jsgray@watmath.UUCP (Jan Gray) (01/22/85)
I just received this *very* interesting MIT course outline that I just *had* to share with you...[apologies if this is a repeat] Jan Gray (jsgray@watmath.UUCP) University of Waterloo (519) 885-1211 x3870 Styles of User Interaction Lippman and Kay Spring Semester Materials: 25 512K touch-screen Macintoshs running MacSmalltalk. Any additional LISA's and Macs that might be available. All will be networked to a file server, laser printer, and gateway to AMT LAN. Book by Paul Heckel Book by Dick Bolt Misc. papers by well-known user-interactivists The Macs will be set up in a MacGarden that can double as a classroom ala Brown. The Smalltalk is *not* Smalltalk-80 but a carefully trimmed version that is easier to use than the old Smalltalk-72 for kids. Direction: The course in intended to be exploratory with the students doing most of the legwork. As in Heckel's book we will not state hard interactin principles that have been handed down on RAND tablets from past generations. Rather, the intent will be to get studets to become designers so they can compare different interaction styles and then make up their own. The first part of the semester will be spent trying different interaction styles now in vogue. MacSmall will have a variety of models to which use interfaces can be fit, including: browser, word processor, spread-sheet, draw and paint, animation, and music. The last part, and most student projects, wll be concerned with two new interaction principles: Agents, and Multi-channel Interaction. After the students have done enough to be critical of most approaches, talks by distinguished user-interaction designers will commence. Discussion topics will include: Human factors of displays and controllers "Modeless" Interaction Easy To Learn vs. Hard To Use Doing with Images makes Symbols User tailored/written software Agents Multi-channel interaction