CS 279: Topics in HCI Research

Course Information

Meeting time: Tu., Th., 10:30-11:45

Location: MD 221

Instructor: Krzysztof Gajos

Krzysztof's office hours: sign up online (you can sign up for as many slots as you need)

Prerequisites: None for CS graduate students; for undergrads CS 179 is strongly recommended and permission of the instructor is required. Masters students welcome, but come to first class and talk to the instructor to make sure the course is a good fit for your needs. Basic web hacking ability is required to implement and deploy web-based experiments.

Previous offerings: Fall 2017

About the Course

The course explores major areas of inquiry and core research methods in Human-Computer Interaction including experimental design, statistical data analysis, and qualitative methods. Activities will include discussion of primary literature, a small number of lectures, assignments (design, execution and analysis of both lab-based and on-line experiments), and a research project.

Designed for first year grads from all areas. Advanced undergraduates welcome, particularly those who wish to do research (or write a thesis) in an area related to Human-Computer Interaction.

Course Objectives

This course will introduce you to the current research topics in Human-Computer Interaction and it will give you opportunity to learn and practice some of the fundamental research methods (experiment design, data analysis). The final research project (usually done in pairs) will give you a chance to generate your own novel HCI research contribution. The focus this year is on social computing and crowd-powered systems, but we will visit many other major topics in HCI. For final projects, you will be encouraged to engage this year's theme, but well motivated requests to do something different will be considered (though not always granted).

After taking this class:

  • you will be able to conduct informative, rigorous, and ethical research with human participants;
  • you will have gained knowledge and skills on how to build systems that allow communities of people to collaborate on non-trivial tasks online;
  • you will have good understanding of modern HCI research.

Course Format

This is a seminar-style course. During most meetings, we will discuss research papers (which you will have read and provided written feedback on prior to class). There will also be occasional lectures, in-class presentation and discussion of project proposals, and some in-class design activities.

There will be a small number of formal homework assignments and a substantial final research project (typically done in teams of 2 or 3).

Expectations

This is a seminar-style course. All students are expected to:

  • read papers prior to the class and provide written comments on each;
  • attend the class regularly --- a lot of the learning will happen through the in-class discussions;
  • lead the discussion once or twice during the semester;
  • the final projects are expected to be plausible attempts at novel HCI research.

Grading

Grading will be based on:

  • final project: 60%
  • the assignments: 20%
  • written responses to the papers: 10%
  • contributions to in-class discussions: 10%

What to do if you absolutely have to miss a class

Email the class list (not just the instructor) prior to missing the class and offer your apologies. In this class, we learn from each other so your absence will have a negative impact on the learning experience of others. You do not have to divulge the reason for your absence if it is something personal that you would prefer to keep private.

What to do if some piece of course technology fails

It is unlikely, but possible, that some piece of technology we use in the course breaks. For example, I may forget to upload the paper you are supposed to read, the Canvas site may go dead, etc. If you detect a problem, please follow these steps:

  1. See if you can come up with a quick fix (e.g., can you find the paper elsewhere else on the internet?)
  2. Email the course mailing list (not just the instructor) to report the problem (and perhaps to share your fix). Emailing the whole class will help make sure that everyone is on the same page and that if somebody else has found a solution, they can share it quickly.
  3. Do as much of the work as you can.
  4. Do not panic if the instructor does not respond immediately -- if there is a problem beyond your control, I will accept late work without penalty.

Laptop/tablet/phone policy

To be decided collectively early in the semester.

Collaboration policy

In this class, as in research, learning from others is key --- you are free to discuss any aspect of most assignments or projects with others. But you must acknowledge any source of substantial help. We will provide more specific collaboration policies for each of the assignments and for the project.

Diversity and inclusion

In an ideal world, science would be objective. However, much of what we know about design is subjective, reflects the behaviors and preferences of a non-representative sample of the world's population, and is historically built on a small subset of privileged voices. In this class, we will make an effort to read papers from a diverse group of scientists, but limits still exist on this diversity. I acknowledge that it is possible that there may be both overt and covert biases in the material due to the lens with which it was written or because of how the participants contributing to the research were chosen. Integrating a diverse set of values, abilities, cultures, etc. is important for building design knowledge that equitably benefits everyone. I would like to discuss issues of diversity in design as part of the course from time to time.

Please contact me if you have any suggestions to improve the quality and diversity of the course materials.

Furthermore, I would like to create a learning environment in our class that supports a diversity of thoughts, perspectives and experiences, and honors your identities (including race, gender, class, sexuality, socioeconomic status, religion, ability, etc.). I (like many people) am still in the process of learning about diverse perspectives and identities. If something was said in class (by anyone) that made you feel uncomfortable, please talk to me about it.

If you feel like your performance in the class is being impacted by your experiences outside of class, please don’t hesitate to come and talk with me.

As a participant in course discussions, you should also strive to honor the diversity of your classmates.

(I was inspired by Dr. Monica Linden at Brown University to include this statement.)

Accommodations for students with disabilities

If you have a health condition that affects your learning or classroom experience, please let me know as soon as possible. I will, of course, provide all the accommodations listed in your AEO letter (if you have one), but I find that sometimes we can do even better if a student helps me understand what really matters to them.