Last updated April 04, 2000 12:30 am

	Monday	Wednesday
Jan 17 & 19	No class - MLK Birthday	Introduction/overview
Jan 24 & 26	Overview - Needs & Evaluation	Evaluation of content: Trust
Jan 31 & Feb 1	Trust (Continued)	California Digital Library Presentation
Feb 7 & 9	CDL	Heuristics
Feb 14 & 16	Heuristics; Disabilities	Task analysis; Scenarios
Feb 21 & 23	No class - Presidents' Day	Walk-thrus
Feb 28 &  Mar 1	Usability testing, Principles of measurement & evaluation, Experimental design
Mar 6 & 8	Usability testing (Continued)	Surveys and Interviews
Mar 13 & 15	Focus groups	Guest speaker: Kevin McBride / IMS User Centered Design / IBM Santa Teresa Laboratory
Mar 20 & 22	Field observation and Ethnography
March 27 & 29	SPRING BREAK
Apr 3 & 5	Contextual Inquiry
Apr 10 & 12	Contextual Design
Apr 17 & 19	Logs & Monitoring	Ethics of Representation. Collecting data in cyberspace.
Apr 24 & 26	Wrap-up & Synthesis	NO CLASS
May 1 & 3	Final project reports
May 8	Scheduled last class but we will not meet

I. INTRODUCTION, OVERVIEW, PRINCIPLES, METHODS

1b. Jan 19 -- Introduction to the Course

IF YOU HAVEN'T ALREADY READ IT -- WAS ASSIGNED IN IS204, F99 -- THE MAY, 1999, ISSUE OF COMMUNICATIONS
OF THE ACM WAS ON USABILITY; PLEASE READ.

2a. Jan 24 --Needs  Assessment and Evaluation - Overview

• Nielsen, Usability Engineering -- NOT IN READER 

ch 1, Exec summary
ch 2, What is usability
ch 4, Usability engineering life cycle
also look at p. 224

• Preece, Jenny, ed. Guide to Usability: Human Factors in Computing, Addison-Wesley, 1993; ch 6, "Evaluation."  

• Articles about why trust and credibility are problems on the Web:  

NY Times 3/4/99 - Whales in the Minnesota River?
NY Times 2/26/99 - Caveat Emptor on the Web: Ad and Editorial Lines Blur.

• Information Quality on the Web
• Evaluating Web Resources by Jan Alexander and Marsha Ann Tate
• Nielsen's AlertBox on Trust and Web Design 
• Practical guide to evaluating info quality, from Johns Hopkins' Eisenhower Library (Note: this is a slightly updated URL-- is a page linked from the one we had linked to before -- Jan/25 9:00PM) 

 
• Recommended (in reader): Nancy A. Van House, Mark H. Butler, Lisa R. Schiff.  "Cooperative Knowledge Work and Practices of Trust: Sharing Environmental Planning Data Sets."  CSCW ’98: The ACM Conference On Computer Supported Cooperative Work.  Seattle, WA,  November 14-18, 1998, Proceedings; ACM, 1998,  pp. 335-343. 
• Marchionini, Information Seeking in Electronic Environments, ch 3 
• Schamber, "Relevance and Information Behavior" Annual Review of Information Science and Technology 29 (1994) p. 3-48.  
• Spool, Jared M., and others. Web Site Usability: a Designer's Guide.  Morgan Kaufmann, 1999. CHs. 1, 2, 6 Annotated table of contents: http://world.std.com/~uieweb/booktoc.htm 

4b. Feb 9-- Heuristics & Standards

• Nielsen UE ch 5 Not in reader 
• Nielsen & Mack UIM ch 2  Not in reader 

 
• Buie, Elizabeth.  "HCI Standards: a Mixed Blessing."  Interactions vi.2 (March-April 1999) p. 36-42. 

Includes references and links to most major HCI standards.
NOTE: This article is missing from the reader, but it can be found online (PDF format) at http://www.acm.org/pubs/contents/journals/interactions/1999-6/#2
• Instone, Keith, "Site Usability Evaluation" http://webreview.com/wr/pub/97/10/10/usability/index.html 
• Instone, Keith. "Usability Heuristics for the Web" http://webreview.com/wr/pub/97/10/10/usability/sidebar.html 
• Society for Technical Communication list and links to standards and guidelines 

http://stc.org/pics/usability/resources/index.html
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (e.g., for disabled users)  http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ 

In this reader under the unit on accessibilty.

5a. Feb 14- Disabled users

Resources for Web Accessibility: 

• Web Accessibility Initiative

http://www.w3.org/WAI/
• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
• Usability Interface, October 1999, Vol. 6, No. 1 -Usability and Accessibility 
• Working Together: People with Disabilities and Computer Technology by Sheryl Burgstahler
• Web Accessessiblity Initiative by Whitney Quesenbery
• Accommodating Color Blindness by Paul Hoffman

II. NEEDS ASSESSMENT, REQUIREMENTS ANALYSIS

5b. Feb. 16 - Task Analysis & Scenarios

• Fuccella, Jeanette and Jack Pizzolato, Creating Web Site Designs Based on User Expectations and Feedback. ITG  

Newsletter 1.1 June 1998 http://www.sandia.gov/itg/newsletter/june98/web_design.html
Simple but useful overview of many methods.
 
• Hackos, JoAnn T. and Janice C.Redish. User and Task Analysis for Interface Design. Wiley, 1998.  chs. 1-3 and p. 322-9. 
• The following readings are now OPTIONAL instead of required. 2/14/00
• Carroll, John, ed. Scenario-Based Design. 1995 John Wiley & Sons 
• Kuutti, ch 1  
• Carey and Rusli, ch 7

6a. Feb. 21 - NO CLASS, PRESIDENTS' DAY

6b. Feb. 23 - Walk-throughs

• Nielsen & Mack, chs 1, 3, 5, 6 Not in reader 

 

 

Reminder: Assignment 2 is due today.

7. Feb 28, Mar 1 & 8a. Mar 6- Usability Testing / Principles of Measurement and Evaluation /Experimental design

• Nielsen, Usability Engineering, ch 6, "Usability Testing"   Not in reader 
• Rubin, Handbook of Usability Testing, Table of Contents (a good summary of steps of usability testing); and Ch. 2, "Overview of Usability Testing."

(This is an excellent resource and well worth buying if you are serious about usability testing. $45 in paper.)
• Usability Testing" From Behavior and Information Technology 13: 1-2, Jan-April, 1994, Special issue on usability labs:  

          Blatt, Louis, and others, "Designing and equipping a usability laboratory." 
          Faith, Janet L. and others, "A practical guide to using software usability labs." 
          Bevan, Nigel, and Miles MacLeod, "Usability measurement in context." 

 

If you are not familiar with measurement (especially reliability and validity), sampling, and/or social science research methods, read about them in any quantitative social science research methods text. We will put on informal reserve within South Hall the following:  (Not in reader -- on informal reserve in the Computer Lab)

Singleton, Straits, Straits, and McAllister. Approaches to Social Research. Oxford Univ Press, 1988:

CH. 4, Elements of Research Design

Ch. 5, Measurement
Ch 6, Sampling

Also recommended: Joseph S. Dumas, Janice C. Redish. A Practical Guide to Usability Testing, Ablex, 1993. 

 

If you are unfamiliar with experimental design, read -- not in reader:
Singleton et al -- or another social science research methods text  Not in reader

ch 7 - Experimentation
ch 8 - Experimental design

Microsoft - Usability Home Page - Information about facilities and examples of their work.

Sun Usability Lab - Information on sevices including equipment and staff cost and a very good summary on usability engineering general -- according to last year's students. 

Society for Technical Communication - Their usability toolkit has guidelines and sample forms for usability testing.

 

• Singleton, Straits, Straits, and McAllister. Approaches to Social Research. Oxford Univ Press, 1988. (on informal reserve within South Hall; not in reader)  ch 9, survey research; ch 10, survey instrumentation.  If you plan to do surveys and/or interviews, you need to learn the basics about survey research and interviewing, and then how it can be adapted to your situation.  Most social science research texts cover these topics, and there are many books out that treat them in depth.  Nielsen on web surveys -- "Collecting Feedback from Users of an Archive."   http://www.useit.com/alertbox/990110.html

 
• Schmidt, WIlliam C.  "World Wide Web Survey  Research: Benefits, Potential Problems, Solutions." Behavior Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers 29 (2) 1997 p. 274-9. 

9b. Mar 15 - Focus Groups

• David L. Morgan, Focus Groups as Qualitative Research, Sage, 1988; p. 53-71.  
• Krueger, Richard A. Focus Groups, 2^nd ed. Sage, 1994; 

" Asking questions" p. 53 -69. 

• Nielsen, Usability Engineering, p. 214-217. Not in reader 
• Gaiser, Ted J.  "Conducting On-Line Focus Groups."  Social Science Computer Review 15:2 (SUmmer 1997) p. 135-144. 
• See also -- not in  reader: 
• Pushing Methodological Boundaries: On-Line Focus Groups --  Interview with Ted J. Gaiser
• Nielsen, Jakob (1997) The Use and Misuse of Focus Groups. 

See also Estimated Cost of Running a Focus Group (sidebar to article).   http://www.useit.com/papers/focusgroups.html Not in reader

RECOMMENDED

• Sullivan, Patricia (1991) Multiple Methods and the Usability of Interface Prototypes: The Complementarity of Laboratory Observation and Focus Groups (requires ACM account). ACM Ninth International Conference on Systems Documentation, p.106-112   (not in reader) 
• Greenbaum, Thomas L. (1997) The Handbook For Focus Group Research (2nd ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 

10. March 20 & 22- Field observation & Ethnography

These readings overlap somewhat but each offers something that the others don't. 

• Blomberg, Jeanette L. "Ethnography: aligning field studies of work and system design." in Monk, Andrew F., and G. Nigel Gilbert, eds., Perspectives on HCI: Diverse Approaches. ch 8, p. 173-197. Academic Press, 1995.  
• Blomberg, Jeanette, Jean Giacomi, Andrea Mosher, Pat Swenton-Wall, "Ethnographic Field Methods and their Relation to Design." Douglas Schuler and Aki Namioka, eds.. Participatory Design: Principles and Practices. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993; p. 123-155.  
• Brun-Cottan, Francoise and Patricia Wall (1995). "Using Video to Re-Present the User." Communications of the ACM 38 (5): 61-71.  
• Hughes, John, and others. "Ethnography in Interactive Systems Design." Interactions II.2 April 1995 p. 58-65.  
• Jordan, Brigitte, "Ethnographic Workplace Studies and CSCW," Shapiro, Dan, and others, eds., The Design of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware Systems, Elsevier, 1996, ch 3, p. 17-42.  
• Recommended: not in reader: Paul Dourish and Graham Button. 1996. "Technomethodology: Paradoxes and Possibilities." In Proc. ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems CHI'96 (Vancouver, Canada). New York: ACM. http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/Button/jpd_txt.htm

MARCH 27 & 29 -- SPRING BREAK

• H. Beyer and K. Holtzblatt. Contextual Design.

Interactions  vi.1 (Jan-Feb 1999) p. 32-42.
• H. Beyer and K. Holtzblatt. 1998. Contextual Design: Defining Customer-Centered Systems. San Francisco, CA:Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, Inc.  


ch. 3, "Principles of Contextual Inquiry"
ch. 6, "Work Models"

ALSO READ (not in reader):

ch. 8, "Consolidation"
ch. 9, "Creating One View of the Customer"
ch. 11-15, Contextual Design
 
 

For more info, see their website  http://www.incent.com

13a. Apr 17 - Logs and Monitoring

• Nielsen, Usability Engineering, p. 217-221. Not in reader 
• James E. Gaskin, User Monitoring Drives Site Designs

Inter@ctive Week, December 14, 1998
• Bill Winnet, Tracking Your Visitors Webmonkey / e-business, Apr. 1998

          Lesson 1: Tracking Your Visitors 
          Lesson 2: Long Distance Data Tracking 
          Lesson 3: Troubles With Tracking 
• Web Server Transaction Log Analysis Results - A case study of analysis of EPA Web server logs. 


Additional resources about "browser cookies" and user privacy issues.

13b. Apr 19 - Ethics of Representation 

• Suchman, Lucy. Making work visible. CACM 38:9 (Sept. 1995) p. 56-64.  
• Muller, Michael J. Ethnocritical questions for working with translations, interpretation, and their stakeholders. CACM 38:9 (Sept. 1995) p. 64-65.  
• Bannon, Liam J. The politics of design: representing work. CACM 38:9 (Sept. 1995) p. 66-68.  

- Collecting data in cyberspace

• Thomas, Jim. Introduction: a debate about ethics of fair practices for collecting social science data in cyberspace. The Information Society 12:2 (1996) p. 107-118. 
• King, Storm A. Researching internet communities: proposed ethical guidelines for the reporting of results. The Information Society 12:2 (1996) p. 119-128.  
• Max, Gary T.  Ethics for the New Surveillance.  The Information Society 14: 171-185, 1998. 

14b. Apr 26 - NO CLASS

May 1st – Deadline to turn in project drafts for review

5. May 1, 3- Final project presentations.

• 15-20 min. presentation per project.