CSE 271 Readings

CSE 271: User Interface Design: Social and Technical Issues

Readings

NOTES:

The class notes are not a substitute for the assigned readings. They are often critical commentaries meant to supplement or correct the readings, and sometimes they just reflect what I felt like writing at the time, or what was easy to copy in from somewhere else, rather than what is most important. Also, please note that the lectures and the readings beyond the text are at least as important as the text itself.
Readings and homework for a given week should be considered final on the Sunday of the week before, and are due the following Thursday.
To read gziped postscript files, you must first extract the postscript from the gzipped file. On Windows machines, this may be too arcane for the Winzip Wizard, but Power Archiver should work; on Apple machines, the Stuffit Expander should work. For viewing and printing postscript, use GSView or Ghostview; these can be downloaded from the net, although they may be complex to install. CSE Unix machines already have gunzip and ghostview, and older versions of Netscape call them automatically.

Due 4 April:
- Chapter 1 of Shneiderman.
- Section 1 and Section 2 of the class notes.
- Basic Webbing Notes by Joseph Goguen.
Although theoretically this material should have been read before the second class meeting, it is of course acceptable to have read it before the third meeting.
Due 11 April:
- Chapter 2 of Shneiderman, and Section 9.3.5 of Shneiderman (p.325).
- The Scientific American interview with Ben Shneiderman: meet our author and some of his recent obsessions, including agents.
- Agents of Alienation by Jaron Lanier.
- One Cannot Not Interact by Mihai Nadin; if you like that, you might also (optionally) want to read Interface Design: A Semiotic Approach by the same author.
- On Notation by Joseph Goguen; a PDF version is also available. This is a short introduction to some basics of Peircean semiotics, with illustrations from computer science and mathematics.
Due 18 April:
- Chapter 3 of Shneiderman.
- Section 3 of the class notes.
- Communication and Collaboration from a CSCW Perspective by Mark Ackerman. This paper is very condensed and may need to be read several times; some of you may need a dictionary, and the class notes will also help.
- The section entitled "Signs," in Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; you may also want to read the "Introduction" and/or the "Preface"; if so, I recommend doing so after reading the "Signs" section. You do not need to have a deep understanding of this material; however, it is interesting to get a taste of how semiotics is used in the humanities, and the historical information is also of some interest. The most important points about basic semiotics are summarized in the reading below.
- Reread On Notation by Joseph Goguen; a PDF version is also available.
- Read Are Agents an Answer or a Question? by Joseph Goguen.
- (Optional) Direct Manipulation vs. Interface Agents by Ben Shneiderman and Pattie Maes, Interactions, 4, no. 6, pp 42-61, 1997. Digest of a debate held at the 1997 CHI.

Due 25 April:

Reread Communication and Collaboration from a CSCW Perspective by Mark Ackerman.
Chapter 4 of Shneiderman.
Section 4 of the class notes, and reread Section 3.
A brief webpage on speech act theory and mitigation, which includes some interesting examples.
Techniques for Requirements Elicitation by Joseph Goguen and Charlotte Linde; a PDF version is also available. This is a short critical survey of methods for determining what users really need, and for evaluating interfaces.

Due 2 May:

Chapters 5 and 14 of Shneiderman.
Reread Section 4 of the class notes, especially the part on Chapter 5 of Shneiderman, and read Section 5 of the class notes, especially the part on Chapter 14 of Shneiderman.
Semiotic Morphisms, by Joseph Goguen.
Tour the UC San Diego Semiotic Zoo for content, not just form as in earlier homework, paying particular attention to its semiotic introduction.
Providing Social Interaction in the Digital Library by Mark Ackerman.
Pages 1 to 11 (up to but not including Section 3) of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design; a PDF version is also available.

This may look like a lot, but each item is relatively short.

Due 9 May:

Chapter 6 of Shneiderman.
Section 6 of the class notes, and reread Section 5.
Reread Semiotic Morphisms, by Joseph Goguen, especially sections 2 and 3, which have been improved.
Reread pages 1-11 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design, and read pages 11-15 (completing Section 3), and also Appendix D. (PDF version also available.)
Read some basic information on XML; this is available at many places, including www.xmlinfo.com, or the O'Reilly XML Pocket Reference by Robert Eckstein, or www.w3.org (they maintain the XML standards), or www.xml.com, or www.xml.org.
Reread sections 5 and 6 of Techniques for Requirements Elicitation (PDF version also available).

Due 16 May:

Chapter 15 of Shneiderman.
Answer Garden 2: Merging Organizational Memory with Collaborative Help by Mark Ackerman.
Reread pages 1-15 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design (completing Section 3) and read Section 4 (pages 15 to 18). (PDF version also available.)
Read and think about the structure of the simple narrative in The Structure of Narrative, especially the BNF description of narrative structure.
Section 7 of the class notes, and reread Section 6.

Due 23 May:

Chapter 16 of Shneiderman.
Reread pages 15-18 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design (Section 4) and read Sections 5 and 6 (pages 18-24), on blending; you can skim the difficult math and concentrate on the examples.
Section 8 of the class notes, and reread Section 7.
Reread The Structure of Narrative.
Formal Notation for Conceptual Blending; you should understand the technical details.
Multimedia Phase-spaces by Peter Bøgh Andersen; gzipped postscript and PDF versions are also available.

Due 30 May:

The "Afterward" of Shneiderman.
Section 9 of the class notes, and reread Section 8.
Information Visualization and Semiotic Morphisms; be sure to look at the pictures - the versions in the book are better than the online versions. There is also a pure postscript version.
Reread Formal Notation for Conceptual Blending.
Reread pages 18-22 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design, and read Appendices A and C.
Web-based Support for Cooperative Software Engineering, by Joseph Goguen and Kai Lin; gzipped postscript and PDF versions are also available. Please focus on the Tatami conventions for the user interface, and their justifications (pages 11-14).

Due 6 June:

Section 10 and Section A of the class notes, and reread Section 9 (it has new material).
The Ethics of Databases, an application of semiotics to web search engines.
Review the material on semiotics in the class notes, especially in Section 3 and Section 7; the latter contains the most detailed information on how to use semiotic morphisms.
(Optional but recommended) Towards a Social, Ethical Theory of Information for material on information, stories and values, especially pages 13-14 on narrative. There is also a gzipped postscript version.
(Optional but recommended) Dynamic Logic by Peter Bøgh Andersen; PDF and gzipped postscript versions are also available.
(Optional) Notes on Gradient Logic.

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