Human Factors in Information Design
Courses
HF 700 Foundations in Human Factors (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID, MSIT, e-business concentrators/certificate candidates or HFID concentrators.
Designing intuitive, self-revealing products requires understanding the human factors that underlie the user's interaction with the product. This course introduces the applied theories relevant to the design of information products, training programs, or user interface designs. Particularly relevant to those working with critical applications, diverse user populations, and new technologies, the course helps students to create applications compatible with the strengths and weaknesses of the user's information processing systems. Students learn to anticipate user requirements before product development, to explain the user's performance during usability and prototype testing, and to foster a smooth transition for users facing new technologies or information.
HF 710 Managing a User-Centered Design Team (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID and MSIT candidates or MBA HFID concentrators
Addresses methods and tools that information designers can use to integrate user-centered design approaches and human-factors principles to enhance the usability of information products. Through readings, short papers and team projects, students examine common project-management problems that can adversely affect usability, define the implications of those problems for the user interface, and apply selected project-management techniques for anticipating and managing usability issues. Lectures, discussions and assignments focus on various user-centered design methodologies and human-factors techniques, and examine implementing these approaches in the project environment. Course materials and activities focus on processes such as creating user-centered project environments that support a human-factors approach to user-interface design, setting and evaluating project performance standards. Students examine and define metrics (ROI) for evaluating the effectiveness of the usability effort.
HF 715 User Experience Boot Camp (3 credits)
Note: This course is mandatory for students in the MSHFID On-Line Program. It is restricted to MSHFID On-line program students.
This five-day program offers on-line program students an opportunity to explore and develop the skill component of many of the program's classes including user requirements gathering, field methods, prototyping and usability testing. This experience has been created as a complement to the online experience in each of these classes. The program is held primarily in the Design and Usability Center while select experiences will take students into the field. Immersion in the user-centered design experience during a full-week of interactive discussions, an expert panel presentation, site tours, and hands-on workshops is the focus of the week. Over the course of the five days, students will experience the entire user-centered design life-cycle. Interaction/networking with program faculty and current students and alumni from the on-campus program is included in the week's activities.
HF 720 Localization and the Global Market (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID and MSIT candidates or MBA HFID concentrators
In today's global marketplace, long-term success requires a strategy for tailoring products to the requirements of the international community. This course introduces participants to the theory and practice of internationalizing all aspects of a technology business, including documentation, training, user interface, and marketing. Moving beyond the simple translation of language, this course addresses internationalization from the more comprehensive perspective of cultural theory. The course begins by recognizing the ethnocentric biases that affect all aspects of information design, then proposes a strategy for creating a globalized core design for all aspects of the product line. Working from this globalized core, developers can more easily and economically tailor product design to serve the needs of a local community. The course will focus on the major markets for technology, medical and scientific products, including Japan, China, France, Germany and England.
HF 730 Visualizing Information (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID, HFID or IMG concentrators
Examines the theory and practice of designing dynamic visualizations that clarify thinking, facilitate problem solving, and foster creativity. This course helps students to harness their visual and creative potential and to display this potential in the visual medium. In practice, students will learn to make large collections of verbal and numerical data accessible through carefully crafted visual displays. The unique strengths and weaknesses of both words and visuals are analyzed. Advancing from this analysis, the course helps students design a visual-verbal system where the strengths of one medium support the weaknesses of the other. This complementary system more fully integrates visual and verbal information, thereby dramatically improving the reader's understanding and retention of the communication design.
HF 740 Information Architecture: User-Centered Design for the World Wide Web (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID and MSIT candidates or MBA HFID concentrators
Applies human factors design principles, strategies, and best practices in creating various types of web sites. Incorporates the information and knowledge needs of users, clients, product design teams, management and other constituencies involved in creating, implementing, maintaining and using information on the World Wide Web. Topics include the user-centered design process, form and function, technology and usability issues, site types and organization, information categorization and labeling systems, global and local navigation systems, searching and browsing systems, accessibility, interactivity, page layout, template design, prototyping, modularity, scalability, maintenance and management. Students learn to identify for different audiences the value of using information architecture principles and best practices to design highly functional web sites and web applications. Includes individual and group projects.
HF 750 Testing and Assessment Programs (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID, MSIT, and MBA e-business concentrators/certificate candidates or MBA HFID concentrators
Presents the principles, methods and tools for addressing usability issues. Topics covered include processes for assessing the usability of the communicative aspects of the human-computer interface in software applications, web sites and other forms of interactive media. Students will plan and administer tests and other means of product assessment through simulated usability problems and case studies. Human-computer interfaces and various forms of documentation (print and electronic) used in assignments and exercises will range from prototype to released products.
HF 751 Measuring the User Experience (3 credits)
Prerequisite(s): HF 750
Covers more advanced assessment techniques than studied in HF750, such as usability benchmarking, competitive testing, and special studies that require advanced measurement skills. The content goes beyond usability to focus on two new overlapping areas: hedonomics and the user experience. These new areas focus less on productivity and more on the broader emotional experience with products and services. The course examines metrics suitable for assessing the contribution of the user experience to the business bottom line. The core learning activity is a field-based experience where student teams conduct research, prepare a detailed report and deliver a presentation to the sponsoring organization. In addition, influential thought leaders from the user experience community contribute to the class.
HF 755 Special Topics in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID, MSIT, MBA e-business, HFID concentrators or e-business certificate candidates.
Builds expertise for the HCI professional in a wide range of subspecialties related to human behavior and user-centered design. Three 5-week modules on selected topics in HCI are taught by faculty with specialties in requirements gathering, web accessibility, interface design, inspection methods, intelligent agents, and remote usability testing. Students are graded for each module, with the three grades combined for the final class grade. Modules change each semester.
HF 760 Intelligent User Interfaces (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID and MSIT candidates or MBA HFID concentrators
Introduces students to the theory and practice of engineering expert knowledge into system designs. To overcome the limitations of human processing capabilities, the technology industry must increasingly move from a model of providing support, training and documentation in forms external to the system, to a model where this information is seamlessly integrated in the larger system design. Early examples of knowledge-based subsystems include wizards, agents and expert system support. The very nature of expert knowledge, its value to the expert, and the way in which the expert constructs this knowledge are key elements of the course. Students learn to develop strategies for collecting and organizing knowledge from experts, and study ways to integrate expert knowledge in system designs. The course relies heavily on experts from local research and development labs.
HF 770 Prototyping Theory and Practice (3 credits)
Note: Program director approval required for all students except MSHFID, MSIT, and e-business MBA concentrators/certificate candidates or MBA HFID concentrators
Offers students broad exposure to prototyping methods that can be used at different stages of the product-development cycle. The methods range from minimalist scenario prototypes to hi-fidelity software simulations. The characteristics, limitations, business impact, and resource requirements of each method are critically reviewed. Research from business, human factors and usability journals complements practical guidelines. Each class has prototyping exercises and demonstrations to complement reference materials. Prototyping projects are chosen about midway through the course, and executive summaries presented during the last class. Students also learn about the social and political issues involved in bringing prototyping into the product-development lifecycle.
HF 780 Field Methods (3 credits)
Note: MSHFID Program Director approval required for all students except MSHFID, MSIT, MBA E-Business or HFID concentrators.
Places the concept of field research within the user-centered design lifecycle. Methods examined in the class include contextual inquiry, ethnographic survey, card sorts, and cognitive task analysis; how the methods are used, and how collected data fits with business and technical requirements. The course covers the design, planning and delivery of a field study, including preparation, sample definition, administration, and data analysis. Students will examine how the data analysis informs the design process. Special emphasis will be placed on different types of user populations and how they affect the way the field research is implemented. Guest speakers and intensive workshop exercises will be interspersed with lecture. Articles will be discussed during class.
HF 790 Internship in HFID (3 credits)
Prerequisite(s): HF 700 and HF 750
Provides students the opportunity to integrate the classroom experience in a diverse range of field experiences in leading high-tech and web development groups. HF 790 requires the development of an educational plan to identify the student's career goals and how those goals can be enhanced through the internship experience. Requires close coordination with the internship coordinator and regular meetings with the coordinator throughout the semester.
HF 799 Research Methods for Human Factors (3 credits)
Note: Program Director approval needed for all but MSHFID or MSIT candidates
This class prepares students to engage in professional and scholarly research in human-centered design with an emphasis on human factors and usability. By critiquing research methodologies and methods from journal and practitioner publications, students will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of particular research designs. Through lectures, readings, and interactive classroom discussions of research studies from the fields of human factors and information design, students will learn how to apply the most appropriate research methodologies and methods to particular research problems. The first part of the course engages students in debates concerning conflicting research traditions and methodologies applied to human factors. After students understand the rationales of differing research traditions, they will be expected to employ and justify the best research approaches to investigate and solve problems of human factors, usability, and design development.
