HCI and the IS
Curriculum
Dennis F. Galletta
University of Pittsburgh
Katz Graduate School of Business
1. Where does HCI fit?


Present: Short shrift
Future: Should be required

Why?



Poor interfaces abound
Why? Negroponte: developers use introspection
How to fix? Requires lobbying

Role for SIG-HCI?
2. Attributes of a Successful
HCI Course



Describes Practice
Based on Research
Engages the students (more later)




Classic readings for debate
Experiential exercises
Hands-on work
Application of concepts
3. What curriculum would be ideal?

For undergrad/grad, ideal might be




Tools course (VB.Net, Cold Fusion, C#, etc.)
HCI Concepts course (using an HCI in MIS text)
HCI Application course (large project integrating
prerequisite tools and concepts courses)
While we all think HCI is important,
curricular tradeoffs are difficult.
3. Curriculum: PhD level

Important courses:





Experimental design
Psychometrics
Multivariate stats / SEM
HCI Concepts course (using readings and/or
text)
MIS Research project course (integrate above)
4. Integration into Existing Courses



HCI is usually discussed briefly in SA&D (or SD&I) course
Too much going on there for anything but a superficial view
That view could provide some essentials and “advertise” for
full course


Introduce central role of iteration/testing
Compare GUIs and command interfaces





Direct Manipulation
Xerox Star  Macintosh  Windows evolution
Training and Documentation (Minimalism etc.)
How to evaluate an interface
2-3 New technologies (use recent videos from ACM SIGCHI
Conferences)
5. Content of the HCI Course

Assumptions:




MBA/MS level unless noted
All must be jammed into one course
Students have recent internship
Students have some programming background
5a. Assignments (graded)






First half: VB.Net
Executive Memos covering readings
Critique an Interface (even on ship!)
(removed)
Design a text screen (Tullis software)
Design an icon (peer evaluated)
Major design project (present to class;
Q&A)
5a. Assignments (in class)



Find flaws in interface (Molich & Nielsen,
1991)
Mental models (Meyer, 1981; Bransford
and Johnson 1972)
Retroactive Inhibition (color names/text)
Example: Retroactive Inhibition
Red green blue black grey red
brown yellow blue black green
red yellow grey blue brown
black red yellow green red
black blue brown
Example: Retroactive Inhibition
Red green blue black grey red
brown yellow blue black green
red yellow grey blue brown
black red yellow green red
black blue brown grey
Example: Retroactive Inhibition
▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀
▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀
▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀
▀▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀
▀▀▀ ▀▀ ▀▀▀ ▀▀
5b. Web Resources







HCI Bib at http://www.hcibib.org/
HCI Webliography at http://www.hcibib.org/hci-sites/
Shneiderman’s Book Site at http://www.aw-bc.com/DTUI/
HCI Resource Network at http://www.hcirn.com/
Web Design and Usability Guidelines at
http://usability.gov/guidelines/
Perlman’s suggested readings at
http://hcibib.org/readings.html
Microsoft’s Inductive User Interface Guidelines at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/enus/dnwui/html/iuiguidelines.asp
5c. Readings (Master’s course)




Text – primary resource now that VB takes
up half of course
Xerox Star (Bewley et al)
Web Pages that Suck.com
Consistency (Grudin)
5c. Readings (PhD Level)


106 readings
Subdivided as follows:





Previous experiments in
this course (12)
Overview & hard/soft
science (7)
GUIs and Direct
Manipulation (8)
Design Principles (6)
“Damaged merchandise”
and HCI Evaluation (7)








Social Factors (5)
Devices (11)
Menus, command languages (2)
Hypermedia (10)
Task analysis/GOMS (6)
Cognitive & other fit (7)
Mental models/learning (13)
Future technologies (12)
Syllabus available at http://www.pitt.edu/~galletta/phdhci.html
5d. Cases


None used currently as assignments
Cover two cases in lecture



Olympic Message System as illustration of
Gould’s 3 principles of design
Project Ernestine as illustration of value of
GOMS
This area needs work in my course
5e. Experimental Research


Used in PhD course only
Have published:




3 experiments (JMIS, CACM, AMIT)
5 Conference papers (ICIS, AMCIS, HICSS)
Two await 1st revision (ISR, JAIS)
One in SIG-HCI pre ICIS workshop 2002
5e. Experimental Research




We have some news media experience as well,
showing that the world cares about HCI research
June 1994: study with Ahuja, Hartman, Peace, Teo
study reported in WSJ, Computerworld, Information
Week, PC Magazine
April 1996: All Things Considered: Interview about
Web usability difficulties
March 2003: study with Durcikova, Everard, Jones
reported in Business Week, CNN.com, CNN TV,
ABC, CBS, several newspapers, Minn. Public
Radio, CBC, etc.
WSJ Report


Pam Sebastian’s
column
exceptionally thorough



faxed entire paper
allowed me to review a
draft
Ironic Philippe Kahn
juxtaposition
CNN TV
5f. Videos



Several videos are available via ACM’s annual
SIGCHI Conference
Extremely useful to illustrate research and/or
future technology
Examples



Walking/flying in virtual reality
IBM’s mobile PDA Navipoint
Research channel from time to time

Conversa serious and humorous
6. How IS Version Differs From Others:
A Paradox


We can say we stress organizational context and business
value
However:






We cannot count on students’ ability to create a GUI program
We cannot count on students to have psychology background
Students have business context in previous courses
Therefore, one might conclude that business context is less
needed because students already have it!
But the key is to apply principles to the business context
My course is taken after an internship, and shared
experiences are a valuable component.
Postscript: What we do well




We get paid for having a great deal of fun
We do studies that interest us
We make excellent use of our Public
Relations person in our school
We make the Dean very happy
Postscript: What I do poorly




Have trouble getting radio interviewers to allow
names of co-authors (corollary: I do well taking all
the credit for our projects!)
Integrate learning of tool with conceptual
information
Spend too much time writing up the studies we do
in the PhD course and too little time on the MBA
level course: recent recovery of abysmal evals.
Do not think carefully enough about curricular
issues
HCI and the IS
Curriculum
Dennis F. Galletta
University of Pittsburgh
Katz Graduate School of Business