Readings

There is quite a lot of reading for this course, particularly if you are used to technical courses using a single textbook. I have carefully chosen articles that are relatively well written and aimed at a more general audience. There is a whole literature on the research aspects of Human Computer Interaction, Cognitive Psychology and Software Engineering. But I think you have enough on your plate without having to learn the jargon and the background understanding to fully understand that body of work.

I also expect that in pursuing the topics of interest to you that you will do some additional background reading. What you choose to read depends on both the topic and the information sources available to you within the time constraints of the course.
You need to getthe following text:

Usability Engineering
Jakob Nielsen (1994) Academic Press ISBN 0125184069

It is on reserve in the LIS library.
The tentative schedule for the readings
 

Suggested Additional Texts

If you are very keen and interested, these are very good and relatively inexpensive:

The Trouble With Computers : Usefulness, Usability, and Productivity
Thomas K. Landauer (1996) MIT Press. ISBN: 0262621088

Designing Web Usability : The Practice of Simplicity
Jakob Nielsen (2000) New Riders Publishing. ISBN: 156205810X

Usability Engineering: Scenario-Based Development of Human-Computer Interaction
Mary Beth Rosson & John M. Carroll (2001) Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN: 1558607129

Tog on Interface
Bruce Tognazzini (1992) Addison-Wesley. ISBN: 0201608421

The Design of Everyday Things
Donald A. Norman (1990) Currency/Doubleday. ISBN: 0385267746
 

Online resources

Some of the readings are taken from Task-Centered User Interface Design: A Practical Introduction by Clayton Lewis and John Rieman
This is an online shareware book. It can be accessed from
www.acm.org/~perlman/uidesign.html

We will also be looking at various articles from a journal called "interactions".This journal is published by the ACM and is well worth reading. We have an online subscription to the ACM Digital Library. This is accessible via the LIS Library express links page, as well as via the main library web page. Note that you have to go via a UIUC library web page so that the ACM know that you are part of UIUC. You will have to provide your UIUC netid and password.

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