The class notes do not cover everything you need to know for this course, and their emphasis may not reflect the importance of material. The notes will not serve as a substitute for the lectures or the assigned readings. Moreover, the lectures and readings go well beyond the text, and are more important than the text, which actually could be used in a lower division course, although its content is very important for practical applications. There will be handouts, diagrams on the board, stories, examples, and (probably) guest appearances at lectures. In short, all of assigned readings, lectures, notes, and text are absolutely necessary.

A wiki is available for this class (and also CSE 171) to use, at http://cse-gsa.ucsd.edu/wiki/UserInterfaceDesign; it includes material from Spring 2003 that is now out of date, but please feel free to improve it.

You are allowed to talk with other students about how to approach homework problems, but you are not allowed to work together on solutions. Please read the Integrity of Scholarship Agreement site and the offical UCSD policies on Plagariasm; see also the most recent amended policy (sorry, it's in MS Word). You are expected to abide by these rules; failure to do so can have serious consequences.

An evolving draft introduction of Value-Driven Design, with Algebraic Semiotics, by Joseph Goguen and Fox Harrel, to eventually be a text for this course, is online for browsing and comment; a rough draft outline of the whole book is also online for browsing and comment. See also the excellent summary of the work of Batya Friedman and others in the short encyclopedia article Value Sensitive Design, the Value Sensitive Design Lab at the University of Washington, and my recent letter to her.

New technologies provide the means to build superb new systems, as well as phenomenally ugly and awkward systems that still fully meet their performance and functional requirements. This course will explore several approaches towards a scientific understanding of basic issues of usability, representation and coordination that arise in interface design and related areas, such as how to best organize complex information in multimedia. There will be some focus on social issues, semiotics. and new media interfaces. See the course topics list for more detail.

We may distinguish the following levels of interface design issues:

1. technology;
2. ergonomics;
3. individual psychology; and
4. social, cultural, and organizational issues.

• semiotics - the study of signs and meaning, including metaphor;
• ethnomethodology - the sociology of ordinariness;
• narratology - the study of stories;
• discourse analysis - the study of discourse;
• actor-network theory - a network approach to the sociology of technology and science; and
• cognitive linguistics.

Tuesday, Thursday, 17:00 am to 18:20, in Center 203

Section ID 527968, Section A00

There is no TA for this class, and hence no discussion section

My office hours begin 17:00 on Wednesdays.

The only required book is McCracken and Wolfe; other required readings will made available on the web or handed out in class.

• User-Centered Website Development, by Daniel McCracken and Rosalee Wolfe, Prentice-Hall, 2003. ISBN 0-13-041161-2.

Recommended Books

• Designing the User Interface, by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant, Addison Wesley, 2004 (fourth edition). ISBN 0-321-19786-0.
• The Way We Think, by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, Basic Books, 2002. ISBN 0-465-8785-X.
• Metaphor and Iconicity: A cognitive approach to analyzing texts, by Masako Hiraga, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. ISBN 1-4039-3345-6.
• Human-Computer Interaction, by Jennifer Preece, Prentice-Hall, 1998. ISBN 0-13-239864-8.
• Interaction Design, by Jennifer Preece, Yovonne Rogers, and Helen Sharp, Wiley, 2002. ISBN 0-471-49278-7.
• Information Visualization, by Robert Spence, Addison Wesley, 2001. ISBN 0-201-59626-1.
• Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloud, Harper Collins, 1993. ISBN 0-06-097625-X.
• Introduction to Barthes, Mireille Ribiere (Hodder & Stoughton, 2002). ISBN 0-340-84499-X.

Other Relevant Books

• The Design of Everyday Things, by Donald A. Norman, Doubleday, 1988.
• Aramis, or the Love of Technology, by Bruno Latour, Harvard University Press, 1996.
• Requirements Engineering: Social and Technical Issues, ed. by Marina Jirotka and Joseph Goguen, Academic Press, 1994.
• The Humane Interface, by Jef Raskin, Addison Wesley, 2000.
• GUI Bloopers, by Jeff Johnson, Morgan Kaufmann, 2000.
• Life Stories: The Creation of Coherence, by Charlotte Linde, Oxford, 1993.
• The Literary Mind, by Mark Turner, Oxford, 1997.
• The Civilization of Illiteracy, by Mihai Nadin, Dresden Univ Press, 1998.
• Algebraic Semantics of Imperative Programs, by Joseph Goguen and Grant Malcolm, MIT Press, 1996.

Your grade will depend primarily on the quality of your project, tempered by an assessment of your homework and your class participation. Your project should reflect your familiarity with the readings, lectures and class notes, especially the material that is unique to this class; see the projects information page. Homework assignments should be handed in, but will not be formally graded; see me after class if you want feedback. I will try to arrange a session for voluntary presentations of projects if there is sufficient interest.

1. Reading assignments.
2. Class notes: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, A.
3. Homework assignments.
4. Information on projects.
5. The CSE 171 homepage has links to quizzes and exams from various versions of that class. Also, here is a link to the 2003 version of CSE 271.

• A tutorial by Dana Dahlstrom and Vinu Somayaji is also available (warning: it may not always agree with this version of the course).
• The ACM TechNews newsletter usually contains two or three articles that relate closely to user interface design issues; the above link is for the current issue, but back issues are also available on the site.
• Homepage of the book Designing the User Interface, by Ben Shneiderman, Addison Wesley, 1998 (thrid edition).
• Homepage of Interactions magazine, published by the ACM.
• The Yale Style Manuual, perhaps the best general style manual available on the web.
• The Interface Hall of Fame and Interface Hall of Shame.
• Homepage of Ben Shneiderman.
• Essays of Don Norman.
• The UCSD Semiotic Zoo.
• Homepage of Jennifer Preece; see in particular, the subsite on her new book, Online Communities.
• Homepage of Phil Agre at UCLA; many interesting publications on "information studies", plus a good bibliography, and many interesting links.
• Homepage of Geoff Bowker, interesting material on sociology of science, including biodiversity informatics, information infrastructure, classification systems, medical records, and more.
• Website on blending, with applications to metaphor; work of Gilles Fauconnier, Mark Turner and others, in the area of cognitive linguistics.