CourseSyllabus Bki114-IHCI-2016 v11

Course syllabus bki114 – iHCI 2015-16 draft version 1.
1 February 2016

The information in this course syllabus explains what students can expect from the course, from
the student assistants, and from the teachers. It is also explained what we expect from the
participating students. This is the first year that we use this syllabus. Most information
contained in this document is stable and fixed but we may provide you with an updated version
during this semester, for example to answer questions from students that arise the coming
months. Any feedback and suggestions for improvement are very welcome!

The contents of this syllabus is divided in the following chapters:
1) Prerequisites
2) Course objectives
3) Email and Blackboard
4) Rules of engagement
5) Exam regulations
6) Information about your teacher and the lectures
7) Information and guidelines for the practical assignment
8) Course evaluations and corresponding recent changes in course

1) Prerequisites
We will explore the worlds of interaction design and human-‐computer interaction. You will build
an interactive system for which we will use Java. Skills and understanding of Java programming
at the introductory level are required, as taught in Programming for AI (IBKI-‐101/102).

2) Course objectives
As listed in the study guide, after finishing the course, the student has obtained an overview of
the fields of HCI and 'interaction design'. The foundation will be laid for building usable
interactive systems and ensuring that these systems provide a great user experience. The most
prominent theoretical and practical competences and skills for the design, implementation and
evaluation of interactive systems are developed in this course.

More operational learning objectives are listed in the course file for bki114 (see BB/Course
Evaluations) as:
• Understand and be able to explain the fields of HCI and interaction design, in particular
interaction, cognitive/social/emotional aspects, interfaces, the design process, prototyping and
evaluation.
• Develop theoretical and practical skills/competences for the design, implementation and
evaluation of interactive systems

These are very general objectives. More specifically, this course is designed to train students in a
number of disciplines that all together help to develop your skills and competences for
becoming a bachelor in AI (BSc AI). These disciplines are outlined in the EER (Education and
Examination Regulations) and specified in terms of the ten objectives and final qualifications of
the BSc AI. This course trains these disciplines as follows:
1. Relevant disciplines -‐ HCI and Interaction Design
2. Cognition -‐ several chapters from the book
3. Methods and techniques -‐ design & evaluation
4. Analytical skills -‐ from requirements to working software
5. Paradigms -‐ like WWW, mainframe, direct manipulation, …
7. Communication -‐ report and demonstration of software
8. Research -‐ usability study
9. Application -‐ Build working interactive platform
10. Critical attitude -‐ Design, build, evaluate, report

Course syllabus bki114 – iHCI 2015-16 draft version 1.1 February 2016
3) Email and Blackboard: Course info, Announcements, Course documents and Assignments
The primary means of communication in the Bachelor Artificial Intelligence are through
Blackboard and email. So, follow updates on BB and read your email on a daily basis. As you will
see on the course BB site, the main sections are Course info, Announcements, Course
documents and Assignments.
• Announcements – will be put on Blackboard and sometimes broadcast through email.
Announcements may contain updates on any aspect such as practical tips, re-‐calibration
of the course schedule, sudden changes in lecture rooms, illness of teachers or student
assistants, availability of new material, important events (like “HCI in the news”, novel
gadgets, guest speakers, AIfternoon talks), and so on. Results from your exams,
assignment, reports will be announced via “Announcements” as well.
• Course information – contains relevant information about location/time of lectures, a
coarse course schedule, dates of exams, milestones and deliverables.
• Course Documents – contains copies of the slides, some background links and this
course manual.
• Assignments – contains the exercises (to be demonstrated!) of the CCJ and the main
assignment.

4) Rules of engagement
You have just finished your first semester and already learned so much: about cognition,
programming, math, logic, introAI, … You have also learned how to deal with fellow students,
teachers, rules and regulations (see the EER). So, it seems that there is no urgent need to
provide more details. Just to summarize:

• Stick to principles of scientific integrity, as Pim Haselager explained in Caleidoscope
• Be/stay informed, so read the EER, study guide, slides, blackboard,
exercises/assignment, your emails…
• Prepare your lectures and try to be present at all lectures. In most courses and in
particular in this course, not only content will be taught, but also many tips and tricks
will be revealed. Tips that will be very useful for passing your exams and practical.
• Feel free to ask questions, both to teachers and student assistants (SA)
• Always ask questions when you are not sure, both to teachers and SA. Maybe first
consider the points about staying informed, or ask your fellow students. But feel free to
approach teachers and SA in any case.
• Also if you have complaints or just suggestions for improvements, feel free to inform the
teachers and SA. They welcome your comments and suggestions and will certainly take
your feedback seriously.
• In order to make your deadlines you will have to start working in time, and consistently
work according to the scheme explained in Section 6.
• You will work together with a partner. Communicate well, always communicate well
o when you cannot make an appointment (ill, whatever), always tell your partner
about this
o exchange phone numbers and respond to text messages or phone calls
o respond to email questions
• In your report (part of main assignment), write a paragraph on your mutual
performance. Be fair and honest and share your feedback with your partner. This is
called “peer review” and this is needed to be able to judge your work. If there is a
problem with cooperation, please tell the SA and/or teachers immediately. We want to
hear both sides of the story and we will always try to solve the problem.
• You will work together and “program in pairs”. If one of you is better in programming,
please stay polite about your partner’s competences and try to help him/her out. Switch
roles frequently and read about programming in pairs.
• Be sure that we really want to teach you; we want to improve your skills and
understanding. Our goal is to be always available; the management of your bachelor
programme encourages this. Your teachers and SA always read their emails. We will try
to reply to your questions or feedback within a day.
• We want to listen to your feedback and, as mentioned above, we will take your
feedback very seriously.
• … There is one particular rule about “Google Jockeying” that will be explained in the first
lecture: You are free to use any digital equipment during the lessons, as long as you do
not disturb neither the lectures, nor your fellow-‐students, nor the teacher. In practice,
this rule entails: if more than two faces (students) are facing the same device, the device
should be removed (laptops closed, smart phones off).

5) Exam regulations
As explained on BB/CourseInfo, your end grade is the average of your grades for theory and
practice. Note that you have to get at least a 5 for both parts. You will pass for this course if the
average of theory and practice is above 5.5. The theory will be examined in two partial exams.
How the grade for your practical part is computed is explained in Section 7.

Endgrade = (part1+part2)/4 + practical/2

There will be no resit possibility for the practical. The resit for the theoretical part comprises
both parts, so all material.

For details on official rules and regulations, please consider the EER.

6) Information about your teacher and the lectures
Anecdotes and stories: Your teacher has been involved in research on HCI and UX since 1995.
Maybe even before that time, since 1990 – when he developed a UI for running blazingly fast
implementations of neural networks on supercomputers. He will tell stories about how users
(like Stan Gielen, Bert Kappen and Tom Heskes) hated his first user interfaces… he has been
developing websites since the early nineties (including the first www.ru site). He has developed
interactive systems using: telephone/speech; pen computing; information retrieval;
multimodality (speech/gesture/pen); biometrics; a-‐bit-‐of-‐BCI; 3D-‐gestures, and many others.
And he has used many techniques from machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision
and everything that makes AI the second best job ever. (The best job is still beyond-‐Star-‐Trek,
unfortunately and that will be explained that as well). Your teacher has visited many
conferences and workshops on the afore-‐mentioned topics and met many players in HCI. As you
will witness, your teacher cannot withstand sharing stories/anecdotes about all these projects.
Sometimes, you will find this annoying and a bit chaotic. But rest assured: Louis will stay focused
and follow the chapters of the ID book as closely as possible.
Having said that, you will find out that the theory about HCI/UX is quite straightforward: “just”
find out everything about the environment and context-‐of-‐work of your users, what the goals of
your users are, what they know, expect, require, can do, want to do… Subsequently, you will
experience that your users will find it very easy to translate their goals to executable sequences
of interactions with the computer, such that the computer will always respond in such a way
that the users can immediately understand/appreciate the responses. (not)
No, building a usable interactive system is far from straightforward. You will discover many
aspects about your prospective users, about interactive systems, interaction devices, and the
processes of interaction, design, and evaluation. Together we will delve into these topics and
share our thoughts about past, current, emerging, and future technologies.
More in detail: we will follow the various chapters of the book. The current (4th) edition of the
book has been thoroughly revised and contains many contemporary examples. The book
chapters will be covered in 10-‐12 lectures, which involves that some lectures will cover more
than one chapter. Each lecture will start with a buzzword of the day. Buzzwords, slides, book,
and everything I tell you during the lectures form part of the material to be known during the
exam.

7) Information and guidelines for the practical assignment
Please find all the details about your practical assignments via the <Assignments> tab on
Blackboard. There you will find:
• Your main assignment
• The four CCJ-‐lessons (incrementally, so some days before the corresponding practical,
the next assignment will be released)
• Score sheet for the assignment
• Instructions for writing your report.

As mentioned above, you will have to demonstrate each CCJ assignment:
• The assignment will be disclosed in week(x), before the practical;
• You practise the assignment during the practical in week(x);
• You will demonstrate the working software in week(x+1), during the practical from
week(x+1). This makes it possible to make some final adjustments (and ask some final
help from your SA) during that practical from week(x+1).
• We (Franc, your SA and Louis) will use checklists to perform the “ccj-‐test”.

The grade from your practical consists of your performance during the practicals (CCJ-‐test), the
demonstrations of (i) your prototypes and (ii) your interactive software, and your report. The
CCJ-‐test succeeds if you are able to demonstrate all four exercises in time.
gradePractical = (0.9+ccjtest)*assignment

It is allowed that you miss one of the ccjtests. You can have one second chance, provided that
you have a proper excuse (illness, hardware issues, …). The assignment is graded according to
the score sheet. The score sheet is based on the assignment and the instructions for writing your
report.
The table below (next page) will guide you through the process of designing/implementing/
demonstrating/evaluating your software. The table contains a weekly schedule with certain
milestones and deliverables (marked brownish). Cells in green indicate that a practical or lecture
does not take place (because you just had an exam, or just because we have a day off).
Besides the milestones already mentioned (demo of CCJ assignments), you have two further
milestones to achieve: provide a so-‐called low-‐fidelity prototype around week 12 (drawing,
sketching of your user-‐interface) and demonstrate an operational high-‐fidelity prototype around
week 19. There is no need to have a fully functional system, but “most” functionalities should be
implemented and you should be able to discuss the missing functionalities with your SA and
teachers. You will get oral feedback on both versions during the practicals. Note that we may
have insufficient time to judge all CCJs or all low/high during one single practical session. It will
help us if you actively search for an SA or teacher during the practicals when you have
something to demonstrate.
week date lecture practical milestone/deliverable

6 Thu Feb 11 lecture 01 CCJ1 -‐ Objects form groups of two students
7 Thu Feb 18 lecture 02 CCJ2 -‐ colorClicker demo CCJ1
8 Thu Feb 25 lecture 03 CCJ3 -‐ Interfaces demo CCJ2
9 Thu Mar 03 lecture 04 CCJ4 -‐ Shapes & Tools demo CCJ3
10 Thu Mar 10 lecture 05 "going further" demo CCJ4
11 Thu Mar 17 lecture 06 “work on design”
12 Thu Mar 24 question hour Ctd / design designs ready + lowfidelity prototype
13 Thu Mar 31 Exam Part-‐1 no practical Exam
14 Thu Apr 07 lecture 07 practical
17 Thu Apr 28 day after Kings Day day after Kings Day
18 Thu May 05 Ascention Day May holiday
19 Thu May 12 lecture 10 practical demonstrate prototype
20 Thu May 19 Dies Celebration Dies Celebration
21 Thu May 26 lecture 11 prototype day
22 Thu Jun 02 question hour practical Final preparations for demo day
23 Thu Jun 09 Lectures finished demo day demo day
24 Mon Jun 13 deadline report report
24 Thu Jun 16 Exam Part-‐2 Practicals finished Exam

27 Mon Jun 27 Resit (all material)

7) Course evaluations and corresponding recent changes in course

We really urge you to participate in the course evaluations (not only for this course, but for all
courses). Thanks to your feedback, we will not only improve on the course, but we will also
consider programmatic changes (changes in the Bachelor Programme) that may solve the issues
raised in the evaluations. As you may know, the Degree Programme Committee (DPC) is very
active in this evaluation process. Teachers are required to respond to the advice of the DPC in
terms of (i) a reaction on the evaluations and (ii) changes made to the course based on this
advice. You can find this information on the Educational blackboard site (<Course Evaluations>).

Here some highlights from previous improvements made on this course. These changes were
made because of feedback from student assistants, students from earlier years, and
observations and experiences from the teachers.
• Students would like to know details of grading, assignment, exam regulations and such
in an early stage
à this course manual has been written
à assignment, score sheet, and instructions for writing the report have been provided
• Students miss programming experience in Java
à the CCJ has been devised
à the introduction in programming courses (for AI) now use Java and Eclipse
• Students would like to receive some support and guidance in getting the job done
à we added tangible milestones and deliverables (see Section 6)

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Course syllabus bki114 – iHCI 2015-16 draft version 1.

week date lecture practical milestone/deliverable

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