L642 Information Usage and the Cognitive Artifact

(concepts and contemporary issues in HCI)
Provisional Syllabus
Fall 2003, Thursdays 9.30-12.15
Contact Information

Yvonne Rogers
yrogers@indiana.edu
Room: LI 015
Phone: 856-2686

Course Description
A perennial challenge that faces designers and researchers is whether and how to apply theory when understanding and designing interactive technologies. Having a theoretical grounding when conducting research and design is generally considered preferable to simply adopting a 'seat of the pants' approach. Not least, it can provide rigor, systematicity and a structure from which to propose, analyze and evaluate designs. However, it is also well known that it can be very difficult to apply to practical concerns. It has often been noted that there exists a gap between the various theoretical constructs and conceptual frameworks developed in the field of HCI and the actual practice of designing interactive systems. How can this gulf be overcome such that the role of theory is seen to be truly useful?

A main focus of the course is to determine which theories and constructs are appropriate for understanding the use of, informing the design of and assessing the value of information technologies. The course consists of two inter-related strands: theoretical concepts and contemporary issues. The first part provides an opportunity to learn about a range of theoretical approaches that have been developed specifically for use in HCI. Based on this understanding, students will have the opportunity to apply some of them, assessing their value in relation to the design and evaluation of particular interactive technologies. To this end, a number of hands-on practical activities will be carried out alongside reading of the relevant literature. In so doing, a variety of techniques of applying theoretical ideas will be explored and their merits and disadvantages exposed.

The second part of the course will examine contemporary issues surrounding the situated use of interactive technologies. In particular, it will cover 'hot topics', including emotion, embodiment, interpersonal and social aspects of interaction. As with the first part, it will explore the value of emerging theoretical accounts for these kinds of phenomena in relation to their utility in informing the design of interactive systems.

Course Objectives
Students will have the opportunity to explore in-depth the following topics:

Textbooks

Recommended:
Yvonne Rogers, Jenny Preece and Helen Sharp. (2002) Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction. Wiley
Carroll, J. (2003) (ed) HCI Models, Theories, & Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science.
Paul Dourish (2001) Where the Action Is: The Foundations of Embodied Interaction. MIT Press ISBN 0-262-04196-0

Additional books:
Suchman, L. (1987) Plans and Situated Actions.
Carroll, J.M. (2002) (ed) Human-Computer Interaction in the New Millennium. Addison-Wesley Publishing ISBN 0-201-70447-1
Winograd, T. and Flores, F. (1986). Understanding Computers and Cognition. Addison Wesley: Wokingham.
Winograd, T. (1996) Bringing Design to Software. Addison-Wesley, ACM Press, New York.
Baecker, R. et al (1995) Readings in Human-Computer Interaction. Second Edition. Morgan-Kaufmann.
Greenbaum, J and Kyng, M. (1991). Design at Work: Cooperative design of computer systems. LEA, New Jersey.
Laurel, B. (1990). (ed) The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design. Addison Wesley: Wokingham.
Green, W. S. and Jordan, P. W. (2001). Pleasure With Products: Beyond Usability, Taylor & Francis ISBN 0-41523704-1
Norman, D. (1988). The Design of Everyday Things. Basic Books: New York.
Norman, D. (1992) Turn Signals are the Facial Expressions of Automobiles. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
Norman, D. (1993) Things That Make Us Smart, Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass.
Norman, D. and Draper, S. (eds) (1986). User-Centred System Design. LEA: Hillsdale.

Assignments

The course is primarily project-based, with an emphasis on putting into practice what is covered in the readings. Projects will be carried out both individually and also as part of a class/group exercise. The projects that count towards your formal assessment are presented below:

1. A report (due week 3) (25%)
This assignment requires you to assess an existing handheld device, using an appropriately selected set of user-experience criteria. These should be based primarily on those covered in the first two classes. Details of what is required for this assignment will be handed out in the first week of class.

2. An html document (due week 8) (25%)
An html document should be created that presents an alternative theory or conceptual framework, explaining how useful it is (or not) in informing the design of or evaluation of a particular kind of user experience (e.g. computer-based learning). You should show how this has been the case and consider what the system/experience might have been like if another theory (or no theory) had not been used. Explain what you consider to be the main benefits of adopting this theoretical stance. You can focus on a particular case study reported in the literature or critique a number of studies reported for a particular area. At the end of the course, the html pages will be collated into a collective website resource, similar to Shneiderman's class exercise: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2002/cmsc838s/tichi/. More details on this project will be presented in class.

3. (i) A project report and (ii) presentation - (i) due end of course (20%) and (ii) during last two weeks (10%)
This two part assignment requires you to (i) write up a group report based on the group project outlined for class 11 and (ii) to present it verbally as a group presentation. Groups should consist of 2 to 3 students. More details on this project will be presented in class.

4. Discussion and class participation (20%)
Reflecting on and discussing the arguments presented in papers is an important part of understanding. A central part of the course is for you to show evidence of having read the papers and also the ability to reflect and critique the issues presented in them.

Classes

Classes run on Thursdays, 9.30-12.15. First class is on 4th September 2003. There will be no class on November 27th

Class 1. An introduction to core concepts relating to information usage and cognitive artifacts
This class will cover some of the core concepts in HCI relating to users and technology use. These include the notions of the interface, interactivity and interaction. Traditional ways of characterizing these aspects of the relationship between technology and users will also be examined in terms of various usability aspects.

Readings:
Norman, D. (1988/2002) The Psychology of Everyday Things. Basic Books. ch 1
Grudin, J. (1990) The Computer reaches out: The historic continuity of interface design. In Proceedings of CHI'90 Conference, Addison Wesley. p.261-268 (ISBN 0-201-50932-6)
Grudin, J. (1990) interface. In Proceedings of CSCW'90 , ACM: NY. p. 269-278 (ISBN 0-89791-402-3)
Bannon, L. (1990) From Human Factors to Human Actors. In Greenbaum, J. and Kyng, M. (eds.) Design at Work . Hillsdale, NJ. Also available at: http://www.ul.ie/~idc/library/papersreports/LiamBannon/LBArticl.html

Hands-on activity: Assessing the usability of a hand-held device, using some of the basic concepts identified as central to human user interaction.

Class 2. Conceptualizing the 'user experience': what are the components?

Recently, there has been much discussion about the limited notions surrounding usability. The notion of the user experience has begun gathering momentum, providing a more encompassing account of how people interact and use technologies. This class will cover some of this new ground, looking at the range of concepts that have emerged.

Readings:
Rogers, Y. et al (2002) Interaction Design. Chapter 1.
Forlizzi, J. and Ford, S. (2000) The building blocks of experience: an early framework for interaction designers. Proceedings of DIS'00, p.419-423. ACM.
Alben, L. (1996) Quality of experience: defining the criteria for effective interaction design. Interactions, 3.3 May+june, ACM, p11

Hands-on activity: The assignment at the end of chapter one of Rogers et al, 2002.

Class 3. Cognitive models and theories in HCI
HCI emerged as an interdisciplinary field where cognitive psychology was a central player. There have been several approaches to applying different types of theory to understanding user-system behaviour and informing system design. In the next two classes we will look at a range of the 'traditional' cognitive approaches and assess their value in terms of their contribution to HCI.

Reading:
Rogers et al (2002) Interaction Design. Chapter 3.
Hutchins, E. el al, Direct manipulation interfaces. In Norman, D. and Draper, S. (eds) (1986). User-Centered System Design. LEA: Hillsdale. Chapter 5, 87-124
John, B. Information Processing and skilled Behaviour. Carroll, J (2003) Ed. HCI Models, Theories, & Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science Chapter 4. 55-101.

Class 4. Mental models: Why they became such a popular concept in HCI

The concept of mental models was popular in HCI in the late '80s and early 90s. This class will examine how and why this phenomenon arose and how useful the concept has been for (i) understanding user experience and (ii) informing system design.

Reading:
Rogers et al (2002) Interaction Design. Chapter 3, 92-95.
Rogers, Y., Rutherford, A. and Bibby, P. (199?) Models in the Mind. Academic Press.
Payne, S. Users' mental models: the very ideas. (2003) Mental Models In Carroll, J (2003) Ed. HCI Models, Theories, & Frameworks: Toward a Multidisciplinary Science Chapter 6, 136-156.

Hands-on activity: Examining the usefulness of the concept of mental models within HCI. The assignment at the end of chapter 3 of Rogers et al (2002) will be carried out.

Class 5. External cognition and cognitive artifacts

One of the criticisms of cognitive theories in HCI is that they are based exclusively on processes occurring inside people's head, while not taking into account how people use external representations and other forms of cognitive artifacts in their everyday and working lives. An alternative approach to studying cognition is to examine the role played by external representations and cognitive artifacts in conjunction with putative internal cognitive processes. Norman and Hutchins are well known for their pioneering work in this area. In this class we will examine the external cognition approach, focusing in particular on Scaife and Rogers (1996) framework.

Reading:
Rogers and Scaife (1997) An introduction to external cognition. http://www-sv.cict.fr/cotcos/pjs/TheoreticalApproaches/ExtCogandRepr/ExtCogandReppaperRogers.htm
Norman, D. (1993) Things That Make Us Smart. Addison-Wesley, Reading, Mass. Ch 3, 43-76.
Scaife, M. and Rogers, Y. (1996) External Cognition: how do Graphical Representations Work? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, 45, 185-213.

Hands-on activity: Examine how different computational devices offload the cognition involved in performing different tasks.

Class 6. Alternative theories Part 1: Activity theory and situated action

There have been a number of other theoretical approaches that have been imported into HCI as a way of understanding people's use of technologies in everyday practice. Three approaches that have received considerable attention over the last 10 years are distributed cognition, Activity theory and the situated action approach. Nardi's paper (1996) provides a critique of the three approaches, comparing and contrasting their merits and differences. In this class we will begin by reading her paper and then examining in more detail the Activity Theory approach and the situated action approach.

Reading:
Nardi, Bonnie. "Context and Consciousness: Activity Theory and Human-Computer Interactions." ACM Interactions, October 1995.
Kuutti, K. (1996). Activity Theory as a potential framework for human-computer interaction. research. In Nardi, B. (ed), Context and Consciousness. Chapter 2, 17-44.
For a set of short overviews on Activity Theory see:
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/act_dff.html
http://www.acm.org/interactions/vol2no4/depts/book.htm
A web resource on Activity Theory can also be found at http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/activity.html
Rogers, Y. (2004) New theoretical approaches for HCI. To appear in ARIST: Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, (Eds. B. Cronin and D. Shaw), 38. Available from: http://www.cogs.ac.uk/users/yvonner

Class 7. Alternative theories Part 2: Distributed cognition

In this class we will continue to explore the three approaches, focusing on the distributed cognition approach.

Reading:
Rogers, Y. (1997) A brief introduction to Distributed Cognition. Available from www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/papers
Rogers, Y. and Ellis, J. (1994) Distributed Cognition: an alternative framework for analysing and explaining collaborative working. Journal of Information Technology, 9 (2). Available from http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/users/papers
Perry, M. (2003) Distributed cognition. In J.M. Carroll (Ed.) HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks: Toward a multidisciplinary science. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 194-233
Hollins, J., Hutchins, E. and Kirsh, D. (2000) Distributed Cognition: Towards a new foundation of HCI. TOCHI, 7, 174-196.
Halverson, C. (2002) Activity theory and distributed cognition, CSCW, 11, 243-267 Obtainable from: http://www.isr.uci.edu/~jpd/classes/ics234bs03/
Wright, P., Fields, B. and Harrison, M. (1998) Modelling human-computer interaction as distributed cognition. Available at: http://citeseer.nj.nec.com/wright98modelling.html

Hands-on activity: Working in small groups we will carry out a distributed cognition analysis using an adapted version of Wright's Resource model.

Class 8. What role has theory in system design?

Having looked at a range of theories primarily adapted in HCI for the analysis of cognitive artifacts and the understanding of user behaviour, we will then examine at a general level the role of theory in interaction design and HCI. How difficult is theory to put into practice? Which theories have been most successful? We will explore current discussions on this topic, focusing on the views espoused by several eminent HCI researchers at the CHIplace discussion forum. Also we will examine my own review of this recurring issue.

Reading:
CHIplace discussion forum on "HCI theory is like the public library" http://www.chiplace.org/content/CHIplace/
Rogers, Y. (2004) New theoretical approaches for HCI.
Castell, F. (2002) Theory theory on the wall. Communications of the ACM, Volume 45. Issue 12 (available at the ACM digital library)
Shneiderman's class exercise: http://www.cs.umd.edu/class/fall2002/cmsc838s/tichi/

Hands-on activity: A debate on the pros and cons of using theory, based on reading of views presented in the CHIplace discussion

Class 9. From theory to frameworks: an alternative way of translating theory into design needs

Following the previous week's debate we will examine alternative approaches of translating theory into design. We will begin by exploring the view that what is needed is a common language that practitioners can use in a variety of contexts. We will look at the two languages of 'cognitive dimensions' and 'technomethodology' as possible candidates. We will also explore the role of frameworks specifically developed for inspiring design (in contrast to being used to analyze existing systems).

Reading:
Button, G. and Dourish., P. (1996) Technomethodology: Paradoxes and possibilities. Obtained from http://www.acm.org/sigchi/chi96/proceedings/papers/Button/jpd_txt.htm
Green, T. and Blackwell, A. (1998) Cognitive dimensions of informational artifacts: A tutorial. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~afb21/CognitiveDimensions/CDtutorial.pdf
Blackwell, A.F. and Green, T.R.G. (2003). Notational systems - the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework. In J.M. Carroll (Ed.) HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks: Toward a multidisciplinary science. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann, 103-134.
Gaver, B., Beaver, J. and Benford, S. (2003) Ambiguity as a resource for design. CHI'03 Proceedings. 233-240. ACM
Rogers, Y. and Muller, H. (2003) Stop making sense: Designing sensor-based interaction to facilitate exploration and reflection. Submitted to Transactions of Computer-Human Interaction special issue on sensing-based interaction.

Class 10. New approaches to conceptualizing the user experience: social and embodied interaction

In this class, we move on to consider new ways of conceptualizing the user experience, in terms of social and embodied aspects.

Reading:
Paul Dourish (2001) Where the Action Is: The foundations of embodied interaction. MIT Press. Pages ch 5 (also draft overview paper available, called "Embodied Interaction: Exploring the Foundations of a New Approach to HCI").
Andy Clark (2003) Natural born Cyborgs.
Battarbee, K. (2003) Co-experience: the social user experience. In Proc. CHI 2003, ACM. 730-731.
Hoff, T., Oritsland, T. and Bjorkli, C. (2002) Exploring the embodied-mind approach to user experience. Proc of Nordchi, ACM. 271-278.

Class 11. New approaches to conceptualizing the user experience: Affective and interpersonal aspects

In this class, we will examine other ways of conceptualising the user experience, in terms of affective and interpersonal aspects. We will look at the nature of these aspects together with the theories and frameworks that have been proposed for explaining them.

Reading:
Rogers et al (2002) Interaction Design. ch 5
Marcus, A. (2002) The cult of cute: the challenge of user experience design. Interactions nov/dec, 29-34, ACM (available on ACM digital library)
Norman, D. (forthcoming) Emotion and design. Chapter 1. Attractive things work better. (Paper can be downloaded from his website)
McCarthy, J. and Wright, P. (2003) The enchantments of technology. In Blythe, M. A., Monk, A., Overbeeke, K. and Wright, P (eds) Funology. Chapter available from me.
Brignull, H. and Rogers, Y. (2003) Enticing People to Interact with Large Public Displays in Public Spaces. In Interact Proceedings. Paper available from http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/interaction
Fogg, B.J. (2003) Persuasive Technology.
Jordan (2002) Designing pleasurable products.

Hands-on activity: Designing a pleasurable user experience
The focus of this activity is to consider how to design a pleasurable user experience, based on a particular 'user experience' framework. This should be written up as a report and presented as part of the final assignment. More details will be provided in the first weeks of the course.

Class 12. Reflections on traditional and nouvelle approaches in HCI

This class will provide an opportunity to reflect on the themes, issues and dilemmas that have been covered in the course. In particular, it will focus on the different approaches that have evolved for informing design of interactive technologies.

Class 13. Student presentations

Class 14. Student presentations