HCI and the IS Curriculum

Dennis F. Galletta

University of Pittsburgh

Katz Graduate School of Business

1. Where does HCI fit? Present: Short shrift Future: Should be required

Why? Poor interfaces abound Why? Negroponte: developers use introspection

How to fix? Requires lobbying Role for SIG-HCI?

2. Attributes of a Successful HCI Course

Describes Practice Based on Research Engages the students (more later)

Classic readings for debate Experiential exercises Hands-on work Application of concepts

3. What curriculum would be ideal?

For undergrad/grad, ideal might be Tools course (VB.Net, Cold Fusion, C#, etc.) HCI Concepts course (using an HCI in MIS text) HCI Application course (large project integrating

prerequisite tools and concepts courses)

While we all think HCI is important, curricular tradeoffs are difficult.

3. Curriculum: PhD level Important courses:

Experimental design Psychometrics Multivariate stats / SEM HCI Concepts course (using readings and/or

text) MIS Research project course (integrate above)

4. Integration into Existing Courses HCI is usually discussed briefly in SA&D (or SD&I) course Too much going on there for anything but a superficial view That view could provide some essentials and “advertise” for

full course Introduce central role of iteration/testing Compare GUIs and command interfaces

Direct Manipulation Xerox Star Macintosh Windows evolution

Training and Documentation (Minimalism etc.) How to evaluate an interface 2-3 New technologies (use recent videos from ACM SIGCHI

Conferences)

5. Content of the HCI Course Assumptions:

MBA/MS level unless noted All must be jammed into one course Students have recent internship Students have some programming background

5a. Assignments (graded) First half: VB.Net Executive Memos covering readings Critique an Interface (even on ship!)

(removed) Design a text screen (Tullis software) Design an icon (peer evaluated) Major design project (present to class;

Q&A)

5a. Assignments (in class) Find flaws in interface (Molich & Nielsen,

1991) Mental models (Meyer, 1981; Bransford

and Johnson 1972) Retroactive Inhibition (color names/text)

Example: Retroactive Inhibition

Red green blue black grey red brown yellow blue black green

red yellow grey blue brown black red yellow green red

black blue brown

Example: Retroactive Inhibition

Red green blue black grey red brown yellow blue black green

red yellow grey blue brown black red yellow green red

black blue brown grey

Example: Retroactive Inhibition

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5b. Web Resources HCI Bib at http://www.hcibib.org/ HCI Webliography at http://www.hcibib.org/hci-sites/ Shneiderman’s Book Site at http://www.aw-bc.com/DTUI/ HCI Resource Network at http://www.hcirn.com/ Web Design and Usability Guidelines at

http://usability.gov/guidelines/ Perlman’s suggested readings at

http://hcibib.org/readings.html Microsoft’s Inductive User Interface Guidelines at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnwui/html/iuiguidelines.asp

5c. Readings (Master’s course) Text – primary resource now that VB takes

up half of course Xerox Star (Bewley et al) Web Pages that Suck.com Consistency (Grudin)

5c. Readings (PhD Level) 106 readings Subdivided as follows:

Previous experiments in this course (12)

Overview & hard/soft science (7)

GUIs and Direct Manipulation (8)

Design Principles (6) “Damaged merchandise”

and HCI Evaluation (7)

Social Factors (5) Devices (11) Menus, command languages (2) Hypermedia (10) Task analysis/GOMS (6) Cognitive & other fit (7) Mental models/learning (13) Future technologies (12)

Syllabus available at http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta/phdhci.html

5d. Cases None used currently as assignments Cover two cases in lecture

Olympic Message System as illustration of Gould’s 3 principles of design

Project Ernestine as illustration of value of GOMS

This area needs work in my course

5e. Experimental Research Used in PhD course only Have published:

3 experiments (JMIS, CACM, AMIT) 5 Conference papers (ICIS, AMCIS, HICSS)

Two await 1st revision (ISR, JAIS) One in SIG-HCI pre ICIS workshop 2002

5e. Experimental Research We have some news media experience as well,

showing that the world cares about HCI research June 1994: study with Ahuja, Hartman, Peace, Teo

study reported in WSJ, Computerworld, Information Week, PC Magazine

April 1996: All Things Considered: Interview about Web usability difficulties

March 2003: study with Durcikova, Everard, Jones reported in Business Week, CNN.com, CNN TV, ABC, CBS, several newspapers, Minn. Public Radio, CBC, etc.

WSJ Report Pam Sebastian’s

column exceptionally thorough

faxed entire paper allowed me to review a

draft

Ironic Philippe Kahn juxtaposition

CNN TV

5f. Videos Several videos are available via ACM’s annual

SIGCHI Conference Extremely useful to illustrate research and/or

future technology Examples

Walking/flying in virtual reality IBM’s mobile PDA Navipoint

Research channel from time to time Conversa serious and humorous

6. How IS Version Differs From Others: A Paradox We can say we stress organizational context and business

value However:

We cannot count on students’ ability to create a GUI program We cannot count on students to have psychology background Students have business context in previous courses

Therefore, one might conclude that business context is less needed because students already have it!

But the key is to apply principles to the business context My course is taken after an internship, and shared

experiences are a valuable component.

Postscript: What we do well We get paid for having a great deal of fun We do studies that interest us We make excellent use of our Public

Relations person in our school We make the Dean very happy

Postscript: What I do poorly Have trouble getting radio interviewers to allow

names of co-authors (corollary: I do well taking all the credit for our projects!)

Integrate learning of tool with conceptual information

Spend too much time writing up the studies we do in the PhD course and too little time on the MBA level course: recent recovery of abysmal evals.

Do not think carefully enough about curricular issues

HCI and the IS Curriculum

Dennis F. Galletta

University of Pittsburgh

Katz Graduate School of Business