SWE 632: User Interface Design and Development

Fall 2024Tuesday, 4:30pm-7:10pm, Exploratory Hall L102


Grades • Syllabus, Schedule, and Slides • Announcements, Assignments, Discussion (Piazza)

Course Overview

This course will provide a comprehensive introduction to human-computer interaction and the design and development of user interfaces, covering basic human cognition, methods for needfinding and prototyping, user-centered design, empirical and analytical methods for conducting usability evaluations, and principles for visual, information, interaction, and community design.

Learning Outcomes

Required Textbooks

Course Staff

Instructor: Prof. Thomas LaToza (tlatoza@gmu.edu)
   Office hours by appointment.
Teaching Assistant: Umama Dewan (udewan@gmu.edu)
Office hours: Mondays 3-5pm

Schedule

Preliminary Schedule, subject to change. Lecture titles link to lecture slides.

1. Course Overview and Heuristic Evaluation, React Tech Talk (8/27)

Req Readings: none

2. Human Cognition (9/3)

Req Readings: HWs: HW0 due, Tech Talk signup due

3. User-Centered Design (9/10)

Req Reading:

4. Contextual Inquiry (9/17)

Req Reading: Beyer and Holtzblatt, Apprenticing with the customer, CACM 38 (5)
HWs: HW1 due

5. Sketching and Prototyping (9/24)

Req Readings: HWs: HW2 due

6. Think-aloud Usability Evaluations (10/1)

Req Reading: Krug, Chapter 9, Usability Testing on 10 cents a Day
HWs: HW3 due

7. Midterm Exam (10/8)

8. Site Design (10/15)

Req Readings:

9. Interaction Techniques (10/22)

Req Readings: HWs: HW4 due

10. Preventing Error (10/29)

Req Reading: HWs: HW5 due

(11/5) – NO CLASS – ELECTION DAY

11. Visual Design (11/12)

Req Reading (distributed as pdf): Mullet and Sano, Chapter 4, Designing Visual Interfaces

12. Information Visualization (11/19)

Req Reading (distributed as pdf): Card, Mackinlay, and Shneiderman, Chapter 1, Information Visualization
HWs: HW6 Due

13. Community Design (11/26)

Req Reading: HWs: HW7 Due

14. Final Presentations (12/3)

Req Reading: none

Final Exam: Tuesday, December 17, 4:30-7:15pm

Course Policies

Contacting

If you have a general question about an assignment or course content, first check piazza to see if someone has already answered your question. If not, post your question in piazza, where your question may be answered by other students or the course staff. For questions about grades, contact one of the TAs by email.

Office Hours

Office hours this semester are by appointment. Please email the instructor or course TA to make an appointment.

Readings

We will have readings from the textbooks Krug and Norman. Additionally, several readings will be chapters from other books, which will be available electronically through Blackboard. All readings are listed in the course schedule. Material covered in the readings may appear in the midterm and final exams.

Resources

The course website lists the sylabus, course schedule, and links to the lecture slides. Assignments and announcements as well as discussion will be posted on Piazza. Grades will be posted on Blackboard.

Exams

There will be a midterm exam and a comprehensive final exam. Both will be closed-book and in-class. Exams will cover material from the lectures as well as from the assigned readings.

Makeups

Unless arrangements are worked out in advance, missed exams cannot be made up. As some of the HW assignments involve peer evaluations where groups give and receive feedback with other groups, late HW submissions impact not only the groups themselves but other students in the course. Thus, 10% will be deducted for late HW assignments and late HW assignments will only be accepted for 24 hours after the due date. HW assignments submitted more than 24 hours late will receive a zero. If you’re worried about being busy around the time of a HW submission, please plan ahead and get started early.

In-Class Activities

As user interface design requires achieving a mastery of design skills, each class will include an extended in-class group activity. Each activity will result in a small deliverable, often in the form of a sketch or a list. In-class activities will each be worth 10 points and will be graded for participation as follows:

Satisfactory: put forth a good effort in accomplishing the activity's goals (10/10)
Needs improvement: substantially misunderstood the activity or did not make meaningful progress (5/10)
Not present: did not submit deliverable from activity (0/10)

To accomodate planned or unplanned absences, the three lowest scores (including absences) will be dropped.

Assignments

The homeworks in the course will be in the form of a project. You will first design and implement a simple UI in the form of a web app. Throughout the semester, you will perform peer evaluations, identifying usability issues with the UI of apps built by other students in the course. Based on the reported usability issues you receive, you will then iteratively redesign and improve the usability of your web app to address these issues. Full details for each HW can be found in the HW Assignment descriptions; the due dates are summarized in the course schedule.

You are allowed to work on the HWs collaboratively using one of two models:

  1. Work on and submit all HWs independently.
  2. Collaborate from start to finish on all HWs with at most two other students in SWE 632. You must submit one solution as a group for each HW. Additionally, each group member will separately submit a peer evaluation, describing the involvement of each group member (including themselves) in the HW assignment.

Note: You are NOT ALLOWED to include “guest names.” Every person listed as a collaborator must contribute. If someone is listed as a collaborator but did not contribute, all will be given a zero on the assignment and reported to the university honor committee.

Tech Talks

Each student will be responsible for giving a short group presentation surveying a front-end web technology. Each group will consist of 3 students. See the Tech Talks posting on piazza for more details.

SWE Subject Pool

To gain experience in user studies, you will participate in the software engineering subject pool and sign up for at least 6 hours of programming user studies or complete an alternative assignment. See the SWE Subject Pool posting on piazza for more details.

Grading

In-Class Activities: 10%
Tech talk: 5%
HWs and project presentation: 30%
SWE Subject Pool participation: 10%
Mid-term exam: 20%
Final exam: 25%

Letter Grades

Course letter grades will be assigned based on the following cutoffs (the minimum required percentage to achieve a specific letter grade):

LMS

This course will use Canvas for the Fall 2024 semester. Please ensure you are familiar with accessing and navigating this platform. Resources and support are available here to help you get started. If you have any questions, do not hesitate to reach out to me or contact the ITS Support Center for assistance.

George Mason Common Course Policies

You can find a number of important Mason policies on the Common Course Policies Page.