. Explain the difference between evaluating and validating an interface.
9. What are the 9 heuristics proposed by Nielsen. For each heuristics, describe one example where the heuristic has been respected, and one when it has been violated. In both case, explain the impact on users. What class of problems will these heuristics have difficulty to identify? Why?
10. Compare and contrast the use of the "formal" and "back-of-the-envelop" action analysis. In particular which one is most likely to be used as a validation technique and which one is most likely to be used as an evaluation technique? Perform a back-of-the-envelope action analysis for taking a picture with your cell-phone (or playing a given piece of music on your MP3 player). 

Introduction to Usability Test Facilitation
Book: "Paper Prototyping", by Carolyn Snyder

Usability Tests
Book: "Observing The User Experience", by Mike Kuniavsky

1. What are nonspecific utterances and why are they important?
2. Give 2 examples of users with an agenda. How can the experimenter keep them focused?
3. Why is being funny as a facilitator during the usability test not encouraged?
4. In most cases, usability tests are done after the features set has been locked and it's too late to make any fundamental changes. Some people criticize usability tests as to be useful only for the next version. Do you agree on their opinion? Support or refute it.
5. What is a competitive usability test? What are the pros and cons of it?
6. What are the task-based interview and a hybrid interview? Compare them.
7. Explain the 3 stages of the analysis process and 3 sets of observations to be collected. Which set of observations is most important? why?
8. What is the primary purpose of an Informed Consent Form? What are the key parts of that form? When shall it be used?
9. Carolyn Snyder highlights 3 main roles for the facilitator. Name and describe each role.
10. What are the advantages and possible drawbacks of co-discovery? Do you think it is best to use strangers or friends as co-discoverers?
11. During user testing, what should the facilitator do if a participant get stuck? What are the possible drawbacks of offering help too rapidly? In what kind of circumstances, can a moderator suggest an idea to a user without providing any bias?
12. During user testing, how important is it to carefully select participants? What are typical criteria used? Who are the best participants to invite during the recruiting step and why? What groups of people should be considered as being not eligible?
13. What is a reasonable number of participants in a qualitative study? What parameters might influence your answer? Given a fix number of participants, is it better to run several small study or one big one? Why?
14. What are the pros and cons of writing a script for usability studies?
15. Describe a typical usability study setting. What elements might feel threatening to participants? How can this problem be alleviated?
16. Is it important for the development team to witness usability testing? Why?

Designing the Palm Pilot
Book: "Information Appliances and Beyond", by Eric Bergman (Ed.)

1. How did the 80/20 principle influence the design of  the Palm Pilot interface? Provide two examples.
2. Rob pointed out that more often than not, literal translation from PC to PDA format does not work. Which examples did he give to support that statement? Could you think about other examples? 

3. How did the Palm Pilot team come up with the overall shape of the device? How did that influence the screen design? In turn, how did that choice influence the interface design? 

4. Why are hardware buttons so important for the Palm interface? Why will more flexible software buttons not do? 

5. Why was the Synchronization feature so important to users? What made it successful?

6. Evaluation was used extensively during the development of the original Palm Pilot. From the reading, list the different techniques used, when they were used in the product development cycle, and their outcome for the product.

7. Explain how redesigning an interface could make a given processor feel faster. What was Haitani's response to the remarks such as "that's just one more tap" and "It would only take another second" on the interface design? 

8. What is a "Phone test"? Why was it so useful for the team? 

9. Why is it important to strike the right balance between predictability and consistency? 

10. Do you think that it will be possible to build a PC interface without a Save feature?

1. Fitts' law has been known as a method to predict the time required to move from a starting position to a final target area (pointing action). How can we apply Fitts' law to a scrolling task? What is the appropriate interpretation of D and W for a scrolling task? Compare the goal of the traditional Fitts' law and that of Fitts' law for scrolling in this paper.
2. Explain Figure 1. Why is the crossover effect important in comparing scrolling techniques?
3. What is the "two-handed approach" on document navigation techniques? From your experience, do you think that the two-handed approach would be better than the one-handed approach?
4. What are the main hypotheses presented in this paper?
5. What are the main contributions presented in this paper?
6. According to authors, what are the pros and cons of  the ScrollPoint device? What about the ScrollWheel?
7. How do the authors propose to address the main limitation of ScrollWheel? Which observation did lead the authors to their solution? Is this method used for other input devices?
8. Which tasks were selected for this experiment and why? Do you think that these tasks are representative of users activity and make it easy to gather reliable measurements?
9. What is the experimental design?
10. How were subjects selected for this experiment? What was the experimental procedure?
11. What are the results of the experiment?
12. What is the qualitative feedback gathered by the authors?
13. Looking at the results presented in this paper, propose a new design for a mouse based scrolling mechanism. 

1. What is the meaning of the sentence that "the most profound technologies are those that disappear" ? Explain the previous sentence, and provide an example related to computer technology.
2. Give two examples of technologies which "weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life"? How do you think these technologies were received when they were first introduced?
3. What does the author think is problematic about virtual reality? How could you explain his point of view? Do you think that his claims are application dependent?
4. What are the three scales of computing according to this paper? What is the mapping between devices and scale of use in the system presented in this paper? What are the main functions of each device?
5. What are the crucial differences between a pad and a conventional portable computer?
6. What are the 3 parts of the technology required for ubiquitous computing? Rank them by their degree of difficulties, and give a plausible solution for the problem of each part.
7. What kind of social issue does the author point out about the scenario of Sal's day?
8. Do you think that the vision proposed here will help everyday users address the information overload many are facing?
9. For each prediction presented in the paper, explain how accurate this prediction was. What was the role of technology and/or social constrains in making a prediction succeed or fail?
10. In the scenario presented at the end of the article, Sal found her manual because it was equipped with a digital tag. As illustrated by the story, there is a drawback of such approach for a manual. What is it? How will you address it?

1. Pick a technology used extensively today, and draw a parallel between this technology and the watch technology. When did the technology you picked cross the Chasm described by Moore.
2. What is the posture of the popular press during the technology-driven (or feature-driven) phase? What are the problems with their approach? How valid are their measurements? What are the effects of such measurements on products? In the long run, does this feedback help the intended users?
3. Compare early adopters and late adopters. Give examples off each adopter. What do they want from the products? What would be appropriate strategies to develop or sell your products to the early/late adopters?
4. What are the key characteristics of mature markets? What are the driving forces in such mature markets? Explain them. Provide an example of mature market today.
5. Since the market is dominated by late adopters in number, sometimes we underestimate the importance of early users. What is their role in the development of a new industry?
6. As a CEO of a company, what problems are you facing while crossing the chasm (what Moore calls the Tornado)?
7. What are the 3 legs of human-centered product development? Describe them and explain how they relate to each others.
8. Some might think that you should focus more on the user experience from the beginning of the product development because eventually late adopters choose the product by it. Criticize this way of thinking using the case of the Xerox Star and IBM PC (or Apple II).
9. What is a "killer application"? Using the case of Gertrude, explain how a killer application can bootstrap a full industry. What is the meaning of the "positioning" of the product? Why is it important?
10. What is the difference between users and customers?