Courses

List of Courses

Saturday

• 9:00 – 17:40
  • Research Methods for HCI: Understanding People Using Interactive Technologies
    Duncan P. Brumby, Ann E. Blandford, Anna L. Cox, Sandy J.J. Gould, Paul Marshall
    (4 units) This course will provide an introduction to methods used in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research. An equal focus will be given to both the quantitative and qualitative research traditions used to understand people and interactional contexts. We shall discuss these major philosophical traditions along with their contemporary framings (e.g., in-the-wild research and Interaction Science). By the end of the course attendees will have a detailed understanding of how to select and apply methods to address a range of problems that are of concern to contemporary HCI researchers.

Monday

• 11:30 – 12:50
  • Personal Fabrication: State of the Art and Future Research
    Stefanie Mueller, Patrick Baudisch
    (2 units) Personal fabrication is an emerging research field in Human Computer Interaction and related disciplines. Within the last three years, an increasing number of papers have been published that branch out into different research directions. To maximize the impact HCI researchers can have on this emerging field, it is important to identify the grand challenges and then approach them in a focused way. At the end of the course, participants will have an in-depth understanding of state of the art research in personal fabrication and will be aware of open research question in the field that they might want to tackle in their future research.
• 11:30 – 15:50
  • Designing with the Mind in Mind: The Psychological Basis for UI Design Guidelines
    Jeff A Johnson
    (2 units) UI design rules and guidelines are not simple recipes.  Applying them effectively requires determining rule applicability and precedence and balancing trade-offs when rules compete.  By understanding the underlying psychology, designers and evaluators enhance their ability to apply design rules. This two-part (160-minute) course explains that psychology.
  • Research Methods for Child Computer Interaction
    Janet C Read, Shuli Gilutz
    (2 units) In this course participants will learn about the theory and practice of conducting research in children’s HCI. The course is divided into two sessions: basic principles and theory, and best practices. The instructors have multiple years of experience designing, conducting, and analyzing children-computer interaction (CCI) studies, in the UK, USA, and Israel.
  • Introduction To Human Computer Interaction
    Jonathan Lazar, Simone D J Barbosa
    (2 units) The objective of this course is to provide newcomers to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) with an introduction and overview of the field. In addition to introducing basic concepts, the course will provide enough structure to help understand how the advanced material in the CHI 2016 technical program fits into the overall field.
• 14:30 – 17:50
  • Game User Experience Evaluation
    Regina Bernhaupt, Florian Mueller
    (1 unit) This course comprehensively covers important user experience (UX) evaluation methods as well as opportunities and challenges of UX evaluation in the area of entertainment and games. The course is an ideal forum for attendees to gain insight into state-of-the art user experience evaluation methods going way-beyond standard usability and user experience evaluation approaches in the area of human-computer interaction. It surveys and assesses the efforts of user experience evaluation of the gaming and human computer interaction communities during the last 15 years.
• 16:30 – 17:50
  • An Introduction to Cognitive Aging and Dementia: A Clinical Neuropsychologist’s Perspective
    Allyson Rosen
    (1 unit) This course will be an introduction to the current state of clinical diagnosis of age-related cognitive declines and dementia with the goal of facilitating effective collaboration between computer scientists and clinicians to help older adults.
  • So, You Want To Be A CHI AC
    Julie A Kientz, Hilary B Hutchinson
    In this 1.5 hour course, we’ll explain the entire process of being an AC, from application to selecting and managing reviewers to handling rebuttals to the 2 day Program Committee meeting to getting accepted authors over the finish line. Priority given to first-time ACs, but seasoned veterans welcome as well to share their perspectives!
  • Hands-on introduction to interactive electric muscle stimulation
    Pedro Lopes, Max Pfeiffer, Michael Rohs, Patrick Baudisch
    (1 unit) In this course, participants create their own prototypes using electrical-muscle stimulation. We provide a ready-to-use device and toolkit consisting of electrodes, microcontroller, and an off-the-shelve muscle stimulator that allows for programmatically actuating the user’s muscles directly from mobile devices.
  • Visual Facilitation for Design Groups
    Eileen M. Clegg
    (1 unit) Introduction to visual facilitation for design groups, enables leaders to catalyze innovation in groups by (1) aggregating ideas creatively in a visual tableau (2) activating human-system elements of design through somatic expression, (3) enabling multiple cognitive inputs, (4) modeling the fundamentals of innovation such as risk-taking, open-ended inquiry, vulnerability, and pattern-finding. This is a highly experiential course, based on the cognitive apprenticeship approach to learning.

Tuesday

• 9:30 – 12:50
  • Introduction to Creating Musical Interfaces
    Michael J Lyons, Sidney S Fels
    (2 units) This course provides a general, gentle, and fun introduction to the \ theory and practice of interface design for creating and performing music. Participants will learn key aspects of the theory and practice of musical interface design by studying case studies and live demonstrations mostly sourced from the leading conference in this area, “New Interfaces for Musical Expression” (NIME).
  • Visual Analytics 101
    Russ Burtner, Kris Cook, Jean Scholtz
    (2 units) This course will introduce the field of Visual Analytics to HCI researchers and practitioners highlighting the contributions they can make to this field.  Topics will include a definition of visual analytics along with examples of current systems, types of tasks and end users, issues in defining user requirements, design of visualizations and interactions, guidelines and heuristics, the current state of user-centered evaluations, and metrics for evaluation.  We encourage designers, HCI researchers, and HCI practitioners to attend to learn how their skills can contribute to advancing the state of the art of visual analytics.
  • Interaction Design for Online Video and Television
    David Geerts, Pablo Cesar, Marianna Obrist
    (2 units) This course will teach attendees how to design and evaluate interaction with online video and television. It provides attendees a pragmatic toolset, including techniques and guidelines, which can be directly applied in practice. The different tools will be contextualized based on current developments, giving participants a complete overview of the state of the art and industry.
  • An Introduction to Automotive User Interfaces
    Bastian Pfleging, Nora Broy, Andrew L Kun
    (2 units) The objective of this course is to provide newcomers to Automotive User Interfaces with an introduction and overview of the field. The course will introduce the specifics and challenges of In-Vehicle User Interfaces that set this field apart from others. We will provide an overview of the specific requirements of AutomotiveUI, discuss the design of such interfaces, also with regard to standards and guidelines. We further outline how to evaluate interfaces in the car, discuss the challenges with upcoming automated driving and present trends and challenges in this domain.
• 14:30 – 17:50
  • Designing Technology to Foster Psychological Wellbeing
    Rafael A. Calvo, Dorian Peters
    (2 units) In this course we will explore approaches to evaluating and designing for wellbeing determinants like autonomy, competence, connectedness, meaning, and compassion, as a first step towards a future in which all digital experience supports flourishing.
  • User Story Mapping: The Hands-on Course
    Stephanie Foehrenbach, Christian Heldstab
    (2 units) Agile development practice breaks requirements down into small building blocks that are used to steer development and product progress. However, with this pile of small blocks it can be challenging to keep the big picture of what the product should provide and what is needed for users to conduct their task flows. User story mapping [1] addresses this challenge. It is a method and a visual representation that further helps building a bridge between scenario oriented usability methods and the fragmentation of requirements. This hands-on course introduces user story mapping with a balanced combination of up front presentation and group exercises.
  • Make This! Introduction to Electronics Prototyping Using Arduino
    David Sirkin, Nikolas Martelaro, Wendy Ju
    (2 units) 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. Participants learn basic electronics, microcontroller programming and physical prototyping using the Arduino platform, then use digital and analog sensors, LED lights and motors to build, program and customize a small paper robot.
  • Designing and Assessing Interactive Systems Using Task Models
    Philippe Palanque, Celia Marine
    (2 units) This two-part course takes a practical approach to introduce attendees to the principles, methods and tools for task modelling.  Part 1: A non-technical introduction demonstrates that task models can be the corner stone of successful design of interactive systems. Part 2: A more technical interactive hands-on exercise of how to “do it right”, such as: How to go from task analysis to task models? How to assess (through analysis and simulation) that a task model is correct? How to identify complexity of user tasks and how to reduce it? How to identify tasks that are good candidate for migration either towards automation or other users? How to take into account user errors in task modelling? And more…

Wednesday

• 9:30 – 12:50
  • Empirical Research Methods for Human-Computer Interaction
    I. Scott MacKenzie, Steven J. Castellucci
    (2 units) In this two-session course, attendees will learn how to conduct empirical research in human-computer interaction (HCI).  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 HCI knowledge is required.
  • Advances in Participatory Design
    Susanne Bödker, Christian Dindler, Ole Sejer Iversen, Kim Halskov
    (2 units) In this course participants are introduced to theory and practice of Participatory Design. The course offers an overview of state of the art in Participatory Design literature, practices and methods, and provides participants with the opportunity to work practically on a Participatory Design case. The instructors have substantial experience in Participatory Design research and practice and have been active members of the PDC community for several decades.
  • Speech-based Interaction: Myths, Challenges, and Opportunities
    Cosmin Munteanu, Gerald Penn
    (2 units) The goal of this course is to inform the CHI 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 researchers and practitioners to learn more about how speech recognition and speech synthesis work, what are their limitations, and how they could be used to enhance current interaction paradigms. Through this, we hope that HCI researchers and practitioners will learn how to combine recent advances in speech processing with user-centred principles in designing more usable and useful speech-based interactive systems.
• 14:30 – 15:50
  • Interactive Biotechnology: Building your own Biotic Game Setup to Play with Living Microorganisms
    Honesty Kim, Lukas C Gerber, Ingmar H Riedel-Kruse
    (1 unit) In this course we will give an overview of our recent approaches to interactive biology. We will then demonstrate a biotic video game that enables real time play with living cells. We will instruct participants how they can replicate (and modify) this setup, which consists of a DIY microscope containing additionally four LEDs controlled by a joystick to stimulate single celled phototactic organisms. We invite the community to develop games and other interactive applications on this platform, and to bring it to maker spaces and classrooms.
• 14:30 – 17:50
  • Mobile UX: Breaking the Glass to Richer User Experiences
    Matt Jones, Simon Robinson
    (2 units) The aim of this course is to connect the great app innovation that is out there with the sorts of alternative thinking that have been brewing in university and industry labs for several years. It seems obvious how things should develop in the mobile market—more apps, better screens, longer battery life, faster and faster networks, drawing us more and more towards the tempting pool that leads us to digital worlds that offer so much. We want to help undermine this certainty by challenging attendees to step back and look at alternative perspectives; changing the future but starting now.
  • Tools for Designing for Home Entertainment: Gesture Interfaces, Augmented Reality, and Smart Spaces
    Radu-Daniel Vatavu
    (2 units) This course explores the ways in which home entertainment systems benefit from such technological advances, in the quest to design highly-interactive smart home entertainment spaces. Attendees will be introduced to the fundamental principles of smart spaces and ambient intelligence, augmented reality, and gesture interface design by falling back on examples of designs and applications for home entertainment. Notions such as context awareness, mixed reality, and naturalness of gesture interaction will be clarified for participants in the context of home entertainment.
  • User Interface Design In Agile Projects
    Karri-Pekka Laakso, Tuomas Husu, Mikko Romppainen, Janina Fagerlund, Marju Kettunen, Toni Standell
    (2 units) In this enhanced version of our well-received tutorial in NordiCHI’14 we will teach the way we design UIs at Reaktor and share our lessons learned from more than 10 years of design in agile projects. No previous knowledge of UI design is required, but the participants should know at least the basics of agile development in order to follow the examples and discussion in the second part.
• 16:30 – 17:50
  • Designing for an Aging Population: Toward Universal Design
    Jeff A Johnson, Kate Finn
    (1 unit) This course describes age-related factors that affect ability to use the Web, and presents Web design guidelines that reflect the capabilities, usage patterns, and preferences of older Web users.  The course also explains the value of testing websites on older adults.

Thursday

• 9:30 – 15:50
  • Presumptive Design: Design Thinking In Service of Research
    Leo Frishberg, Charles Lambdin
    (3 units) Working in small groups, professionals from across the UX spectrum will learn Presumptive Design (PrD), a design-research technique for capturing the unmet and/or unspoken needs of stakeholders, while revealing and vetting the assumptions of the project team. This course covers the theoretical framework of PrD, provides attendees with hands-on experience applying the process to a design problem, introduces the PrD “Creation Session” has attendees engage external participants with the artifact in “Engagement Sessions” and introduces post-engagement analysis activities.
  • A Dummy’s Guide to your Next EXPeriment: Experimental Design and Analysis Made Easy
    Shengdong Zhao, Xiaojun Meng, Pin Sym Foong, Simon T Perrault
    (3 units) Experiment design is a challenging task for novice and sometimes even more advanced HCI researchers. This course will introduce the field of experimental design and analysis to participants. Participants will be able to design an experiment, implement the experiment, gather data and analyze data during the course. By grounding the course in a real-life exemplar, participants will be able to have practical experience in running a controlled experiment in HCI.
  • Practical UX Research Methodologies
    Sarah E Garcia, Laura Hammond
    (3 units) Half-Day course on the practical research methods used to understand the changing technology climate.  Experts from UEGroup, a Silicon Valley research and design company, will lead an interactive discussion and give practical suggestions for developing methodologies including: Ethnography, Out of Box Experiences, and Usability Testing.
  • Creative Worthwhile Interaction Design
    Gilbert Cockton
    (3 units) Over the last two decades, creative and strategic design approaches have become increasingly prevalent in the development of interactive technologies, 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 developing approaches and resources that can balance and integrate a range of multidisciplinary design practices.

Quick Facts

• Important Dates
  • Submission Deadline: 9 October 2015 (12:00pm noon PDT).
  • Notification: 24 November 2015.
  • Publication Ready Deadlines:
    • Revised Course Description: 7 December 2015.
    • Electronic Course Notes: 29 February 2016.
• Submission Details
  • Online Submission: PCS Submission System.
  • Template: Extended Abstracts Format.
  • Submission Format: 300 word advanced program description, detailed course description, and sample course material.
• Selection Process: Curated.
• Chairs: Wendy Ju and Joy Mountford (courses@chi2016.acm.org).
• At the Conference: Accepted Courses with the minimum number of registered participants will be taught in up to three 80-minute sessions during the conference.
• Archives: Course descriptions will be published in the Extended Abstracts; ACM Digital Library.

Message from the CHI 2016 Courses Chairs

The CHI 2016 conference will offer a wide variety of courses designed to appeal to our diverse audience of researchers, practitioners, designers, developers, managers and students. Courses will take place during the CHI 2016 main conference. Course duration can be up to three 80-minute sessions.

We encourage proposals for CHI 2016 conference courses that cover topics like:

• history and foundations of HCI
• new and emerging topics within and/or relevant to HCI (e.g., HCI and the home, sustainability, mobile HCI, developments in automotive technologies, social media design, game design)
• courses focusing on all stages of the user-centered development cycle including user needs and requirements analysis, design, prototyping and evaluation
• practical and technical methods that are relevant to HCI (e.g., storyboarding, role playing and improvisation methods, prototyping tools and methods, experimental design and analysis, statistical methods, field methods, Web design tools and languages, mobile development frameworks, microelectronics toolkits, gesture and sensor toolkits, robot programming toolkits)

As CHI 2016 Course Chairs, we are committed to creating the best possible coverage of relevant topics through provisions of high quality courses. To ensure educational value we are balancing course topics over consecutive years of the conference. Therefore, if you have ideas for key courses you would like to see presented at CHI 2016, please email us at the email address below.

Wendy Ju, Stanford University
Joy Mountford, Akamai Technologies
courses@chi2016.acm.org

What is a CHI Course?

Courses allow CHI attendees to extend their knowledge beyond their current area(s) of expertise. Participants will include industry managers and professionals, practitioners, students and researchers. Courses will be offered in up to three 80-minute sessions. Courses will run in parallel with the technical program. Course can be designed for novices, general interest audiences and/or experts.

For example, a Course could:

• Provide a substantial overview of state of the art research or technology areas
• Introduce practitioners to emerging areas, new technologies and methods within HCI research
• Create opportunities to learn new techniques for use in research or practice
• Provide master level classes for experienced CHI attendees
• Provide advanced instruction in CHI-related tools, technologies or methods

If you are still in doubt see Shall I offer a course or a workshop?

Preparing and Submitting your CHI Course Proposal

A Course proposal must be submitted via the PCS Submission System by 9 October 2015, 12:00pm noon PDT. The proposal should have the following components:

1. Advance Program Description (300 words)
2. Course Description (up to 4 pages)
3. (optional) Course Material Samples (for example, handouts, slides, etc.)

As part of the online submission process, submitters will be asked to also provide the following to help the jury and chairs understand the logistical constraints of the proposed course:

• Duration of the Course (total number of sessions).
• Linkage to other courses, if any. A linkage should be defined if there is a dependency between the courses requiring that they be considered together. Linked courses will be accepted or rejected together. Include scheduling constraints, such as the order of the Courses and whether they can be scheduled on different days.
• Audience size: what is the preferred audience size? The average number of registrations for Courses at CHI in recent years was 43 (st.dev.=18), with 10 of the 28 Courses having over 50 registrations. If the Course is very popular, would you consider teaching it more than once? We will contact instructors of Courses that have significant enrollments by the end of the second week of registration. if you believe your course should be limited to a certain number for optimal effect, please state so and state the optimal number below or above which you believe your course would not be maximally effective.
• Course history: if the proposed Course has been given previously, describe where it was given, the evaluation it received from attendees, and how it will be modified.
• Student Volunteers: specify and justify student volunteer help for your Course.
• Audio/visual needs: CHI can generally provide a projector, screen, computer audio, and podium microphone. Budget constraints make it unlikely that additional equipment can be provided. CHI also provides a small budget for instructors to buy office supplies for their course. Please define all your requirements for audio visual aids and office supplies.
• Promotional strategy: a description of your advertising/promotional strategy for attracting attendees

Part 1. Advance Program Description
The Advance Program Description is a brief 300-word abstract that is used to describe and advertise your course to prospective attendees. The description should describe the topic to be covered with pointers to relevant background material, an outline of the course activities itself and short presenter/tutor bios.

Part 2. Detailed Course Description (up to 4 pages)
The Course description is the most important part of your proposal. The jury will evaluate the course based primarily on this description and the material sample in Part 3. The course descriptions for accepted courses will be included in the 2016 CHI Extended Abstracts. This part of the proposal must not exceed four pages. It should include:

• Title of the Course (please make this short but descriptive)
• Names and affiliations of the instructors.
• Benefits: summarize the skills and knowledge the attendees will gain as a result of attending this Course. This should include the reasons that CHI attendees would want to take your course.
• Content: describe in detail the material that will be covered.
• Learning objectives
• Audience: state the disciplines and/or organizational roles of attendees who would be interested in your Course
• Prerequisites: described any background required to understand the Course, including attendance at any other course in the program if that is a requirement.
• Presentation format: list the various presentation forms used in the Course, for example, lecture, demonstration, exercises, videos, group discussions, and/or case studies.
• Instructor background: list the background for each instructor, including current employment and activities, previous professional activities, and relevant publications.
• Resources: web site or other resources (e.g., books) that might be accessed to provide more information about the Course or instructor(s)

Part 3. Course Material Sample (optional)
Provide a sample of the Course material you will present in this Course. This can include handouts, slides or other relevant material you plan to use or have used before in courses, talks or related curriculum.

Course Selection Process

CHI 2016 Courses will be curated by the CHI 2016 Course Chairs. Acceptance of proposals will be based on:

1. Fit within the overall CHI education curriculum, that balances topics over consecutive years as well as relationship to the theme of this year’s conference, overall distribution of topics within this year’s program, approaches, audience experience levels, and specialties of the intended audience.
2. Factors such as relevance of the course to HCI, suitability for presentation given venue and time constraints, timeliness of topic, audience appeal, attendance limits and presentation methods.
3. Previous presentations and, if appropriate, course participant evaluations of the Course at CHI and number of times this course (or a similar course or tutorial) has been offered over the past years.
4. Prior experience and qualifications of the instructors.
5. Courses that promote products (solely for marketing purposes) will not be considered. The courses may discuss techniques or products in the context of larger issues.

Courses should not contain sensitive, private, or proprietary information that cannot be disclosed at publication time. Submissions should NOT be anonymous. However, confidentiality of submissions will be maintained during the jury process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity.

Upon Acceptance of your CHI Course

Course instructors will be notified of acceptance or non-acceptance by 24 November, 2015. The instructors will receive more information about the expected format of the Course notes and about logistics (e.g., student volunteers, A/V equipment, recommendations and requirements for course evaluations, course payments) after acceptance of courses.

As a general guideline, Course notes are intended to provide the attendees with carry-away materials that will enable them to concentrate their attention on the presentation and participation, rather than on hastily taking handwritten notes.

Beginning this year, the course notes will primarily be distributed online, in digital format. A few paper copies of the digital notes will be available for sale at Registration, but we intend for most attendees to view these on their computers or phones as html or pdf files.

The notes should include materials such as:

• Introduction
• Copies of presentation material, e.g., slides
• Annotated bibliography and/or recommended reading
• Copies of relevant background material or scholarly papers (for which the instructors have obtained any necessary reprint permission)
• Course exercises, as appropriate

Instructors will be required to sign a release form giving CHI one-time-only permission to utilize the notes for course participants and to sell notes at the conference. All accepted courses are required to provide their course notes to CHI 2016. The deadline for the course notes is 29 February 2016.
Cancellation: Courses with fewer than 10 participants registered by the early registration deadline may be cancelled. We therefore strongly recommend that you promote your courses through social media channels, in your own social networks, to your personal contacts and in your teaching, research and professional/practice communities. The CHI 2015 conference organizers will not promote specific courses or course materials.

At the Conference

Your CHI Course will be allotted up to three 80-minute sessions for presentation. We will coordinate A/V requirements with accepted course instructors. Instructors should see Presenting at CHI 2016 for information about standard computing and A/V equipment that will be made available to instructors and presenters at CHI 2016.

After the Conference

Accepted four-page Course Descriptions will be distributed in the CHI Extended Abstracts, available in the ACM Digital Library. Course notes and additional descriptive material will not be available in the Proceedings or the ACM Digital Library.