612: Pervasive Interaction Design

Computation is moving off of the desktop and into users’ environments and onto their bodies. The field of Pervasive (aka Ubiquitous) Computing looks at how to design, build, and evaluate systems and applications in this emerging world of everywhere, always on, always connected devices. This world presents enormous opportunities as well as enormous challenges. The Pervasive Interaction Design (PIxD) course seeks to provide students with perspectives, techniques, and hands on experience that will allow them to engage with these increasingly important technologies. 

Learning Goals

After taking 612, students should be able to:

1. Use best practices to design, prototype, and evaluate pervasive computing applications.
2. Describe key themes and issues from the pervasive computing literature in terms of their impact on design.
3. Critique and defend design decisions for pervasive applications grounded in the HCI, CSCW, and Pervasive Computing literature.

712: Research Topics in Pervasive Computing

Research in Pervasive Computing seeks to extend our knowledge about how to design, build, and evaluate pervasive computing systems that meet human needs. This course will survey literature from the fields of HCI and Ubiquitous/Pervasive Computing that address key topics in the area. In addition, novel research methods that have been developed and applied in pervasive computing will be studied and applied. 

Learning Goals

After taking 712, students should be able to:

1. Describe contemporary research topics in pervasive computing, including seminal work and open research questions.
2. Describe common human-centered methods used in pervasive computing research and apply one or more methods in a substantial research project.
3. Execute a project that advances knowledge on a research question of interest to the pervasive computing research community.