Course Overview and Goals:

This is an undergraduate course designed as an introduction to human-computer interaction-- a field that spans several disciplines and draws on multiple intellectual traditions. In this class we will address HCI and games, and we will also explore design methods.

I've broken the quarter schedule into two unequal parts. We'll spend the initial couple weeks talking about some history and overarching ideas that relate to HCI. The goal of this part of the class is to introduce you to HCI concepts, some of the driving research questions in the field, and some research methods. The bulk of the quarter, however, will be focused on how HCI relates to entertainment uses of computers. In particular, we'll talk about games and gaming environments, not with a focus on games themselves but, rather, with a focus on how people interact with computers when their goals are not work-related. This part of the course will give you an opportunity to do both fieldwork and design work, and to focus attention on some of the questions that come up when we take computers off the desktop and integrate them into activities of everyday life outside of the workplace.

Our consideration of games will focus on the unusual or unexpected, environments for play, open-ended exploration, and community building.

In this class you will learn:
•    Some basic concepts of HCI
•    Theory and practice of research methods used in the field of HCI, including personas and fieldwork
•    How to apply HCI concepts across genres
•    Creative approaches to identifying new user groups or use scenarios

The class will include a combination of lecture, discussion, presentations, projects, guest lectures, and field trips. Access to a digital camera is required. We'll do a good chunk of our exploration this quarter outside the classroom, so please be prepared to spend some time in the world.


Course Schedule:
The schedule is subject to change, especially with respect to guest speakers.


Tuesday January 6: Course Introduction and Definitions

Thursday January 8: Background

• Mark Weiser, "The Computer for the 21st Century"  http://www.ubiq.com/hypertext/weiser/SciAmDraft3.html
• Terry Winograd, "From Computing Machinery to Interaction Design"  http://hci.stanford.edu/~winograd/acm97.html

Due: bring digital camera to class

Tuesday January 13: Design 
D. Norman, from The Design of Everyday Things
Weiser, "Some Computer Science Issues in Ubiquitous Computing" Communications of the ACM July 1993 36:7
Due: set up Flickr account

Thursday January 15: Games and HCI
Bardzell et al, "Blissfully Productive: Grouping and Cooperation in World of Warcraft Instance Runs"
Dyck et al., "Learning from Games: HCI Design Innovations in Entertainment Software"
http://hci.usask.ca/publications/2003/games-gi03.pdf
Zaphiris and Ang, "HCI Issues in Computer Games" Interacting with Computers 19(2007) 135-139
Due: First photo assignment completed

Tuesday January 20: Broadening HCI
Schneiderman, "Universal Usability"
http://www.cs.umd.edu/~ben/p84-shneiderman-May2000CACMf.pdf
Jan Chipchase, "Shared Phone Use," http://www.janchipchase.com/sharedphoneuse

Thursday January 22: Research Methods
Pruitt and Grudin, "Personas, Practice and Theory"
Dourish and Button "On ‘Technomethodology:' Foundational Relationships between Ethnomethodology and System Design"
http://www.ics.uci.edu/~jpd/publications/1998/hci-technometh.pdf
Guest lecture: Cynthia Putnam
Due: Second photo assignment completed

Tuesday January 27: Fieldwork
Burrell, Brooke, Beckwith, "Vineyard Computing: Sensor Networks in Agricultural Production"
Pervasive Computing, January-March 2004 (Vol. 3, No. 1)   pp. 38-45
Mynatt, Melenhorst, Fisk, and Rogers, "Aware Technologies for Aging in Place"
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/7756/29186/01316816.pdf?tp=&arnumber=1316816&isnumber=29186

Thursday January 29: Practice fieldwork assignment
No class

Tuesday February 3: Social Computing
Chalmers, et al., "Gaming on the Edge: Using Seams in Ubicomp Games"
Presentations on fieldwork
Due: Third photo assignment

Thursday February 5: Prototyping; PC Games, Consoles, Casual Games
Reading tba
Due: Project plan assignment

Tuesday February 10: Xbox 360 vs. the Wii
 Reading tba

Thursday February 12: Alternative Reality Games
Reading tba
Due: Fieldwork assignment

Tuesday February 17: Serious Games
Seriousgames.org
Ben Sawyer, "Emergent Use of Interactive Games for Solving Problems is Serious Effort"
Sue Blackman, "Serious Games…and Less!"
Due: Fourth photo assignment

Thursday February 19: Mobile Games
Matt Jones, Mobile Interaction Design. Chapter 1.
http://media.wiley.com/product_data/excerpt/98/04700908/0470090898.pdf
Due: Personas assignment

Tuesday February 24: The Global Game Market
Reading tba

Thursday February 26: Gamers
Pew report on adults and videgames: http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Adult_gaming_memo.pdf
Additional reading tba
Due: Social Impact Analysis
 
Tuesday March 3:  Games in Public (Game Cafes) and in Private (Home)
Reading tba
Due: Fifth photo assignment

Thursday March 5:  Project work

Tuesday March 10: Presentations

Thursday March 12: Presentations

Friday March 20:
Final projects due by 5 pm


Course Requirements:
•    Do the readings listed on the syllabus. Readings should be completed by the day they are listed. All but one or two of the readings (handouts provided) are available online. If I haven't included the URL on the syllabus, that means you can access it directly through UW Library resources.  
•    Read the following blogs at least weekly. Be prepared to talk about them.
o    http://www.janchipchase.com/
o    http://www.escapistmagazine.com/
o    http://www.gamesetwatch.com/
•    Get a flickr account. If you want a separate one for this course, that's fine.
•    Have access to a digital camera.
•    Show up to class and participate.
•    Be a responsible and responsive team member and complete your group project.
•    Have access to some form of transportation (car, bus, bike). This will be necessary for your fieldtrip.
•    Be prepared to do some of the learning for this course outside of the classroom.

Assignments for the course are as follows:
Report on one outside article: 10% (oral component only)
Do at least one fieldtrip and present findings to class: 15% (oral component only)
Participation: 5%
Design exercises and project [includes individual and group components. Personas, Fieldwork, Social Impact analysis, Prototype, Final paper, etc.] 70%

Other Information:
For information on "How the Department of Technical Communication Protects Student Rights", see http://intranet.uwtc.washington.edu/facultyresources/studentrights.php

Information on departmental plagiarism policy can be found at: http://intranet.uwtc.washington.edu/academicresources/plagiarismpolicy.php