Fundamentals of Human-Computer Interaction

2018-2019

Lectures: building 640 (PUIO), room E212 (Wednesday 9:30am-12:30pm)
Instructor: Michel Beaudouin-Lafon mbl@lri.fr
Teaching Assistants: Rafaël James, Philip Tchernavskij

Lecture 1: Wednesday 12 September, 9:30am-12:30pm, E212
Lecture 2: Thursday 13 September, 13:30am-16:30pm, room TBA
Lecture 3: Wednesday 19 September, 9:30am-12:30pm, E212
Lecture 4: Wednesday 26 September, 9:30am-12:30pm, E212
Lecture 5: Wednesday 3 October, 9:30am-12:30pm, E212
Lecture 6: Wednesday 10 October, 9:30am-12:30pm, E212
Lecture 7: Wednesday 24 October, 9:30am-12:30pm, E212

Exam Date 14 November 2018, 9:30am-12:30pm - room D101

The only allowed document for the exam is one two-sided A4 sheet with your own handwritten notes.

Former exams (please note that the content of the course has changed over the years)

• In French: 1999 - 2000 - 2001 - 2002 - 2003 - 2004 - 2005 - 2006 - 2007 - 2008
• In English: 2005 - 2009 - 2011 - 2012 - 2013 - 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017

Course Summary

This is a joint course between the first year of the EIT Digital Master in Human-Computer Interaction and Design, the first year International Master in Computer Science, and the second year Specialty in Interaction of the Master in Computer Science.

The course gives an overview of the field of human-computer interaction, including a short history of HCI, a review of interaction styles, basic elements of psychology and software engineering for HCI, an in-depth analysis of graphical interaction, a sampling of post-WIMP interaction techniques, the notion of conceptual modeling, and a range of theories and models for HCI.

This page and its content are solely for students enrolled in the 2018-2019 HCID and Interaction Masters at Université Paris-Saclay. It contains instructor's material (slides and audio recordings) that are not to be distributed without the author's written consent, and copyrighted materials (such as articles) that are only made available under the fair use exception to copyright law.

Lecture 1 — 12 September 2018 — Introduction, History of HCI

Handouts

• Introduction
• A Brief History of HCI

Audio recordings

• Introduction
• A Brief History of HCI - Interaction Styles

Videos (briefly) shown in class

• SketchPad
• NLS/Augment short segment on groupware - Full video of The "mother of all demos" - Edited version
• Xerox Star introduction video - Video of the Star User Interface (1984) - Video of the "Last Xerox Star Demo" (1998)

Note: some videos don't play in the browser and must be downloaded to view them with VLC.

Readings

Papers about visions:

• As we May Think. Vannevar Bush, The Atlantic Monthly, 1947
• Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework. Douglas Engelbart, SRI Report, 1962 (original report)
• The Computer for the 21st Century. Mark Weiser, Scientific American, 1991
• Interaction is more Powerful than Algorithms. Peter Wegner, Communications of the ACM, 1997
• Interacting in Chaos. Dan Olsen, ACM Interactions, 1999

Papers about history of HCI:

• The Xerox Star: a Retrospective. Jeff Johnson et al., IEEE Computer, 1989
• The Making of the Mouse. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, Invention&Technology, 2002.
• Inventing the Lisa User Interface. Roderick Perkins, Dan Smith Keller and Frank Ludolph, ACM Interactions, 1997 (see the figures here)
• A Brief History of Human-Computer Interaction Technology. Brad Myers, ACM Interactions, 1998
• (In French) 50 ans d'interaction homme-machine : retours vers le futur. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon, Interstices, 2016.

Historical videos:

• SketchPad
• NLS/Augment short segment on groupware - Full video of The "mother of all demos" - Edited version
• Xerox Star introduction video - Video of the Star User Interface (1984) - Video of the "Last Xerox Star Demo" (1998)

Note: some videos don't play in the browser and must be downloaded to view them with VLC.

About innovation and invention:

• Innovation vs. Invention. Bill Buxton, Business Week, 2005
• The Long Nose of Innovation. Bill Buxton, Business Week, 2009
• Modeling and Forecasting the Information Sciences. Brian Gaines, Information Sciences, 1999

"Vision" videos to watch

• Apple Knowledge Navigator (1987)
• Microsoft Future Vision 2009
• Microsoft Future Vision 2011

Lecture 2 — 12 September 2018 — Interaction styles, Psychology 101

Handouts

• Interaction styles
• Psychology 101 (part 1)

Audio recordings

• Interaction styles
• Psychology 101

Videos shown in class

• Myron Krueger - Video Place (1988)
• Rich Bolt / Chris Schmandt - Put-that-there (1979)
• Pierre Wellner - Digital Desk (1993)
• Toolglasses and Magic Lenses ()
• Monkey Business Illusion
  see also: Curious Psychology

Readings in Interaction Styles

• Direct Manipulation Interfaces. Ed Hutchins, James Hollan & Don Norman, HCI Journal, 1985.
• Chunking and Phrasing and the Design of Human-Computer Dialogues. Bill Buxton, Proc. Proc. IFIP World Congress, 1986.
• Direct Manipulation vs. Interface Agents. Ben Shneiderman & Pattie Maes, ACM Interactions, 1997.
• Augmented Reality: Linking Real and Virtual Worlds. Wendy Mackay, Proc. Advanced Visual Interfaces, 1998.
• Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms. Hiroshi Ishii & Brygg Ullmer, Proc. ACM Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI'97), 1997.

Videos about Gesture-based Interaction:

• Bill Buxton - Multitouch tablet (1985)
• Minority report (2002) - scene with gesture-based interface
• Jeff Han - TED talk on multitouch interface (2006)
• Leap Motion (2012)

Videos about Augmented Reality and Embodied and Physical Interaction:

• Holodesk (Microsoft Research)
• RoomAlive (Microsoft Research)
• Skinput (Carnegie Mellon University)
• InForm (MIT)
• Zooids (Inria)

Readings in Psychology

General psychology:

• Behaviorism
• Cognitivism
• Gestalt perception
• James J. Gibson

Visual system:

• Held & Hein's experiment
• Preattentive processing (from Perception in Visualization)
• Change blindness (from Perception in Visualization) - See also this video and this one

Visual illusions:

• Ames room - explanation
• Mighty Optical Illusions
• Hermann's Grid (my personal favorite) - see explanation here

Auditory illusion:

• Shepard-Risset tone: an infinite glissando (see also the wikipedia page)

Motor system:

• The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling the Amplitude of Movement. Paul Fitts. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1954. (See also the wikipedia page)
• Fitts' Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction. Scott Mackenzie. HCI Journal, 1992.
• Asymmetric Division of Labo in Human Skilled Bimanuel Action: The Kinematic Chain as a Model. Yves Guiard, Journal of Motor Behaviour, 1987.

Lecture 3 — 19 September 2018 — Graphical Interaction

Handouts

• Graphical Interaction

Audio recordings

• Psychology 101 - Graphical Interaction (part 1)
• Graphical Interaction (part 2)

Videos, papers

• Marking menus - video - Gordon Kurtenbach's thesis
• All the widgets - 1990 video by Brad Myers

Readings in Psychology

Memory:

• Types of memory (from The Human Memory)
• The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two. George A. Miller, Psychology Review, 1955. (see also the wikipedia page)
• The Forgetting Pill - article from Wired Magazine, february 2012

Cognition:

• Action theory, Don Norman
• Plans and Situated Actions, Lucy Suchman
• Situated cognition

Lecture 4 — 26 September 2018 — Pointing and Navigation

Handouts

• Pointing and Navigation

Audio recordings

• Pointing and Navigation (part 1)
• Pointing and Navigation (part 2)

Videos on pointing and navigation shown in class

• Drag'n'pop
• Semantic pointing (click the demo link to get to the Java applet)
• Bubble cursor (video)
• Dynaspot (video)
• Pad++
• OrthoZoom
• Crossy
• BumpTop
• Side Views

Readings on pointing and navigation

• Fitt's Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction, I. Scott MacKenzie, Human-Computer Interaction, 1992.
• "Beating" Fitts' law: Virtual Enhancements for Pointing Facilitation, R. Balakrishnan, Int. J. Human-Computer Studies, 2004.
• Semantic Pointing: improving target acquisition with control-display ratio adaptation, Blanch, Guiard & Beaudouin-Lafon, CHI 2004.
• Bubble cursor - enhancing target acquisition by dynamic resizing of the cursor's activation area, Grossman & Balakrishnan, CHI 2005 - web page - Chrome extension.
• Dynaspot - Speed-dependent Area Cursor, Chapuis, Labrune & Pietriga, CHI 2009.
• Pad - An Alternative Approach to the Computer Interface, Perlin & Fox, SIGGRAPH 1992.
• Orthozoom - 1D Multi-Scale Navigation, Appert & Fekete, CHI 2006.
• Crossy - A crossing-based drawing application, Apitz & Guimbretiere, UIST 2004 - web page.
• BumpTop - Keepin’ It Real: Pushing the Desktop Metaphor with Physics, Piles and the Pen, Agarawala & Balakrishnan, CHI 2006 - web page
• Side Views: persistent, on-demand previews for open-ended tasks, Terry & Mynatt, UIST 2002.

Lecture 5 — 3 October 2018 — Conceptual modeling

Handouts

• Conceptual modeling

Audio recordings

• Conceptual modeling (part 1)
• Conceptual modeling (part 2)

Readings

• Don Norman - The Design of Everyday Things
• Carelman - Catalogue des objets introuvables - see also images from the original edition and an online version based on his later exhibit and the book.
• Planar maps: An Interaction Paradigm for Graphic Design, P. Baudelaire & M. Gangnet, CHI'89 - for the maths behind it: Incremental Computation of Planar Maps, M. Gangnet et al, SIGGRAPH'89.

Lecture 6 — 10 October 2018 — Instrumental Interaction, Theories and models in HCI

Handouts

• Instrumental Interaction
• Theories and models in HCI

Audio recordings

• Instrumental Interaction (part 1)
• Instrumental Interaction (part 2) - Theories and models in HCI (part 1)

Videos and demos shown in class

• CPN200
• StickyLines
• Zip archive containing 3 Tcl/Tk demos that can be run from the terminal, assuming you have installed the Tcl/Tk (installed by default on Mac OS X):
  % wish indirect.tcl   - direct vs. indirect manipulation
  % wish search.tcl     - instrumental text search
  % wish guidelines.tcl - magnetic guidelines

Readings on instrumental interaction

• Instrumental Interaction: An Interaction Model for Designing Post-WIMP Interfaces, Beaudouin-Lafon, ACM CHI 2000.
• Reification, Polymorphism and Reuse: Three Design Principles for Designing Visual Interfaces, Beaudouin-Lafon & Mackay
• The Architecture and Implementation of CPN2000, A Post-WIMP Graphical Application, Beaudouin-Lafon & Lassen, ACM UIST 2000. CPNtools web site.
• Beyond Snapping: Persistent, Tweakable Alignment and Distribution with StickyLines, Ciolfi Felice, Maudet, Mackay & Beaudouin-Lafon, ACM UIST 2016.

Readings on theories and models

• Karl Popper. His most famous book:
  The Logic of Scientific Discovery
• HCI Models, Theories, and Frameworks, John Carroll (Ed). Available also on ScienceDirect. I used this book extensively to prepare this lecture.

Action and perception:

• Pre-attentive processing (infovis wiki). Research paper:
  Search asymmetry: A diagnostic for preattentive processing of separable features, A. Treisman and J. Souther, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1985.
• Gestalt perception
• Ecological Psychology. James J. Gibson's seminal book:
  The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (also on Google Books)
• Affordances vs. Signifiers by Don Norman

Lecture 7 — 24 October 2018 — Theories and models in HCI

Handouts

• Theories and models in HCI

Audio recordings

• Theories and models in HCI (part 2)
• Theories and models in HCI (part 3)

Readings on theories and models

Action and perception:

• Hick's law (also known as Hick-Hyman law). Research paper:
  On the rate of gain of information, W.E. Hick, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1952.
• Fitts' law. Research paper:
  The Information Capacity of the Human Motor System in Controlling the Amplitude of Movement, P. Fitts, Journal of Experimental Psychology, 1954.
  Fitts' Law as a Research and Design Tool in Human-Computer Interaction. Scott Mackenzie, HCI Journal, 1992.
• Kinematic chain - this entry describes the general concept of a kinematic chain.
  Asymmetric Division of Labo in Human Skilled Bimanuel Action: The Kinematic Chain as a Model, Y. Guiard, Journal of Motor Behaviour, 1987. Research paper about kinematic chain and bimanual interaction.
  A study in two-handed input, W. Buxton and B. Myers, Proc. ACM CHI'86, 1986. The first study of bimanual input (HTML version).
• Toolglass and Magic Lenses: The See-Through Interface, E. Bier et al., Proc. ACM SIGGRAPH 93, 1993. An advanced bimanual interface using Guiard's principles. Video

Cognition and behaviour:

• Action Theory, from The Design of Everyday Things, Don Norman, 2002. revised edition.
• Plans and Situated Action, Lucy Suchman. PDF version.
• Human-Machine Reconfigurations, recently revised version of the above.
• Activity Theory
• Beyond the Interface: Encountering Artifacts in Use, L. Bannon and S. Bodker, in Designing Interaction: Psychology at the Human-Computer Interface, 1991. Introduced Activity Theory into HCI.
• Acting with Technology: Activity Theory and Interaction Design, V. Kaptelenin and B. Nardi, 2009. A recent book on activity theory and HCI.
• The Human-Artifact Model - an Activity Theory Approach to Artifact Ecologies, S. Bødker and C. Klokmose, Human-Computer Interaction, 2011.
• Cognitive Dimensions of Notation. Research paper:
• Notational Systems – the Cognitive Dimensions of Notations framework, A. Blackwell and T. Green, in HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks, 2003. Web site with additional resources.

HCI models and theories:

• A Morphological Analysis of the Design Space of Input Devices, S. Card et al., ACM Trans. Office Information Systems, 1991.
• The UAN: a user-oriented representation for direct manipulation interface designs, R. Hartson, A. Siochi and D. Hix, ACM Trans. Office Information Systems, 1990.
• SwingStates: Adding state machines to Java and the Swing toolkit, C. Appert and M. Beaudouin-Lafon. Jal Software Practice and Experience, 2008. Web site with downloadable library and examples.
• GOMS, Keystroke-level model
• The Psychology of Human Computer Interaction, S. Card, T. Moran and A. Newell, 1983.
• Project Ernestine: A validation of GOMS for prediction and explanation of real-world task performance W. Gray et al., Human-Computer Interaction, 1993.
• Extensions of GOMS analyses to expert performance requiring perception of dynamic visual and auditory information, B. John, Proc. ACM CHI'90, 1990.
• Instrumental Interaction: An Interaction Model for Designing Post-WIMP Interfaces, M. Beaudouin-Lafon, Proc. ACM CHI 2000, 2000.

Software engineering:

• User Interface Management Systems: Present and Future, M. Beaudouin-Lafon, Eurographics, 1994.
• MVC, see also history of MVC
  A cookbook for using the model-view controller user interface paradigm in Smalltalk-80, G. Krasner and S. Pope, Jal Object-Oriented Programming, 1988.
• PAC
  PAC, an Object-Oriented Model for Dialog Design, J. Coutaz, Proc. INTERACT 87, 1987.