CSI 5122: Software Usability

This page contains general information about the course CSI 5122 (Winter 2012), taught by Professor Tim Lethbridge.

My objectives in teaching this course are 1) to raise your awareness of usability as a key software engineering quality; 2) to teach you up-to-date knowledge regarding usability engineering and human-computer interaction; 3) to teach you skills in UI design and evaluation; and 4) to help graduate students to learn to be be better researchers by emphasizing research techniques and paper writing.

Some students will have taken a user interface design course (such as SEG3120/SEG3125) before taking this course, but not all students will have had the opportunity to do this. If you have not, don't worry. I will review key undergrad knowledge in the first part of course. I will also ask you to do some extra reading, but not an excessive amount of this.

Course notes

Please click here for the course notes. As we work our way through the course, I will update these from the previous offering of the course, so they should only be considered final just before each week's lecture.

Blog posts by students in the class

The following are blog posts by students in this year's class. These are awarded marks in the class.

• David Lareau: Inverted Analog Stick Camera Controls: Inverted to what?
• Let the maps win: Google Map (“GM”) or Bing Map (“BM”) - Shruti Sharma
• VS2010 Auto-complete Usability - Mahmoud Orabi
• VS2010 Missing Import Quick Fix Usability - Ahmed Orabi

Weekly schedule

The following is the current weekly schedule. As students' presentations and paper-leading slots are filled up, the schediule will be adjusted. You must download and read all the papers required for each week. This material will be tested on the exam.