CPE/CSC 486-S06 Human-Computer Interaction Theory and Design UCD and HCI Links

Resources for UCD and HCI

The SLO Chapter of the Society for Technical Communications, in collaboration with Erika Rogers (who taught UCD and HCI courses at Cal Poly earlier), has put together a collection of Web pointers with information that are of interest for this course. You can find it at http://www.slostc.org/topics/usability/resources_list.html. At the same site, you can also find definitions of key terms in usability and HCI; see http://slostc.org/topics/usability/definitions.html.

For academic publications, I also recommend CiteSeer, http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/, and Google Scholar, http://scholar.google.com. If you're looking for an explanation of a particular term, Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/ is often a good start. Some of the material can be a bit rough and unbalanced, however.

Human Subjects in Research

Usability evaluations and similar activities frequently require the participation of other people. While the potential for harm is very low for the types of activities in this area, it may fall under some constraints and requirements of using human subjects in reaseach. Some relevant documents were assembled by a Cal Poly committee, and are available at http://www.calpoly.edu/~scdavis/human.htm. At the very minimum, you need to use an "informed consent" form to explain what you're doing to participants, and get their approval.