Teaching

This course covers the fundamentals of UX design and provides the students with insights into the "real-life" processes, challengers, considerations, tools, teams, models, etc. of a user experience designer. Students will be introduced to the UX principles, to designing, evaluating, implementing and measuring of UX.


Additional Readings:

Week 2:
Usability Evaluation
A Cultural Constraint and the Definition of Awkward
What’s the waiter doing with the computer screen?
What is a browser?
Ozzy and remote control
How to Conduct User Observations
Contextual Inquiry
Kathy Sierra: Building the minimum Badass User, Business of Software 2012
Kathy Sierra – Building badass users
How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme
These are your users... read and be horrified

Week 3:
Personas and user-centered design: How can personas benefit product design processes?
Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER
The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
Handling the Competing Demands of Field Studies
Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin

Week 4:
Usability Inspection Methods
Are we overlooking some usability testing methods? A comparison of lab, beta, and forum tests
Usability testing of mobile applications: A comparison between laboratory and field testing
Methods to support human-centred design
Methods for testing and evaluating survey questions
A Comparison of Three Usability Evaluation Methods: Heuristic, Think-Aloud, and Performance Testing

Week 5:
User Stories
10 Tips for writing good user stories
Handbook of Usability Testing

Week 6:
User Experience and Experience Design
Measuring usability as quality of use
Methods for Measuring Usability
SUS - A quick and dirty usability scale
SUS: A Retrospective
Assessing The Validity Of Your Research
Visualizing Fitts’s Law
Fitts' Law and Infinite Width
Digital services playbook

Week 7:
Latch: The Five Ultimate Hatracks
LATCH – Methods of Organization
Information Architecture
Latch Principles Explained
UX Online Card Sort Example
Analyzing Card Sort Results with a Spreadsheet Template
Remote Unmoderated Card Sorts: For Free!
Card Sorting Encyclopedia Entry

Week 11:
Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Them
Redesigning The Country Selector
Designing More Efficient Forms: Assistance and Validation
Where’s the Search? Re-examining User Expectations of Web Objects
“Label Placement in Forms” by Matteo Penzo

Week 12:
Usability Testers Manual
Prototyping tools
Paper Prototyping As A Usability Testing Technique
Usability Testing With Prototypes
Hanmail paper prototyping video

This course introduces fundamental design skills for two-dimensional interactive video games and provides the theoretical knowledge of the emotional and cognitive effects of video game play. Students will understand the importance of user experience assessment for video games as part of iterative design and development. Students will learn to theorize, design, prototype, and test digital games with a special focus on exploring the impact that video games have on human experience.

This course explores the fundamentals of game design. It focuses on the essentials shared by all games that are fundamental for a game designer working in any medium, from sports to board games to computer and video games. Although the focus of the course is on designing, prototyping, and testing non-digital games, digital games will be discussed in class to provide students with a broad theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train for creating a game.

This is an undergraduate honours seminar about a language learning game project.

This is a graduate class about games user research for SWaGUR students.

This course covers the fundamentals of UX design and provides the students with insights into the "real-life" processes, challengers, considerations, tools, teams, models, etc. of a user experience designer. Students will be introduced to the UX principles, to designing, evaluating, implementing and measuring of UX.


Additional Readings:

Week 2:
Usability Evaluation
A Cultural Constraint and the Definition of Awkward
What’s the waiter doing with the computer screen?
What is a browser?
Ozzy and remote control
How to Conduct User Observations
Contextual Inquiry
Kathy Sierra: Building the minimum Badass User, Business of Software 2012
Kathy Sierra – Building badass users
How Google Failed Its Users and Gave Birth to an Internet Meme
These are your users... read and be horrified

Week 3:
Personas and user-centered design: How can personas benefit product design processes?
Creative Problem Solving with SCAMPER
The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed.
Handling the Competing Demands of Field Studies
Goal-Directed Design: An Interview with Kim Goodwin

Week 4:
Usability Inspection Methods
Are we overlooking some usability testing methods? A comparison of lab, beta, and forum tests
Usability testing of mobile applications: A comparison between laboratory and field testing
Methods to support human-centred design
Methods for testing and evaluating survey questions
A Comparison of Three Usability Evaluation Methods: Heuristic, Think-Aloud, and Performance Testing

Week 5:
User Stories
10 Tips for writing good user stories
Handbook of Usability Testing

Week 6:
User Experience and Experience Design
Measuring usability as quality of use
Methods for Measuring Usability
SUS - A quick and dirty usability scale
SUS: A Retrospective
Assessing The Validity Of Your Research
Visualizing Fitts’s Law
Fitts' Law and Infinite Width
Digital services playbook

Week 7:
Latch: The Five Ultimate Hatracks
LATCH – Methods of Organization
Information Architecture
Latch Principles Explained
UX Online Card Sort Example
Analyzing Card Sort Results with a Spreadsheet Template
Remote Unmoderated Card Sorts: For Free!
Card Sorting Encyclopedia Entry

Week 11:
Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Them
Redesigning The Country Selector
Designing More Efficient Forms: Assistance and Validation
Where’s the Search? Re-examining User Expectations of Web Objects
“Label Placement in Forms” by Matteo Penzo

Week 12:
Usability Testers Manual
Prototyping tools
Paper Prototyping As A Usability Testing Technique
Usability Testing With Prototypes
Hanmail paper prototyping video

Co-taught with Vivian Yang. This is a project based course for the fourth year in the GDBA program. The purpose of this course is for students to study how digital products and services are modified and/or repurposed to suit the needs of a community outside of their origin. Students will work on a cross-cultural digital business media project with a local or global community. This year students are expected to register in a worldwide competition: The P2P: Challenging Extremism initiative. All the course activities will focus around this Contest. See details below for this Contest and how class is structured around it.

Game design is one of the most fascinating, yet least understood blends of arts, crafts, and engineering. We are looking for systems thinkers with a love of board and card games for this course. Introduction to Game Design is a course that explores the fundamentals of game design. Similar to the fundamentals classes that art students might take in figure drawing or color theory as part of their education to become visual artists, this class provides an opportunity for you to learn the basics of game design. It focuses on the essentials shared by all games that are fundamental for a game designer working in any medium, from sports to board games to computer and video games.

This course introduces fundamental design skills for two-dimensional interactive video games and provides the theoretical knowledge of the emotional and cognitive effects of video game play. Students will understand the importance of user experience assessment for video games as part of iterative design and development. Students will learn to theorize, design, prototype, and test digital games with a special focus on exploring the impact that video games have on human experience.

Game design is one of the most fascinating, yet least understood blends of arts, crafts, and engineering. We are looking for systems thinkers with a love of board and card games for this course. Introduction to Game Design is a course that explores the fundamentals of game design. Similar to the fundamentals classes that art students might take in figure drawing or color theory as part of their education to become visual artists, this class provides an opportunity for you to learn the basics of game design. It focuses on the essentials shared by all games that are fundamental for a game designer working in any medium, from sports to board games to computer and video games.

Knowledge and information are linked on a global scale though new media and communication technologies. Technology has become pervasive in our lives and has changed how we experience our interactions with ourselves, computing devices, and the world. The scale, speed, and logic - cultural and algorithmic -through which technology and new media operates today is unprecedented. However, this cultural shift towards pervasive computers has not just improved our lives, but provides an increasing amount of challenges for designers of technology and new media in this day and age. It is not enough that technology just works these days, but it is also important that the experience we have with it, is pleasurable.On the backdrop of development of new media, we will discuss the emergence of pleasurable user experience design. Students will be introduced to the theoretical background of user experience design and emerging new media and how to analyze and design for new media.

Co-taught with Vivian Yang. This is a project based course for the fourth year in the GDBA program. The purpose of this course is for students to study how digital products and services are modified and/or repurposed to suit the needs of a community outside of their origin. Students will work on a cross-cultural digital business media project with a local or global community. This year students are expected to register in a worldwide competition: The P2P: Challenging Extremism initiative. All the course activities will focus around this Contest. See details below for this Contest and how class is structured around it.

This course is a reading course for advanced topics in information science. We will schedule readings and the students will report on the findings in the literature via oral presentations.

This course provides an introduction to methods for conducting empirical research within the field of Computer Science. These methods help, for example, to provide objective answers to questions about the usability, effectiveness, and acceptability of systems and their impact on individuals, work groups, organizations and society at large. This is a very hands-on course, including a significant amount of fieldwork. The first half of the course covers the basics of the scientific method, building bottom-up from a survey of objective measures to the fundamentals of hypothesis testing using relatively simple research designs. The second half of the course alternates between a team-based project encompassing the design, conduct and presentation of small empirical studies and lectures and exercises covering introductory statistical methods especially useful in empirical work, as well as more advanced research designs and important topics such as ethics.

This is a course about the human factor of interactive entertainment technology. We will discuss novel interaction technologies and ways of getting feedback from players and users of interactive systems. Interactive entertainment systems have become a part of people’s lives around the globe. You can play games and other forms of interactive entertainment everywhere, on the web, on your phone, with augmented reality, or with novel sensor technologies. The design and usability of interactive systems is important for the ubiquitous computing that surrounds us to function properly. Many lessons can be learned from gaming for the interaction with these computer systems, but also games can be improved with knowledge from human factors and interface design. The goal of this course is to make better interactive systems by marrying the knowledge from human-computer interaction and game design. This will ultimately result in improving the relationship that people have to technology.

Introduction to Game Design is a course that explores the fundamentals of game design. The emphasis of this class is on creating several non-digital (not computer) games. Similar to the fundamentals classes that art students might take in figure drawing or color theory as part of their education to become visual artists, this class remains rooted squarely in the basics of game design. It focuses on the essentials shared by all games that are fundamental for a game designer working in any medium, from sports to board games to computer and video games. Although the focus of the course is on the creation of non-digital games, digital games will also be discussed in class. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a broad theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a game. As a game designer, students need to provide information to players about the content of their game, about how to play it (the things they need to do to progress in the game and the rules), and about the winning conditions. Students need to motivate people to play their games in the first place.

This course provides an introduction to methods for conducting empirical research within the field of Computer Science. These methods help, for example, to provide objective answers to questions about the usability, effectiveness, and acceptability of systems and their impact on individuals, work groups, organizations and society at large. This is a very hands-on course, including a significant amount of fieldwork. The first half of the course covers the basics of the scientific method, building bottom-up from a survey of objective measures to the fundamentals of hypothesis testing using relatively simple research designs. The second half of the course alternates between a team-based project encompassing the design, conduct and presentation of small empirical studies and lectures and exercises covering introductory statistical methods especially useful in empirical work, as well as more advanced research designs and important topics such as ethics.

Gamification is using game design in systems that primarily support non-game tasks to make them more fun, engaging, and motivating. We treat gamification in this course from a seductive interaction and user experience design lens. We’ll learn about how to solve real-world problems, such as social impact, health and business challenges using gaming systems. While we will revisit some familiar game design principles, we will focus this course on leveraging motivational psychology and interaction design to get insights into marketing, human resources, productivity enhancement, sustainability, training, health and wellness, innovation, and customer engagement. Students will leave the course with a thorough understanding of gamification methods and how to use gamification effectively.

Introduction to Game Design is a course that explores the fundamentals of game design. The emphasis of this class is on creating several non-digital (not computer) games. Similar to the fundamentals classes that art students might take in figure drawing or color theory as part of their education to become visual artists, this class remains rooted squarely in the basics of game design. It focuses on the essentials shared by all games that are fundamental for a game designer working in any medium, from sports to board games to computer and video games. Although the focus of the course is on the creation of non-digital games, digital games will also be discussed in class. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a broad theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a game. As a game designer, students need to provide information to players about the content of their game, about how to play it (the things they need to do to progress in the game and the rules), and about the winning conditions. Students need to motivate people to play their games in the first place.

This course furthers students’ knowledge of the design and development of games. We will be looking at game balancing concepts (probability and statistics) as well as level design and architecture and recent forms of game innovation such as social games and gameful design concepts. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a refined and in-depth theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a digital game. Students are expected to create several smaller non-digital games throughout the course as well as to develop their own game pitch documents, videos, and presentations by the end of the course.

This is a course about the human factor of interactive entertainment technology. We will discuss novel interaction technologies and ways of getting feedback from players and users of interactive systems. Interactive entertainment systems have become a part of people’s lives around the globe. You can play games and other forms of interactive entertainment everywhere, on the web, on your phone, with augmented reality, or with novel sensor technologies. The design and usability of interactive systems is important for the ubiquitous computing that surrounds us to function properly. Many lessons can be learned from gaming for the interaction with these computer systems, but also games can be improved with knowledge from human factors and interface design. The goal of this course is to make better interactive systems by marrying the knowledge from human-computer interaction and game design. This will ultimately result in improving the relationship that people have to technology.

In this graduate reading course, we will focus on research topics in the subfield of human-computer interaction: affective gaming, which explores interaction technologies and user research for game. The course will introduce students to conducting research experiments. The research topics in the course will focus on user experience, input devices, interaction technologies, and evaluation approaches concerning human factors in interactive entertainment. The goal of this course is for you to be able to understand the writing, methods, and relevant topics in the research field of human-computer interaction for interactive entertainment technologies. Knowing this will ultimately make you a better HCI researcher and allow you to improve the relationship that people have to technology.

This course furthers students’ knowledge of the design and development of games. We will be looking at game balancing concepts (probability and statistics) as well as level design and architecture and recent forms of game innovation such as social games and gameful design concepts. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a refined and in-depth theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a digital game. Students are expected to create several smaller non-digital games throughout the course as well as to develop their own game pitch documents, videos, and presentations by the end of the course.

This course introduces students to the design and development of games, including digital, board, and card games. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a broad theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a game. Students will be exposed to game criticism and balancing concepts as well as game production and industry standard team management techniques. Students are expected to create several smaller non-digital games throughout the course as well as to develop their own game pitch documents, videos, and presentations by the end of the course.

This course furthers students’ knowledge of the design and development of games. We will be looking at game balancing concepts (probability and statistics) as well as level design and architecture and recent forms of game innovation such as social games and gameful design concepts. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a refined and in-depth theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a digital game. Students are expected to create several smaller non-digital games throughout the course as well as to develop their own game pitch documents, videos, and presentations by the end of the course.

This course introduces students to the design and development of games, including digital, board, and card games. The lectures and tutorials provide students with a broad theoretical and conceptual understanding of the field of game design and development along with practical exercises to train creating a game. Students will be exposed to game criticism and balancing concepts as well as game production and industry standard team management techniques. Students are expected to create several smaller non-digital games throughout the course as well as to develop their own game pitch documents, videos, and presentations by the end of the course.

This is a course about the human factor of interactive entertainment technology. We will discuss novel interaction technologies and ways of getting feedback from players and users of interactive systems. Interactive entertainment systems have become a part of people’s lives around the globe. You can play games and other forms of interactive entertainment everywhere, on the web, on your phone, with augmented reality, or with novel sensor technologies. The design and usability of interactive systems is important for the ubiquitous computing that surrounds us to function properly. Many lessons can be learned from gaming for the interaction with these computer systems, but also games can be improved with knowledge from human factors and interface design. The goal of this course is to make better interactive systems by marrying the knowledge from human-computer interaction and game design. This will ultimately result in improving the relationship that people have to technology.

This course introduces topics of artificial intelligence (AI) that are relevant for game developers (such as behavioral AI, steering, spatial reasoning, navigation and pathfinding, agents, or scripting). Game AI is more than just a testbed for achieving human-level intelligence in computers. One primary goal of game AI is to increase the engagement and enjoyment of players. This can be done through smooth motion and animation techniques that leverage AI procedures or by developing AI that orchestrates non-player behavior in a challenging and fun way for players. This course allows students to explore basic AI principles, such as finite-state machines and A* pathfinding, up to more sophisticated principles, such as player modeling and neural networks. This course is using the #inf4320 hashtag on Twitter. Recommended Textbook: Millington, I., Funge, J. (2009). Artificial Intelligence for Games, Second Edition. San Francisco, CA: Morgan Kaufmann. ISBN-10: 0123747317 | ISBN-13: 978-0123747310