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HCI and the IS Curriculum

HCI and the IS Curriculum. Dennis F. Galletta University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business. 1. Where does HCI fit?. Present: Short shrift Future: Should be required Why? Poor interfaces abound Why? Negroponte: developers use introspection How to fix? Requires lobbying

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HCI and the IS Curriculum

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  1. HCI and the IS Curriculum Dennis F. Galletta University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business

  2. 1. Where does HCI fit? • Present: Short shrift • Future: Should be required • Why? • Poor interfaces abound • Why? Negroponte: developers use introspection • How to fix? Requires lobbying • Role for SIG-HCI?

  3. 2. Attributes of a Successful HCI Course • Describes Practice • Based on Research • Engages the students (more later) • Classic readings for debate • Experiential exercises • Hands-on work • Application of concepts

  4. 3. What curriculum would be ideal? • For undergrad/grad, ideal might be • Tools course (VB.Net, Cold Fusion, C#, etc.) • HCI Concepts course (using an HCI in MIS text) • HCI Application course (large project integrating prerequisite tools and concepts courses) • While we all think HCI is important, curricular tradeoffs are difficult.

  5. 3. Curriculum: PhD level • Important courses: • Experimental design • Psychometrics • Multivariate stats / SEM • HCI Concepts course (using readings and/or text) • MIS Research project course (integrate above)

  6. 4. Integration into Existing Courses • HCI is usually discussed briefly in SA&D (or SD&I) course • Too much going on there for anything but a superficial view • That view could provide some essentials and “advertise” for full course • Introduce central role of iteration/testing • Compare GUIs and command interfaces • Direct Manipulation • Xerox Star  Macintosh  Windows evolution • Training and Documentation (Minimalism etc.) • How to evaluate an interface • 2-3 New technologies (use recent videos from ACM SIGCHI Conferences)

  7. 5. Content of the HCI Course • Assumptions: • MBA/MS level unless noted • All must be jammed into one course • Students have recent internship • Students have some programming background

  8. 5a. Assignments (graded) • First half: VB.Net • Executive Memos covering readings • Critique an Interface (even on ship!) (removed) • Design a text screen (Tullis software) • Design an icon (peer evaluated) • Major design project (present to class; Q&A)

  9. 5a. Assignments (in class) • Find flaws in interface (Molich & Nielsen, 1991) • Mental models (Meyer, 1981; Bransford and Johnson 1972) • Retroactive Inhibition (color names/text)

  10. Example: Retroactive Inhibition Red green blue black grey red brown yellow blue black green red yellow grey blue brown black red yellow green red black blue brown

  11. Example: Retroactive Inhibition Redgreenblueblackgreyredbrownyellowblueblackgreenredyellowgreybluebrownblackredyellowgreenredblackbluebrowngrey

  12. Example: Retroactive Inhibition ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀ ▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀▀

  13. 5b. Web Resources • HCI Bib at http://www.hcibib.org/ • HCI Webliography at http://www.hcibib.org/hci-sites/ • Shneiderman’s Book Site at http://www.aw-bc.com/DTUI/ • HCI Resource Network at http://www.hcirn.com/ • Web Design and Usability Guidelines at http://usability.gov/guidelines/ • Perlman’s suggested readings at http://hcibib.org/readings.html • Microsoft’s Inductive User Interface Guidelines at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwui/html/iuiguidelines.asp

  14. 5c. Readings (Master’s course) • Text – primary resource now that VB takes up half of course • Xerox Star (Bewley et al) • Web Pages that Suck.com • Consistency (Grudin)

  15. 106 readings Subdivided as follows: Previous experiments in this course (12) Overview & hard/soft science (7) GUIs and Direct Manipulation (8) Design Principles (6) “Damaged merchandise” and HCI Evaluation (7) Social Factors (5) Devices (11) Menus, command languages (2) Hypermedia (10) Task analysis/GOMS (6) Cognitive & other fit (7) Mental models/learning (13) Future technologies (12) 5c. Readings (PhD Level) Syllabus available at http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta/phdhci.html

  16. 5d. Cases • None used currently as assignments • Cover two cases in lecture • Olympic Message System as illustration of Gould’s 3 principles of design • Project Ernestine as illustration of value of GOMS • This area needs work in my course

  17. 5e. Experimental Research • Used in PhD course only • Have published: • 3 experiments (JMIS, CACM, AMIT) • 5 Conference papers (ICIS, AMCIS, HICSS) • Two await 1st revision (ISR, JAIS) • One in SIG-HCI pre ICIS workshop 2002

  18. 5e. Experimental Research • We have some news media experience as well, showing that the world cares about HCI research • June 1994: study with Ahuja, Hartman, Peace, Teo study reported in WSJ, Computerworld, Information Week, PC Magazine • April 1996: All Things Considered: Interview about Web usability difficulties • March 2003: study with Durcikova, Everard, Jones reported in Business Week, CNN.com, CNN TV, ABC, CBS, several newspapers, Minn. Public Radio, CBC, etc.

  19. WSJ Report • Pam Sebastian’s column • exceptionally thorough • faxed entire paper • allowed me to review a draft • Ironic Philippe Kahn juxtaposition

  20. CNN TV

  21. 5f. Videos • Several videos are available via ACM’s annual SIGCHI Conference • Extremely useful to illustrate research and/or future technology • Examples • Walking/flying in virtual reality • IBM’s mobile PDA Navipoint • Research channel from time to time • Conversa serious and humorous

  22. 6. How IS Version Differs From Others: A Paradox • We can say we stress organizational context and business value • However: • We cannot count on students’ ability to create a GUI program • We cannot count on students to have psychology background • Students have business context in previous courses • Therefore, one might conclude that business context is less needed because students already have it! • But the key is to apply principles to the business context • My course is taken after an internship, and shared experiences are a valuable component.

  23. Postscript: What we do well • We get paid for having a great deal of fun • We do studies that interest us • We make excellent use of our Public Relations person in our school • We make the Dean very happy

  24. Postscript: What I do poorly • Have trouble getting radio interviewers to allow names of co-authors (corollary: I do well taking all the credit for our projects!) • Integrate learning of tool with conceptual information • Spend too much time writing up the studies we do in the PhD course and too little time on the MBA level course: recent recovery of abysmal evals. • Do not think carefully enough about curricular issues

  25. HCI and the IS Curriculum Dennis F. Galletta University of Pittsburgh Katz Graduate School of Business

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