Preliminary Topic List Ideas
(Note: these are mostly for reference -- the class schedule has the actual list that will be covered, in order.)
- History of interaction techniques – where did each technique come from?
- Interviews/discussions with various interaction technique inventors
- Models and taxonomies of interaction techniques
- State Transition Diagrams
- Buxton’s, All the Widgets, what else?
- Stuart K. Card, Jock D. Mackinlay, and George G. Robertson. 1990. The design space of input devices. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '90), ACM, New York, NY, USA, 117-124. http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/97243.97263
- Models for measuring and evaluating interaction techniques, like Fitt’s Law, Keystroke model, GOMS, etc.
- Studying interaction techniques
- Research methods, formal A vs. B studies
- How to tell if your technique is faster/better/more accurate
- Fitt’s law tests
- Accot and Zhai’s steering law
- I. Scott MacKenzie’s work
- Statistical analyses
- Tools for measuring performance, like Wobbrock’s
- Interaction techniques for desktops:
- Scrolling, selecting, text editing, creating/moving/growing objects & windows, dealing with lists and trees of objects
- Desktop metaphor, other ways to organize files
- Medium-level “interaction techniques” and metaphors
- And how selection, extend selection, etc. works on each
- Dialog boxes / forms / conventional web pages
- Expand/contract hierarchy views (e.g., files/folders)
- List + detail view (e.g., email messages)
- Graphical objects view
- Spreadsheet view
- Table view with sortable columns
- Text editor view
- Map view (like Google maps)
- Interaction techniques for mobile devices:
- Text entry techniques
- Scrolling (flick, etc.)
- Other gestures
- A little on speech recognition and voice interfaces
- Telephony menus (“press 1 for ….”)
- 3D interaction techniques (for manipulating 3D objects)
- Interaction techniques for very-large displays and immersive (VR) environments
- Glove-based interaction techniques (data-glove)
- Multi-user, multi-device interaction techniques
- Interaction techniques for the handicapped
- Gaze recognition
- Assistive keyboards
- Etc.
- Interaction techniques for game control
- Conventional controllers
- Issues with N64 controller – backwards compatibility made ½ of it unusable
- The original Wii controller
- New Wii tablet interactions
- “Exertion Games” interactions
- “Natural User interfaces” (NUIs) (as Microsoft calls them)
- Kinect, gestures, etc.
- Speech and vision interfaces
- Interaction techniques for consumer electronics
- Knobs and buttons on the front panel
- Beyond buttons on a remote?
- Increasing use of touch screens (at least on printers and copiers)
- Interaction techniques on Google Glasses
- Gadgets and interaction techniques with them (just a little on this topic so this course isn’t redundant with Scott Hudson’s 05-833 course).
- Research topics in interaction techniques
- Novel interaction techniques presented at recent UIST/CHI conferences
- Gesture recognition and its algorithms (Rubine, Wobbrock’s)
- Interaction techniques that use vision/camera
- Legal issues around interaction techniques, patents on interaction techniques
- Implementation techniques and tools for interaction techniques
- Interaction techniques for synchronous collaboration (are there any? Anything here that’s different than single person?) ref: PebblesDraw-CSCW’98
- AI interfaces
- Questions and answers
- Microsoft Bob (1995)
- Microsoft Clippy (Office Assistant) (1997)
- Squiggly underlines in Word
- Speech/camera recognition
- What else?
- Undo, various undo models, interaction histories, macro recording, tutorial-makers
- Visualization (not sure if this should be included or not – it is mostly output/graphics and not interaction
Homework/Final Project Ideas:
(Note: these are mostly for reference -- we have not yet finalized the format for the homeworks and final projects in the course. See the more complete Final Project Ideas list at the end of the main page. Also, some of these are more appropriate for graduate students and others are more appropriate for undergrads.)
- Simple measurements of an existing interaction technique, for speed/accuracy
- Formal comparison of two existing techniques, with appropriate statistical tests
- In-class quizzes about the reading and video homeworks
- Paper providing a comprehensive history of a particular interaction area (e.g., scrolling) and techniques used, with citations
- Better taxonomy organizing a set of interaction techniques
- Searching for patents describing interaction techniques, evaluating whether they seem valid or not
- Interview with an inventor of a particular interaction technique
- Most of them are still alive
- E.g., Ivan Sutherland, Alan Kay (covered windows), David Canfield Smith (desktop icons), Larry Tesler (copy/paste), Bas Ording (Apple flick scrolling), Daniel Oran (Windows Task bar), etc.
- Create a video, audio and/or paper report
- Create or fix up a Wikipedia page about an interaction technique or about an inventor of one, with appropriate citations:
- There isn’t a page about David Canfield Smith
- The page for Larry Tesler only vaguely mentions his invention of Copy-and-Paste text editing
- The entry for things like “scrollbar” have no history at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrollbar
- Take the current video of All the Widgets and create a useful on-line resource, indexed by technique but also by system, source, date, etc.
- Update the video of All the Widgets for one area showing new widgets and progress since 1990
- Invent a novel interaction technique for something, implement or prototype it, do a user study of the result, write a conference-style paper
- Prepare a chapter for the interaction-design.org encyclopedia
- Prepare a set of non-copyrighted pictures/videos for interaction-design.org image library
- OK to use screen capture from commercial products and your own photos