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Department of Information Science and Telecommunications

 

INFSCI 2470 - Interactive System Design

(Spring 2002, CRN 21653)


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INFSCI 2470 Course Books

SIS Interactive System Design course is unique in the sense that you will need to learn several things in parallel. You have to get a good overview of the Human-Computer Interface Design field, master key design principles and evaluation techniques. At the same time, you have to get a practical experience in designing, developing, and evaluating interactive systems. No single book can provide all necessary readings. The books choosen by the instructor as main course books provide a good coverage of the course content without breaking your budget. The course readings will be assigned from these books. Those who need some more advanced treatment of selected course topics could use additional recommeded books. You may be able to get some of these books in the University Book Center, however, it could be a better choice to buy them on the internet (new or used) or from your fellow students. One main course book and all the recommended books have been reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library. You can locate the reserved books through Course Reserves.

Main course books

Learning the principles of Human-Computer Interface Design:

An excellent textbook of Shneiderman will serve as one of our main course books. This book does not cover the whole course content. Moreover, only about half of this book will be used direcly in this coure. Still it provides a very good overview of the Human-Computer Interface Design field and could be a good investment for those who choose an Information Science career. The insructor strongly recommends you to get a copy of this book. For several reasons, this book has not been ordered for you through the Book Center. This book has been used for IS 2470 in the past, so you may have a good chance to borrow/buy it from the students who took this course in the past. It was reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library. If you choose not to purchase it, make sure that you do your readings in the Library.

Designing the User Interface : Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction
Ben Shneiderman
3rd Edition (2nd edition will also work)
Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 1998, 640 pp.
ISBN: 0201694972

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($67 new; $40 used)

Mastering the Design and Evaluation of Human Computer Interfaces

The Shneiderman textbook focuses on basic principles and does not provide a hands-on guide on designing and evaluating interactive systems. Instead of requiring you to get a few more popular but expensive books that cover this part of the course (some of them are listed as additional recommeded books) the instructor choosed to use a well-known shareware book:

Task-Centered User Interface Design: A Practical Introduction
Clayton Lewis and John Rieman
University of Colorado, Boulder, 1994.

This book can be downloaded from the University of Colorado FTP site and also accessed as a hypertext from HCI Bibliography Site. You use in in electronic form or print it. If you choose to use this book, please, pay the $5 shareware fee.

Practicing the Interactive System Design

Some assignments and the main course project of this course will require you to develop practical interactive systems using Java programming language. We recommend two books that provide a comprehensive support for this part of the course. The Deitel & Deitel Book provides a good overall introduction to Java for those who starts the course with little knowledge of Java. Most of lecture slides in the Java part of our course is based on this book. It provides a reasonably good introduction to Java graphics, widgets (including Swing) and applets. It does not cover servlets enough though. The Callaway's book is one of the best introduction to servlets that is very suitable for the beginners. It explains all necessary prerequisits and comes with a CD full of examples and software.In addition to these books, a list of reseources for learning Java is available from the Links section of the course Web site.

Inside Servlets: Server-Side Programming for the Java(TM) Platform (2nd Edition)
Dustin R. Callaway, Danny Coward
(2nd edition)
Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 2001, 912 pp.
ISBN: 0201709066 ;

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($40 new; $27 used)

Java How to Program
Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel
4rd Edition (3nd edition will also work)
Prentice Hall, 2001, 1545 pp.
ISBN: 0130341517

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($74 new; $50 used)

Additional Books on Human-Computer Interface Design

The books listed in this section are not required to complete the course but can be used by the students who need to understand the subject better or in more details. The authors of these books are leading authorities in HCI. The first of these books (Raskin) can be used as a good addition to the Shneiderman textbook. The second (Norman) provides an excellent background for the interface design part. The third (Nielsen) is still one of the best handbooks on the evaluation of Interactive System. All three books have been reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library.

The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems
Jef Raskin

Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 2000, 256 pp.
ISBN: 0201379376

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com

The Design of Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman

Currency/Doubleday, 1990, 257 pp.
ISBN: 0385267746

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com

Nielsen Book Usability Engineering
Jakob Nielsen

Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1994, 362 pp.
ISBN: 0125184069 6

Buy / read about this book at amazon.com

 

Copyright © 2002 Peter Brusilovsky