This
course takes you through the first eight lessons of CS6750:
Human-Computer Interaction as taught in the Georgia Tech Online Master
of Science in Computer Science program.
In this course, you’ll take the first steps toward being a solid HCI
practitioner and researcher. You’ll learn the fundamentals of how HCI
relates to fields like user experience design, user interface design,
human factors engineering, and psychology. You’ll also learn how
human-computer interaction has influence across application domains like
healthcare and education; technology development like virtual and
augmented reality; and broader ideas like context-sensitive computing
and information visualization.
You’ll then dive into the fundamentals of human-computer interaction.
You’ll learn three views of the user’s role in interface design: the
behaviorist ‘processor’ view, the cognitivist ‘predictor’ view, and the
situationist ‘participant’ view. You’ll discover how these different
views of the user’s role affect the scope we use to evaluate
interaction. These perspectives will be crucial as you move forward in
designing interfaces to ensure you’re considering what goes on inside
the user’s head, as well as in the environment around them.
You’ll then learn the gulfs of execution and evaluation, which
determine how easily the user can accomplish their goals in a system and
how well they can understand the results of their actions. All of user
interface design can be seen as taking steps to bridge these gulfs.
You’ll also investigate the notion of direct manipulation, which
shortens the distance between the user and the objects they are
manipulating in the interface. With these tools, you’ll be well-equipped
to start designing effective interfaces.
You’ll then take a deeper dive into what humans are even capable of
accomplishing. You’ll learn the limitations of human sensing and memory
and how we must be aware of the cognitive load we introduce on the user
while using our interfaces. Cognitive load can have an enormous impact
on a user’s satisfaction with an interface, and must be kept in mind as
you begin your career as a designer.
You’ll finally conclude with an overview of the major design
principles in human-computer interaction. Curated from the work of Don
Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Ronald Mace, Larry Constantine, and Lucy
Lockwood, these design principles cover revolutionary ideas in the
design of interfaces: discoverability, affordances, perceptibility,
constraints, error tolerance, and more. These principles are crucial
whether you move forward as a designer, an evaluator, a front-end
engineer, or any other role in technology design.
By the end of the course, you’ll have an understanding of where HCI
sits in the broader field, a grasp of the goals of HCI, and a foundation
in core principles that inform interface design.
