This is the syllabus as of the first day of class. Revisions to the syllabus will be made available in the Download area.
Week 1
October 1 (Class1)
Introduction to Course
Week 2
October 6 (Class 2)
Early History of Literacy
Key Concepts of Information Design
Read Schmandt-Besserat, “Signs of Life.”
Read Chandler, “An Introduction to Genre Theory.”
Read McCloud,. “Follow that Trail (I Can’t Stop Thinking #4).”
Read Graham and Whalen, “Mode, Medium, and Genre.”
GoPost activity: Write a short bio of yourself.
GoPost activity: Try to guess the age of the scroll on the course website.
Note: I recommend that you read the assignments for each class in the sequence in which the items are listed on the syllabus.
October 8 (Class 3)
Patterns and Pattern Languages
Patterns as a Genre
Discuss HCDE 510 Pattern Language Project
Read Ding, “Genre Analysis of Personal Statements.”
Read Marcus, “Patterns within Patterns: Introduction to Design Patterns.”
Examine the Yahoo! Developer Network Design Pattern Library.
Examine sample patterns.
Week 3
October 13 (Class 4)
The Genre of the Environmental Life-Cycle Rating Label
Practice Writing Patterns
Read Larson, Chapters 1, 3, and 4, Indicating Impact: The Design of an Environmental Labeling System for Consumer Goods.
October 15 (Class 5)
The Standard Expository Model
Read Farkas, “Explicit Structure in Print and On-Screen Documents.”
Read Chandler, “Montaigne and the Word Processor.”
Week 4
October 20 (Class 6)
Cultural Contexts of Information Design
How Are Our Literacies Changing?
Read Self, “What If Readers Can’t Read?”
Read Snyder, “Online Video: The Book Was Better.”
Read Berghel, “A Cyberpublishing Manifesto.”
Read NEA, Reading on the Rise.
Read Nielsen's Alertbox for May 6, 2008: “How Little Do Users Read?”
Read Nielsen's Alertbox for August 23, 1998. “The End of Legacy Media (Newspapers, Magazines, Books, TV Networks).”
Read Cotton and Oliver, "Hypermedia Applications: Education."
Read Farkas and Farkas, “An Introduction to Copyright Law” (Appendix B, Principles of Web Design).
October 22 (Class 7)
Student-Led Planning Session on the Environmental Label Pattern Language
Tip: Read Weiss, “Bits, Atoms, and the Technical Writer: The Rhetoric of STOP.” Start reading Tracey, Rugh, and Starkey, Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP).
Week 5
October 27 (Class 8)
Challenges to the Standard Expository Model
Read Horn, “What Kinds of Writing Have a Future?”
Weiss, “Bits, Atoms, and the Technical Writer: The Rhetoric of STOP.
Read Tracey, Rugh, and Starkey, Sequential Thematic Organization of Publications (STOP).
October 29 (Class 9)
Guest Class: Lori Fisher (IBM) "Strategy and Directions in IBM Information Design"
Discussion of Document Reuse
Read Fisher, “Moving from Single Sourcing to Reuse with XML DITA.”
Read Rockley Group, “Preparing for DITA.”
Read Rockley, “Dynamic Content Management.”
Week 6
November 3 (Class 10)
Static Alternatives to the Standard Expository Model
QuikScan
Read Heller, “Tom Suzuki, 76, a Designer Who Transformed Textbooks, Dies.”
Read Walker et al., the standalone PowerPoint file (with notes), “Visual-Syntactic Text-Formatting.”
Examine Koster, “Theory of Fun.”
View https://www.bids.tswg.gov/Content/QuadCharts.htm.
Read Zhou and Farkas, “Formatting Documents for Better Comprehension and Navigation.”
Complete QuikScan tutorials.
November 5 (Class 11)
Documents in Support of Oral Communication
Read Farkas, “A Heuristic for Reasoning about PowerPoint Deck Design.”
Read Horn, “Knowledge Mapping for Complex Social Messes.”
Examine Horn, selected knowledge maps.
Read Horn, “Interactive Visual Scenario for the PanDefense 1.0 Conference.”
Examine Horn, “Mega-Flu Pandemic – (not quite the) Worst Case Scenario V.2.”
Peruse selected posters and quad/penta charts.
Week 7
November 10 (Class 12)
Hypertext, Modularity, and Writing
Read Farkas, “Hypertext and Hypermedia” and “The Linear-Hierarchical Model.”
Read selected articles from Keep, McLaughlin, and Parmar, The Electronic Labyrinth.
Explore Bernstein, Hypertext Gardens.
Read Nielson’s Alertbox for January 3, 2005, “Reviving Advanced Hypertext.”
Read Farkas, “Designing for Selective Reading to Address Information Overload.”
November 12 (Class 13)
Modularity
Pattern Languages as Hypertext Documents
Read Raban, excerpt from review of The Atomic Bazaar by William Langewiesche.
Peruse the John Henry hypertext exercise.
Week 8
November 17 (Class 14)
Multimedia/Virtual Reality
Two-Minute Previews of Course Projects
Read Ramaswami, “Best of Both Worlds.”
Peruse the multimedia tutorial Biology for Engineers.
Read Jackson and Fagan, “Collaboration and Learning within Immersive Virtual Reality.”
Read Harrill, “Readers Become Part of the Action.”
Read Billinghurst, Kato, and Poupyrev, “The MagicBook - Moving Seamlessly between Reality and Virtuality.”
Watch video “What is a Vook?” http://www.vook.com.
November 19 (Class 15)
Social Media
Read Analor, “GM Uses Wiki to Tell Its Story.”
Read Erickson, “Social Interaction on the Net: Virtual Community as Participatory Genre.”
Peruse http://www.commoncraft.com and www.ehow.com.
Week 9
November 24 (Class 16)
Adaptive/Intelligent Documents
Intelligent Dialogs
Read De Bra, “Adaptive Educational Hypermedia on the Web.”
Read Cawsey Cawsey, Grasso, and Paris, “Adaptive Information for Consumers of Healthcare.”
Read Kiernan, “Multimedia Data Base at Carnegie Mellon Lets You ‘Interview’ Albert Einstein.”
Peruse the HCDE 510 Elvis Presley interactive interview (Team A and Team B).
November 26
NO CLASS—Thanksgiving
Week 10
December 1 (Class 17)
Final Course Plans
Course Review and Synthesis—The Future of the Document
December 3 (Class 18)
Course Exam
Week 11
December 8 (Class 19)
Review of Exam
Full Class Review of Environmental Label Pattern Language
December 10 (Class 20)
Selected Presentations on Variations Projects
Course Wrap-up
Variations projects due: Submit to instructor, post on GoPost.
