Courses are curated each year to provide a range of exciting opportunities to learn something new. Unlike peer/collaborative workshops, courses are: teaching delivered by instructors, typically with a strong track record. Courses may be between 1-3 units (of 80min conference slots) which run in parallel with the papers tracks. Courses typically cost $25 per unit, and some could have an additional cost for resources. You should register for courses at the time of registration (although it is sometimes also possible to register on the day of arrival).

We have four major categories of courses
1) MetaHCI Courses – that focus on being in the HCI community
2) Introduction Courses – typically starter courses on major topics for those new to the field
3) Method Courses – designed to teach you a new skill or method
4) Hot Topic Courses – giving you new knowledge and experience in specific topic areas.

List of Courses

MetaHCI

• Becoming a SIGCHI Volunteer
• Communicating with the Public and the Press
• Don’t forget to be the way you are: how to create a meaningful and sustainable research identity
• How to write CHI papers – Second Edition

HCIIntro

• Balanced Interaction Design
• Designing Technology for an Aging Population
• Designing with the Mind in Mind: The Psychological Basis for UI Design Guidelines
• From Tool to Partner: The Evolution of Human-Computer Interaction
• Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

Method

• Applied Sketching in HCI: Hands-on Course of Sketching Techniques
• Computational Interaction: Theory and Practice
• Empirical Research Methods for Human-Computer Interaction
• How Do We Measure That?! Quick Scale Development
• Reflexive Ethnographies in Human-Computer Interaction: Theory and Practice
• Research Methods for Child Computer Interaction
• Visual Design 4 Non-Designers: Learn Basics the Hands-on Way

HotTopic

• Automation: Danger or Opportunity? Designing and Assessing Automation for Interactive Systems
• Deep Learning for Understanding the Human
• Designing, Engineering, and Evaluating Gesture User Interfaces
• Gamification: Tools and Techniques for Motivating Users
• Make This! Introduction to Electronics Prototyping Using Arduino
• Mobile UX – The Next Ten Years?
• Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice
• Speech and Hands-free Interaction: Myths, Challenges, and Opportunities

MetaHCI

Becoming a SIGCHI Volunteer

1 Unit | Monday 11:30

NB: Free, for SIGCHI Members only

SIGCHI is the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction and is a volunteer led organisation and sponsors 24 conferences such as CHI. Approximately 9,000 delegates attend all of our sponsored conferences each year. Yet the ACM employs less than 100 people and helps with hundreds of conferences around the world. How is this possible? It’s possible since SIGCHI and ACM are volunteer led organisations. Join us at this session on volunteerism to meet and discuss with members of the SIGCHI Executive Committee and senior members of the SIGCHI community who have been volunteers in some of the other ACM SIGCHI Specialised Conferences. This session on SIGCHI volunteerism is an opportunity to learn about SIGCHI, what work it undertakes, what roles its volunteers take on and how you might be able to get involved. See sigchi.org for more.

Instructor(s)

Loren Terveen

This session will be chaired by Loren Terveen the president of Association for Computing Machinery’s SIGCHI professional group. Loren is a professor of computer science and engineering and studies human-computer interaction at the GroupLens Research at the University of Minnesota.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This event will introduce you to ways of becoming a volunteer at ACM SIGCHI events. The event will explain the ACM, what is SIGCHI, provide example pathways and explain the myriad volunteer opportunities. You might have heard of general, program or papers chairs but there are hundreds of volunteers involved across our conferences. If you are interested in workshops, panels or posters or the work of student volunteers, courses, proceedings or social media then this session is for you. We will provide guidance if this is your first step or next step in being a volunteer with SIGCHI.

Communicating with the Public and the Press

2 Units | Monday 14:30

NB: Free, for SIGCHI Members only, Repeats: Tues 9am, Tues 2pm, Wed 9am

Researchers are increasingly called upon to communicate with non-specialist audiences, but it can be difficult to communicate complex scientific topics in a way that makes them accessible and engaging to people outside the field. Further, interacting with the media can be daunting and frustrating and researchers frequently comment on how their work is misrepresented in the popular press.
This session aims to give participants the skills needed to interact confidently with the media and to non-specialists, and get their key messages across. Areas to be covered include:
– Knowing your audience
– Defining and defending your message
– The importance of narrative, colour and anecdote
– Understanding how research hits the headlines
– Making the best of being interviewed
– Dealing with nerves
– Jargon-busting

Instructor(s)

Helen Pilcher

Helen Pilcher is a professional science communicator, journalist, performer and author. A former scientist, she has spent the last 15 years making complicated science fun and interesting. She has worked for Nature and the Royal Society, and her writing has appeared in outlets including New Scientist, BBC Online and the Guardian. Drawing on her experiences in the worlds of stand-up comedy, storytelling and science journalism, she now specialises in teaching researchers how to deal with the media and communicate their work to wider audiences. She also drinks a lot of tea… and is partial to the odd biscuit.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course will be of use to any researcher or practitioner, at any level, who finds they need to communicate their work to non-specialist audiences and / or interact with the media. It will be deliberately broad, so the techniques learned can be applied to verbal and written presentations, as well as interviews. The course is free for SIGCHI members.

Don’t forget to be the way you are: how to create a meaningful and sustainable research identity

2 Units | Tuesday 14:00| Course Website

There are many resources aimed at building one’s research brand, this is not one of them Instead this course supports new and early career researchers in identifying and reinforcing three key elements of research identity. These elements are author name, research motivation and interest, and paper titles. We will begin by giving evidence-based advice on how to select an author name. We will then discuss research character, including topics, overarching interests, and specialties. Finally we will discuss how to write paper titles that reflect content, identity and publication venue. Each theme will be supported by practical work.

Instructor(s)

Dana McKay, George Buchanan

George Buchanan is an established mentor of early-career researchers, having led the training of over sixty PhD and post-doctoral researchers. Dana McKay is an expert on the information problems of author and paper naming.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course is designed for two groups: very early career researchers (masters or PhD students, or industry participants just beginning to publish), and early career researchers supervising their first students. This course has no prerequisites.

How to write CHI papers – Second Edition

3 Units | Monday 11:30| Course Website

Everything that we do as researchers is based on what we write. It is hard to turn a research project into a successful CHI publication, especially for graduate students and young researchers. In this second edition of the CHI paper writing course (following a successful first edition at CHI 2017), I will incorporate longer hands-on writing practice sessions and more in-depth discussions where we dissect existing CHI papers for structure and contributions. Participants will take away solid knowledge and actionable writing tools for their own writing work on research publications for SIGCHI.

Instructor(s)

Lennart Nacke

The course instructor, Dr. Lennart Nacke, has many years of experience serving on SIGCHI program and steering committees and teaching University graduate classes on HCI research methods. As part of this course, he is running a CHI writing interviews podcast, which he expands continuously at http://chicourse.acagamic.com.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

This course introduces principles of paper writing for CHI to a largely junior audience. It is useful for young researchers, ranging from graduate students to junior faculty. The expectation for the course audiences is that people are familiar with basic PCS terminology and the concept of the CHI conference.

HCIIntro

Balanced Interaction Design

3 Units | Monday 11:30

More is now expected from Interaction Design, but change can be challenging. Over the last two decades, creative and strategic design approaches have become increasingly prevalent, but tensions exist with longer established approaches such as human factors engineering
and user-centered design. These tensions can be harnessed productively by giving equal status in principle to creative, business and engineering practices and by adopting approaches and resources that can balance and integrate a range of multidisciplinary design practices. This hands-on course will show you how to balance and integrate interaction design work, supported by theory from design, psychology, business and media.

Instructor(s)

Gilbert Cockton

Professor of Design Theory in the School of Design at Northumbria University, where he leads cross university design research. He has 35 years experience of Interaction Design, and has taught courses for over 30 years in universities and to industry. He is an editor in chief of ACM Interactions.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

A fast paced studio based course for broad, open minded, agile and curious practitioners, educators and researchers in creative design and software development who want to understand creative and worth-focused approaches, as a basis for reviewing, extending and balancing existing practices and introducing design process innovations, for research or practice

Designing Technology for an Aging Population

1 Unit | Tuesday 9:00

The population of the developed world is aging. Websites, apps, and digital devices used by adults aged 50+ should be designed accordingly. This course presents age-related factors that affect older adults’ ability to use digital technology, as well as design guidelines that reflect older adults’ capabilities, usage patterns, and preferences. Features: a) demographics of users of digital technology, by age, b) age-related factors affecting ability to use computers, mobile devices, and the Web, c) common design problems that decrease usability for older adults, and d) design guidelines to help designers improve experiences for technology users of all ages.

Instructor(s)

Jeff Johnson

Professor of CS at USF-CA. Member of CHI Academy. Received SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement in Practice Award. Authored many articles in HCI. Co-authored the book Designing User Interfaces for an Aging Population, upon which this course is based.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

Interaction and UI designers and developers of all levels. Also testers and managers.

Designing with the Mind in Mind: The Psychological Basis for UI Design Guidelines

2 Units | Wednesday 14:00

Benefits: By understanding the psychology underlying UI design guidelines, designers and evaluators enhance their ability to apply the guidelines. This course explains that psychology. For Perception: a) Perception is biased, b) Vision is optimized to perceive structure, c) We seek and use structure, d) Color vision is limited, and d) Peripheral vision is poor. For Cognition: a) Reading is unnatural, b) Attention is limited, d) Memory is imperfect, e) Limits on attention and memory shape thought and action, and f) Recognition is easier than recall. Easy topics: learning from experience and executing learned actions. Hard topics: novel actions, problem-solving, calculation, and that hand-eye coordination follows clear laws.

Instructor(s)

Jeff Johnson

Professor of CS at USF-CA. Member of CHI Academy. Received SIGCHI Lifetime Achievement in Practice Award. Authored many articles in HCI and the book Designing with the Mind in Mind, 2nd edition, upon which this course is based.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

Designers and developers of all levels, especially those lacking education in recent perceptual and cognitive psychology. Also: Q/A and usability engineers.

From Tool to Partner: The Evolution of Human-Computer Interaction

1 Unit | Wednesday 9:00

Want to predict the future? No promises there, but by understanding how the past shaped the present, we can work more effectively in this complex domain shaped by computer scientists, human factors engineers, psychologists, designers, information systems, information science, UX professionals… Learn where to look and how to interpret what you see. Disciplines with different priorities, methods, and terminologies evolved over decades. HCI at times changed dramatically, yet visionary goals were steadily realized as software went from passively reacting to today’s dynamic presence. Seeing how events unfolded in the past can prepare us to handle surprises that lie ahead.

Instructor(s)

Jonathan Grudin

Jonathan Grudin published articles on HCI history in CACM, TOCHI, Annals of the History of Computing, Interactions, AI Magazine, and several handbooks prior to publishing a book with the course title in 2017. He gave well-attended related tutorials at CHI about ten years ago.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This tutorial is intended for researchers, designers, developers, or practitioners who are interested in positioning their work in the very broad context of HCI, which could lead them to see their own past experience and future possibilities differently.

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

3 Units | Monday 11:30

The objective of this course is to provide newcomers to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with an introduction and overview of the field. Attendees often include practitioners without a formal education in HCI, and those teaching HCI for the first time. This course includes content on theory, cognition, design, evaluation, and user diversity.

Instructor(s)

Jonathan Lazar, Simone Barbosa

Combined, Jonathan and Simone have taught “Introduction to HCI” classes for more than 35 years and taught the “Intro to HCI” course at CHI 2014-2017. Jonathan has published “Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction” (co-authored with Feng and Hochheiser, 2nd edition), and Simone co-authored “Interação Humano-Computador” (“Human-Computer Interaction” in Portuguese).

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course often includes two groups of attendees: 1) first-time attendees of the CHI conference who are practitioners without a formal education in HCI, and 2) individuals who will be teaching HCI for the first time and are therefore collecting approaches and various examples to reuse in their own courses.

Method

Applied Sketching in HCI: Hands-on Course of Sketching Techniques

3 Units | Tuesday 9:00

Hand-drawn sketches are an easy way for researchers to communicate and express ideas, as well as document, explore and describe concepts between researcher, user, or client. Sketches are fast, easy to create, and – by varying their fidelity – can be used in all areas of HCI. The Applied Sketching in HCI course will explore and demonstrate themes around sketching in HCI with the aim of producing tangible outputs. Those attending will leave the course with the confidence to engage actively with sketching on a day-to-day basis. Participants will be encouraged to apply what they have learnt to their own research

Instructor(s)

Makayla Lewis, Miriam Sturdee, Nicolai Marquardt

Makayla Lewis organizes SketchnoteHangout.com amongst other sketching events and has provided visuals for CHI and ISS. Miriam Sturdee is trained illustrator who investigates sketching in the design of novel interfaces. Nicolai Marquardt collaborated on Sketching User Experiences: The Workbook and has coordinated several sketching courses at CHI.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

The content of Applied Sketching in HCI: Hands-on Course of Sketching Techniques course is suitable for individuals from industry and academia that have an interest in learning and or improving their sketching skills. Novices, experts and those with an interest are welcome to attend.

Computational Interaction: Theory and Practice

3 Units | Thursday 9:00

This course introduces computational methods in HCI. Computational interaction methods use computational thinking – abstraction, automation, and analysis – to explain and enhance interaction. They can not only automate tasks, but allow deeper understanding of the phenomena and tradeoffs involved. Optimization and probabilistic inference are introduced as principled methods. Lectures center on hands-on Python programming, interleaving theory and practical examples. The participant will learn how to define problems and solve them efficiently and in a principled manner. The course offers an introduction to applications of computational methods for researchers and practitioners. Some background in computer science is assumed.

Instructor(s)

John Williamson, Antti Oulasvirta, Otmar Hilliges, Per Ola Kristensson

We have strong publication records on this topic. A joint book with the same title (Computational Interaction), published by Oxford University Press, comes out in January. We have jointly organized a CHI course in 2017, a CHI workshop in 2015, and three times a SIGCHI-sponsored summer school on this topic.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

– PhD students and postdocs
– Practitioners with interest in data-driven design and applications of machine learning

Some computer science background is needed, and previous experience with Python is beneficial.

Empirical Research Methods for Human-Computer Interaction

2 Units | Wednesday 9:00

Attendees will learn how to conduct empirical research in human-computer interaction (HCI). A “user study” is founded on observation, measurement, and posing and answering testable research questions. This Course delivers an A-to-Z tutorial on designing a user study and demonstrates how to write a successful CHI paper. It would benefit anyone interested in conducting a user study or writing a CHI paper. Only a general knowledge of HCI is required.

Instructor(s)

Scott MacKenzie, Steven Castellucci

Scott has more than 175 HCI publications (44 in SIGCHI conferences and 2 HCI books) and has given many invited talks over the past 20 years.

Steven has numerous SIGCHI and other ACM publications. He has taught junior level CS and CE courses, and senior and graduate-level HCI university courses.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course caters to attendees who are motivated to learn about and use empirical research methods in HCI research. Specifically, it is for those in academia or industry who evaluate interaction techniques using quantitative methods (e.g., user experience design), or those who make decisions based on usability tests.

How Do We Measure That?! Quick Scale Development

3 Units | Thursday 9:00

Data science requires metrics. But how does a researcher measure constructs such as delight, immersion, or intention to use? It’s best to develop a suitable measure, rather than to just throw something together or use an inappropriate scale. This course presents seven simplified steps for developing a valid and reliable measure. The new scale can then be used to quantify and explain user behavior, make decisions and predictions, and build models. This half-day class is intended for anyone who desires a rapid but thorough overview of how to develop a measure, and it requires a modest understanding of statistics.

Instructor(s)

Norene Kelly

Norene Kelly received her doctorate in Human Computer Interaction from Iowa State University in 2016. There she taught graduate-level HCI courses and earned a Research Excellence Award for developing the WEAR Scale, which measures the social acceptability of any wearable device. Currently she works as a UX Scientist with UEGroup.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

This class is intended for researchers, students, practitioners – anyone who desires a rapid but thorough overview of how to develop a measure. Attendees should be familiar with psychology, and descriptive and inferential statistics. Exploratory factor analysis will be discussed, but no prior knowledge is necessary.

Reflexive Ethnographies in Human-Computer Interaction: Theory and Practice

1 Unit | Thursday 14:00| Course Website

This course outlines different ways for writing ethnographies, describing rhetorical devices, epistemic positions, and stylistic strategies coming from works in anthropology. First, we will focus on the “realist position”, where the voice of the ethnographer is concealed to make the narration “objective”, which represents the “traditional” way for writing ethnographies in HCI. Then we will propose, as alternative to conduct HCI ethnographies, the reflexive approach where the ethnographer’s subjective experience is used to grant reliability and validity to the data coming from the fieldwork. We will explain the methodological steps to carry out a reflexive ethnography emphasizing opportunities and issues.

Instructor(s)

Amon Rapp

Amon Rapp is a research fellow at the Computer Science Department of University of Torino, leading the Smart Objects Lab @ICxT and teaching the Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction course. He conducted a four-year reflexive ethnography in World of Warcraft to find game elements suitable to be transferred to serious domains.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

PhD students, researchers and practitioners with or without previous experience in ethnographic research. No prerequisites needed.

Research Methods for Child Computer Interaction

2 Units | Tuesday 9:00

Doing HCI research with children can be difficult. Recruiting, working with and being fair to children all requires specialist approaches. This two-unit course will have attendees ready to do great and fair recruitment of children, gather useful research data and generally work in ethical inclusive ways. Covering experimental, ethnographic and observational methods and stressing how to effectively write up such research – this is a must-not-miss course for anyone working with children in HCI.

Instructor(s)

Janet Read

Delivered by Professor Janet C Read who is the Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Child Computer Interaction and one of the primary researchers in the general field of Child Computer Interaction. Prof. Read has delivered this course and variations of it for over ten years.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course is broadly appealing and has previously been attended by experienced researchers moving into work with children, by practitioners and by students.

Visual Design 4 Non-Designers: Learn Basics the Hands-on Way

2 Units | Tuesday 14:00

“Attractive things work better” [D. Norman]. Therefore, an appealing visual design for websites and apps should be of interest to anyone involved in creating them.

Visual design is not something magic. The course breaks it down into small chunks and introduces them step-by-step including multiple hands-on exercises. For the exercises participants can use Powerpoint, Keynote, Sketch, Illustrator or Photoshop. Participants will learn:

– The basic elements of visual design (typography, icons, color, layout) and guidelines how to use them.
– Principles of design and how they apply to visual design.
– To better understand and communicate with design experts.

Instructor(s)

Stephanie Foehrenbach, Fabian Scheiwiller

The course is given by Stephanie Foehrenbach and Fabian Scheiwiller, both employed by Zuehlke in switzerland. Stephanie is principal consultant and trainer. She helps her clients applying user centered design methods. Fabian is interaction designer and trainer, he creates appealing visual designs. They work for clients in various industries.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

Everybody is welcome to this course. However, it is most valuable for practitioners such as user experience professionals, software engineers or product managers, as well as researchers and students in the field of human-computer interaction.

HotTopic

Automation: Danger or Opportunity? Designing and Assessing Automation for Interactive Systems

2 Units | Wednesday 14:00

While early approaches in automation were focusing on allocating basic functions to the best player (e.g. Fitts’ approach Machine Are Better At – Men Are Better At), this course focuses on operators’ tasks and their analysis in order to identify tasks that are good candidate for automation. This course takes a practical approach to introduce attendees to the principles, methods and tools for the design and the assessment of automation.
This two units course units goes from conceptual to very practical. It includes interactive hands-on exercises, case studies and the use of HAMSTERS task modeling tool.

Instructor(s)

Philippe Palanque, Célia Martinie, Camille Fayollas

Prof. Philippe Palanque spent over 20 years, to design notations and tools for interactive systems development. These contributions have been applied to domains including interactive cockpits at Airbus or air traffic management. Philippe is Distinguished Speaker at ACM and was the general co-chair of CHI 2014.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course is open to researchers, practitioners, educators and students of all experience levels. No specific skills or knowledge are required beyond a background in User Centered Design. \ This course intends to provide newcomers with a background in automation and task modeling.

Deep Learning for Understanding the Human

3 Units | Tuesday 11:00

We will explore how deep learning approaches can be used for perceiving and interpreting the state and behavior of human beings in images, video, audio, and text data. The course will cover how convolutional, recurrent and generative neural networks can be used for applications of face recognition, eye tracking, cognitive load estimation, emotion recognition, natural language processing, and activity recognition. The course is open to beginners and is designed for those who are new to deep learning, but it can also benefit advanced researchers in the field looking for a practical overview of deep learning methods and their application.

Instructor(s)

Lex Fridman

Lex Fridman is a research scientist at MIT specializing in application of deep learning to understanding human beings in human-robot systems. He taught an applied deep learning course in 2017 to over 300 MIT students, 10,000 students worldwide, and that has been viewed over 1 million times on YouTube.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

Designed for beginners, but beneficial to both beginners and experts in the HCI and AI subfields. Technical content is designed for those who are new to deep learning. Review of insights and applications could benefit advanced researchers in the field looking for a practical overview of deep learning applications.

Designing, Engineering, and Evaluating Gesture User Interfaces

2 Units | Wednesday 14:00

This course will introduce participants to three stages of gesture-based interactions:
(i) how to design a gesture UI by considering aspects, such as gesture recognition, variability in gesture articulation, properties of invariance, and good practices for gesture set.
(ii) how to implement a gesture UI with recognizers, software architecture, and libraries.
(iii) how to evaluate a gesture UI with metrics of user performance.
The course will discuss a wide range of gestures: touch, finger, wrist, hand, arm, and whole-body.
Participants will try out various tools and leave with a set of practical resources for prototyping and evaluating gesture-based interactions.

Instructor(s)

Jean Vanderdonckt, Radu-Daniel Vatavu

Jean Vanderdonckt (ACM Distinguished Speaker) works in HCI with focus on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems: gesture recognition algorithms, gesture management environments, and software engineering methodologies.

Radu-Daniel Vatavu works in HCI with focus on designing novel interactions and gesture user interfaces: gesture recognition algorithms, gesture analysis tools, and gesture methodologies.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

Researchers and practitioners working in general Human-Computer Interaction, user interfaces, and interaction design. A mixture of participants from research and industry is ideal. No previous knowledge about gesture interaction is required.

Gamification: Tools and Techniques for Motivating Users

3 Units | Thursday 9:00

Gamification, the use of game elements in non-game systems, is now established as a relevant research field in human-computer interaction (HCI). Several empirical studies have shown that gameful interventions can increase engagement and generate desired behavioural outcomes in HCI applications. In this course, we will introduce participants to some of the common gameful intervention strategies to add game design elements that can be used to motivate users. We will also train participants with our set of 28 gamification heuristics for rapid evaluation of gameful systems. Finally, at the end of the course, we will generate design ideas with the heuristics.

Instructor(s)

Gustavo Tondello, Lennart Nacke

Gustavo F. Tondello is a PhD student with a main interest in gamification and games for health and learning. Together with his supervisor Dr. Lennart E. Nacke, he has investigated several topics related to design, evaluation, and personalization of gamification. Both have taught a successful gamification course at CHI before.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

An interest in either games and playful interaction is helpful for participants. Given that gamification is aimed at people working with real-world designs, we anticipate the audience for this course to go beyond graduate students in HCI and also appeal to designers, UX professionals, and industrial and academic researchers.

Make This! Introduction to Electronics Prototyping Using Arduino

2 Units | Wednesday 9:00

Make This! is a hands-on introduction to interactive electronics prototyping for people with a variety of backgrounds, including those with no prior experience in electronics. Familiarity with programming is helpful, but not required. In the first half, participants will learn basic electronics, microcontroller programming and physical prototyping using the Arduino platform. In the second half, participants will use digital and analog sensors, LED lights and motors to build, program and customize a small “paper robot.” The electronics kit and paper robot are theirs to keep.

Instructor(s)

David Sirkin, Nikolas Martelaro, Wendy Ju

David Sirkin is a Lecturer and Research Associate at Stanford; he teaches interactive device design and needfinding. Nik Martelaro is a PhD Candidate at Stanford; he teaches mechatronics and rapid prototyping. Wendy Ju is Assistant Professor at Cornell Tech, and leads interaction design research at Stanford’s Center for Design Research.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

This course is a hands-on introduction to interactive electronics prototyping for people with a variety of backgrounds, including those with no prior experience in electronics. Familiarity with programming is helpful, but not required.

Mobile UX – The Next Ten Years?

2 Units | Monday 11:30| Course Website

This course will challenge you to play a part in reinvigorating mobile interaction design, exploring transformational interaction styles for mobiles, and approaches for generating them. We celebrate the success that is apps, services, and the hugely popular ecology of mobile devices, but want to promote a return to radical innovation. We ask the questions: is there more to user experience than the black rectangles we have today? and, how do we generate ideas beyond what we have now?

Instructor(s)

Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, Matt Jones

Jones (with Gary Marsden) wrote the first book on Mobile Interaction Design, and all three presenters have spoken widely across the world. Examples include courses at CHI, MobileHCI, IndiaHCI, and more broadly, British Science Festival, Hay Literary Festival, and many research talks.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

Students will get a broad insight into mobile UX design and methods for ideation. Researchers will gain a new perspective on mobile interaction, provoked to rethink attitudes toward UX. Designers and developers will expand their knowledge of potential users, learning how to prepare for the user experiences of the future.

Navigation Interfaces for Virtual Reality and Gaming: Theory and Practice

2 Units | Tuesday 9:00

In this course, we will take a detailed look at various breeds of spatial navigation interfaces that allow for locomotion in digital 3D environments such as games, virtual environments or even the exploration of abstract data sets. We will closely look into the basics of navigation, unraveling the psychophysics (including wayfinding) and actual navigation (travel) aspects. The theoretical foundations form the basis for the practical skillset we will develop, by providing an in-depth discussion of navigation devices and techniques, and a step-by-step discussion of multiple real-world case studies.

Instructor(s)

Ernst Kruijff, Bernhard Riecke

Both presenters have over 20 years of experience in Virtual Reality and Navigation. Ernst Kruijff has a deep understanding of the design of 3D user interfaces and cognitive aspects of navigation, while Bernhard Riecke has a profound background in perception aspects of 3D navigation.

Intended Audience (Level: Easy)

The intended audience encompasses researchers, students, developers and practitioners who can benefit from an up to date, practical and well-founded overview and practical discussion to design new or improve upon existing navigation techniques for a wide range of domains.

Speech and Hands-free Interaction: Myths, Challenges, and Opportunities

2 Units | Thursday 9:00 | Course Website

Speech remains the “holy grail” of interaction, yet it is the most difficult modality to be understood by machines – its processing resulting in error rates of high variability, especially under adverse conditions. The aim of this course is to inform the HCI community of the current state of speech and natural language research, to dispel some of the myths surrounding speech-based interaction, as well as to provide an opportunity for HCI researchers and practitioners to learn more about how speech recognition and synthesis work, what are their limitations, and how these could be used to enhance current interaction paradigms.

Instructor(s)

Cosmin Munteanu, Gerald Penn

A combined 40+ years of research experience within speech-based interaction, publishing at CHI, MobileHCI, ACL, Interspeech. Main organizers of several workshop series on speech interaction. Significant prior experience working in industry on projects that combine speech processing, artificial intelligence, multimodal interaction, and interface design.

Intended Audience (Level: Intermediate)

Beneficial to all HCI researchers or industry practitioners without a strong expertise in speech, who believe in HCI’s goal of developing methods and systems that allow humans to naturally interact with technology, but are disappointed with the lack of success in using speech and natural language to achieve this goal.

Canceled Courses

From Resilience to Brilliance: how to design with the body (and microbiome) in Mind to #makeNormalBetter

Instructor(s)

m.c. schraefel

A Critical Review of Online Social Data: Biases, Methodological Pitfalls, and Ethical Boundaries

Instructor(s)

Alexandra Olteanu, Emre Kiciman, Carlos Castillo

Introduction to Creating Musical Interfaces

Instructor(s)

Sidney Fels, Michael Lyons