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[ Formal Data | Course Tools | Syllabus | Course Books | Course Plan ]
Interactive System Design course is unique in the sense that you will need to learn several things in parallel. You have to get a good overview of the Human-Computer Interface Design field, master key design principles and evaluation techniques. At the same time, you have to get a practical experience in designing, developing, and evaluating interactive systems. No single book can provide all necessary readings. The mandatory readings for this course will be assigned from several books including the books listed below and will be provided over the Web. For those who prefer paper versions of these books, all books with assigned readings are reserved at Pitt library. You can locate the reserved books through Course Reserves.
Newman and Lamming book provides the most complete and detailed support for the topics presented in this course. This book has clearly emerged as a winner in a competition of about 10 considered books. While being relatively old, it still provides a better treatment of the subject and for smaller price then a number of more recent book. This is not a surprize - the book was specially created to support a course on Interactive System Design. The book is also very popular. This book was used as a course book for several years. More readings will be assigned from this book than from the books listed below, so while it is not required, you may really prefer to have your own copy. It is now "out of print" (new edition of the book is being prepared), however, many copies of this book (used or new) are still available from private sellers on Amazon.com and similar cites (see links below).
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Interactive System Design William M. Newman, Michael G. Lamming Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 1995, 468 pp. ISBN: 0201631628 Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($1 used) Find this books with Campusbooks4less Find this book with FetchBook.info |
While being a very good and comprehensive book, the Newman and Lamming book does not cover well a number of practical issues of interface design and evaluation. Instead of requiring you to get another popular but expensive book to cover the missing components of the course (some of them are listed as additional recommeded books) the instructor decided to use a well-known shareware book:
Task-Centered User Interface Design: A Practical Introduction
Clayton Lewis and John Rieman
University of Colorado, Boulder, 1994.
This book can be downloaded from the University of Colorado FTP site and also accessed as a hypertext from HCI Bibliography Site. You can use in in electronic form or print it. If you choose to use this book, please, pay the $5 shareware fee.
An excellent textbook of Shneiderman has served as a main course book in several eralier offerings of this course. This is a great HCI book, but it supports the needs of our course less than the Newman and Lamming book and it is more expemsive. Still it provides a very good overview of the Human-Computer Interaction field and could be a good investment for those who selected an Information Science career. No mandatory readings will be assigned from this book, however, about half of the lectures will have assigned supplementary readings from it. It was also reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library.
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Designing the User Interface : Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction Ben Shneiderman, Catherine Plaisant 5th Edition (4th and 3rd edition will also work) Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 2009, 606 pp. ISBN: 0321537351 Buy / read about this book at amazon.com Find this book with FetchBook.info |
The book was a contender for the main course book, but has lost to the Newman and Lamming book for several reasons (quite similar to the book above). Still it is a very good book that offers a nice and extended treatment of most design/evaluation topics. It can be an excellent source for broadening your knowledge on the subject. It also can provide an alternative treatment of a few complicated topics. Supplementary readings from this book will be assigned for several lectures of the course. This book has a home page that can be used as an excellent source of relevant information. To help with supplementary readings, the book was reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library. The first edition, while thinner, is eqially useful.
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Interaction Design: Beyond Human-Computer Interaction Buy / read about this book at amazon.com Find this book with FetchBook.info |
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Interaction Design |
This book is an excellent source of information about various HCI topics that is hard to impossible to find in regular textbooks. Supplementary readings from this book will be assigned for several lectures of the course. The Encyclopedia is available at the Information Sciences Library. Note that it is located in its usual place, not in the reserves area.
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Berkshire Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction |
The books listed in this section are not required to complete the course but can be used by the students who need to understand the subject better or in more details. The authors of these books are leading authorities in HCI. The first of these books (Raskin) can be used as a good addition to the Shneiderman textbook. The second (Norman) provides an excellent background for the interface design part. The third (Nielsen) is still one of the best handbooks on the evaluation of Interactive System. All three books have been reserved for you in the Information Sciences Library.
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The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems Addison-Wesley Pub Co, 2000, 256 pp. |
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The Design of Everyday Things Currency/Doubleday, 1990, 257 pp. |
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Usability Engineering Jakob Nielsen Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1994, 362 pp. |
The main course project of this course will require you to develop practical interactive systems and might need advanced knowledge of Java programming language. We recommend two books that provide a comprehensive support for this part of the course. The Deitel & Deitel Book provides a good overall introduction to Java for those who starts the course with little knowledge of Java. Most of lecture slides in the Java part of our course is based on this book. It provides a reasonably good introduction to Java graphics, widgets (including Swing) and applets. It does not cover servlets enough though. The Callaway's and Hunter's book are among the best introduction to servlets that is very suitable for the beginners. It explains all necessary prerequisits and comes with a CD full of examples and software. Zukovsky is a good book on Swing - main GUI package we will use in the course. In addition to these books, a list of resources for learning Java is available from the Links section of the course Web site.
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Java How to Program Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel 4rd Edition (3nd edition will also work) Prentice Hall, 2001, 1545 pp. ISBN: 0130341517 Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($74 new; $50 used) |
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Inside Servlets: Server-Side Programming for the Java(TM) Platform (2nd Edition) Buy / read about this book at amazon.com ($40 new; $27 used) |
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Java Servlet Programming, 2nd Edition |
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Definitive Guide to Swing for Java 2 John Zukowski 2nd Edition NY Apress, 2000 ISBN: 0130341517 |
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