Spring 2019

Overview

This course is a broad graduate-level introduction to interaction design research. The course begins with seminal work on interactive systems, and moves through current and future research areas in interaction techniques and the design, prototyping, and evaluation of user interfaces. Topics include social computing, crowdsourcing, software tools, design and evaluation methods, ubiquitous and context-aware computing, tangible interfaces, and mobile interfaces.

COGS 230 / CSE 216 is a 4-unit course, open to all doctoral students. Students will need four skills: critically reading research papers, undertaking a small research project, giving a presentation, and writing a paper.
Masters students should have taken an intro HCI course like COGS 120 / CSE 170 Human-computer Interaction Design.
Undergrads may enroll in this course if they have two prerequisites: Cogs 14a or CSE 20, AND an A- or better in Cogs 120 or 102C.
Students registered for the class will receive a letter grade; the "credit/no credit" option is not available.
Students in this course are encouraged to enroll in the Design at Large seminar for 1 unit (details).

Course Structure

The course comprises two pieces: reading and discussing research papers, and a quarter-long research project.

For each class period, students will submit short commentaries on the assigned readings (submitted online in this format by 7am on the day of class). After 7am on the day of class, all commentaries will be made available for other students to read (again, through the online submission system). The discussion leader and course staff will all read these before class to prepare for discussion. Students are expected to do all of the readings; commentaries are only required for those marked on the syllabus.

Students will lead one class discussion each. In preparation for that, carefully read this explanation on how to structure a discussion. The discussant(s) should meet with the course staff at the end of the previous class - come to this meeting with a plan for your discussion. On discussion day, students submit their materials instead of their commentary using the online submission system. The discussant should read all student commentaries before class and integrate them into the discussion. Finally, the discussant is responsible for grading the student commentaries.