666 Topics in Interactive Computing

This is a graduate-level course on interactive systems and human computer interaction research. The course comprises of a series of lectures, scientific paper reading and presentations, discussions and a semester-long project. The course begins with briefly discussing the classical work on interactive systems. After that state-of-the-art in the interactive systems design and research methods (e.g. specialized user research and evaluation methodologies and advance interaction techniques) will be discussed. The course usually focuses on five diverse but popular research topics in HCI:

  • Virtual and augmented reality
  • Gamification and serious games
  • Wearable computing
  • Ubiquitous (Context-aware) computing
  • Social robotics
  • ICT4D/HCI4D

Course Objectives

At this end of this course, students should be:

  • aware of the state-of-the-art research developments in the interactive computing/HCI field
  • able to conduct research in the relevant areas of human computer interaction
  • able to translate the theoretical knowledge to research, design, development and evaluation of interactive systems

Learning Outcomes

  • To be able to discuss and explain key concepts and principles within selected interactive computing topics
  • To gain expertise in identifying and reading relevant research literature
  • To gain experience in critically reflecting on the existing work
  • To demonstrate how HCI concepts and principles can be put into use while building interactive systems
  • To be able to design controlled experiments for systematically evaluating interactive systems
  • To gain experience in writing technical/scientific papers to report scientific findings