What is your subject about? A brief overview
This subject provides an advanced study of Interface Design and Evaluation. The subject will look at various contexts that affect interface design and will employ both design and usability principles to evaluate and design interfaces. It includes the creation of usability testing strategies to ensure that both the design and usability requirements are met as well as the evaluation of test results.
Learning outcomes
On successful completion of this subject, you should:
be able to explain the relevance of integrating aspects of the human, social and organisational context into the design process;
be able to demonstrate and articulate the importance of the principles of design that are applicable to the design of an interface;
be able to evaluate the effective usability of an interface and recommend changes to improve its usability;
be able to design a user interface to meet a given set of requirements;
be able to design a usability strategy to ensure that an interface meets its usability goals;
be able to interpret and evaluate usability testing results to plan interface improvements.
Pass Requirements
This subject has no exam.
A student must obtain a pass mark in at least four (4) of the five (5) assessments and a total mark of at least 50% in order to pass this subject.
To be eligible for the grade AA you must have submitted all assessment items in this subject. If you choose not to complete an assessment item and receive an overall mark between 45 and 49 then you will not be granted an AA.
Key Subjects
Passing a key subject is one of the indicators of satisfactory academic progress through your course. You must pass the key subjects in your course at no more than two attempts. The first time you fail a key subject you will be ‘at risk’ of exclusion; if you fail a second time you will be excluded from the course.
Prescribed Text
Prescribed Text
The prescribed text for this subject is:
Rogers, Y., Sharp, H., & Preece, J. (2015). Interaction Design (4th ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, UK.: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Recommended Reading:
Some recommended texts are listed below. These texts are not required for study in this subject but may be used to add depth to your studies. The books by Donald Norman and Steve Krug are particularly recommended for further study.
Norman, D. (1990), The design of everyday things. Doubleday, New York.
Norman, D. (2004). Emotional Design. Basic Books, New York.
Krug, S. (2006). Don’t Make Me Think. A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability. Berkeley. CA: New Riders.
Krug, S. (2010). Rocket Surgery Made Easy. The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems. Berkeley. CA: New Riders.
Lauesen, S. (2007), User Interface Design: A Software Engineering Perspective, Harlow,
UK, Pearson Education Ltd.
Lowdermilk, T. (2013). User-Centered Design. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media Inc. Shneiderman, B., & Plaisant, C. (2009). Designing the user interface: Strategies for effective human-computer interaction (5th ed.). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
ACM/IEEE/SIGCHI journals.
CHI and OZCHI proceedings.
Charles Sturt University call number [P004/S1].
Required Software
The software that we will use for this subject is Balsamiq’s Mockups v3.5.9.
Balsamiq Mockups is a professional wireframing tool and Balsamiq have granted all HCI students at X a full professional licence that will work until February 2018. The Balsamiq Mockups licence file can be downloaded from the Resources Page of the ITC204 Interact site.
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