FALL 2023 - Syllabus
Psych. 425, Human Computer Interaction
Professor - Erik Nilsen (nilsen@lclark.edu )
BioPsy 121 Human Computer Interaction lab - Wednesday 6 - 9 p.m.
coursepack of selected readings in electronic form.
Class Moodle Page | Online Repository of Class Resources | Link to ACM Digital Library (Through Watzek Library Subscription)
Computing technology is radically changing the manner in which we work, play, shop, and communicate. The field of human-computer interaction (HCI) is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together researchers and practitioners from fields such as Psychology, Computer Science & Engineering, Business, Sociology, Linguistics etc. HCI researchers and developers have a common focus of creating and/or evaluating technologies which can expand the frontiers of human capabilities (functionality) while at the same time trying to match these technologies to the abilities of the people who will use them (usability).
This course will include a broad survey of many HCI topics, each studied from a psychological perspective (including cognitive, social, developmental, clinical and health psychology). We will not be using a textbook. The readings will be primarily journal articles from the fields of psychology and computer science. Reading the articles before class and being ready to discuss them and/or apply the knowledge to class projects is very important. Individual writing assignments serve as one way to evaluate your active engagement with the readings. (see below).
One topic we will be exploring in depth this semester is the use of tools for supporting remote collaboration. There is a subfield of HCI called Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). We will take advantage of the silver lining that Covid required distance learning has provided to explore the costs and benefits of collaborating in person and distributed in space as well as time!
Reaction Papers -Before specified class sessions in which we discuss an article, you are to read it and write some comments on the article. This can include a brief summary of the stated purpose of the article, how well the authors fulfilled that purpose, and what methods they used. You can also write any questions about concepts that were either unclear in the article or which need further elaboration. If you find any connection with other articles we have discussed in class or from your own experience, include these insights as well. Each paper should be less than 3 pages and take no more than one hour to write (above and beyond the reading time). The papers will be used to inform class discussions, and undergo peer and instructor review.
Another component of the course will be learning to author web pages following appropriate HCI design guidelines.
Use of computers, speaking and writing will be integral to this course. Projects will include:
1) In-class group activities. Students will serve as participants, observers, and researchers in evaluating the impact of technology on psychology and vice versa.
2) For a final website project, each student will conduct an individual exploration of computer resources on the internet for a specific topic, create a web site, and evaluate several class members web sites. For example, you could study the American with Disabilities Act and design a computer system for a user with a specific type of disability. Virtual reality systems for treating phobias, wearable computers, intelligent agents, and a host of other topics are possible. Along with the web site development, you will utilize it to lead a class exploration of your topic and revise the website afterwards based on the peer and instructor feedback you receive. Beginning on April 1st we will have 2 or 3 final project presentations each class period.
Course Schedule - The class web page is
the definitive location for upcoming class topics and assignments. The class
topics will evolve and change depending on new developments in the field and
student and faculty interest. I will promise to give you at least one weeks
advance notice on readings and assignments.
Consistent attendance and active participation in class
discussion and activities is vital to the success of the class. Missing more
than one class sessions will result in a significant reduction in your course
grade (5% for each additional day).
We will only be meeting 15 times during the semester. My expectation is that on average you will spend 2 hours outside of class for every 1 hour in class. At times during the semester a significant amount of out of class time will be needed to work on projects. Plan accordingly!
Fall 2023 Office Hours - 1:30 - 2:30 M, W. BioPsy 120. Zoom consultation by 24 hour advance appointment T 11:00 a.m.- 1:00 p.m. email nilsen@lclark.edu. Cell Phone (503) 734-5614. I try to respond to e-mails promptly, by noon the following day if sent after 5 p.m. |
My overarching goals for 425 are for you to acquire an understanding of the various connections between the study of psychology and the development of computing technology. The learning objectives for this class include:
1. Explaining the value of psychological perspectives to developing and understanding the impact of computing technology by
2. Engaging in high-level discussion in response to scholarly readings by:
For the web site development project specific goals include:
3. Demonstrate independence and intellectual maturity in the production of knowledge for an academic audience by:
Course Schedule and Assignments
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Topic |
| Introductions, Acronym Game and Overview of Final Website Project. Examples from past classes. The Giving of Voice? Using technology to help those without the ability to speak communicate effectively. Gamification: Productivity, Self-Improvement, and Pro-sociality through Crowdsourcing Technological Treatments for Depression Comparison of therapies and treatments Mental Health in the Modern Age the connection between mental health and phone apps Introduction to HCI Articles to Read BEFORE class time!
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| W Sep. 13 |
History of Computing and Human Computer Interaction
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| W Sep. 20 |
Cognitive Modeling (GOMS, KLM and Kin!) As we discussed last week, One thread of research in HCI is to apply principles and findings from Cognitive Psychology to help design software that matches our cognitive abilities and maximizes efficiency. I have 2 papers for you to read that span a 20ish year period of progress in this Cognitive Modeling Approach. This first one features LC students in the first ever HCI class that I taught at LC using their new knowledge of the KLM model to compete with experienced Human Factors Professionals to see who can come up with the best predictions! Would I assign it if we didn't come out alright! Jakob Nielsen and Victoria L. Phillips. 1993. Estimating the relative usability of two interfaces: heuristic, formal, and empirical methods compared. In Proceedings of the INTERACT '93 and CHI '93 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '93). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 214-221. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/169059.169173 This second article is a very recent study that uses a more sophisticated Cognitive Model called EPIC and explores ways to improve the model to deal with visual search in modern interfaces. David E. Kieras and Anthony J. Hornof. 2014. Towards accurate and practical predictive models of active-vision-based visual search. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '14). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 3875-3884. DOI=http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2556288.2557324
Brain Training: Hype or Hope, Fact or Fad? The whole class will be reading a short Editorial and a lengthier Review Paper to get an overview of Brain Training Research and Development. Here is one more really good Meta Analytic Paper. Shah, T. M., Weinborn, M., Verdile, G., Sohrabi, H. R., & Martins, R. N. (2017). Enhancing Cognitive Functioning in Healthly Older Adults: a Systematic Review of the Clinical Significance of Commercially Available Computerized Cognitive Training in Preventing Cognitive Decline. Neuropsychology Review, 1-19. be ready to discuss these 3 papers.
Internet Brain Training Search Moodle assignment. Complete before class, we will discuss them during class.I also want each of you to find one empirical study from 2018 or later that purports to find support for the benefits of Brain Training and another study that fails to find evidence for Brain Training benefits (two articles total). Try to be selective choosing two articles that look at one type of cognitive ability (working memory, peripheral attention, creative problem solving) or a particular user group (e.g. preschoolers, brain trauma patients, Austistic kids, Dementia patients) on our moodle page. I want you to include a link to the articles and write a couple of paragraphs summarizing the research and its findings and critiquing them. Which study do you find more convincing and what other evidence is needed to really prove that brain training can help this ability or this group of people.
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| Wed. Sep. 27 |
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| Wed. Oct. 4 | Developmental Psychology Perspective in HCI
User Interfaces for Young and Old. Maddy D. Brouwer-Janse, Jane Fulton Suri, Mitchell Yawitz, Govert de Vries, James L. Fozard, Roger Coleman. interactions magazine, march/april 1997, 34 - 46.
Guernsey, L. (n.d.). Can Your Preschooler Learn Anything From an iPad App? Retrieved February 1, 2015, from http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/05/interactive_screen_time_for_kids_do_educational_ipad_apps_teach_toddlers_anything_.html Why yes they can! Tangible Technology Improves Creativity and Shape Recognition in Preschoolers. Erik Nilsen, Joel Schooler, Karma Rose Zavita, Raiven Greenberg, Noah Callaghan, Susan Camp (In Progress). Designing for Digital Playing Out. Gavin Wood, Thomas Dylan, Abigail Durrant, Pablo E. Torres, Philip Ulrich, Amanda Carr, Mutlu Cukurova, Denise Downey, Phil McGrath, Madeline Balaam, Alice Ferguson, John Vines, and Shaun Lawson. 2019. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 679, 1–15. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300909 Nostalgia: an evocative tangible interface for elderly users. Nilsson(2003) Making Well-being: Exploring the Role of Makerspaces in Long Term Care Facilities. Kayla Carucci and Kentaro Toyama. 2019. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 469, 1–12. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300699 Ticket to Talk: Supporting Conversation between Young People and People with Dementia through Digital Media. Daniel Welsh, Kellie Morrissey, Sarah Foley, Roisin McNaney, Christos Salis, John McCarthy, and John Vines. 2018. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 375, 1–14. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3173574.3173949
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| Wed. Oct. 11 | Clinical and Abnormal Psychology An eclectic collection of articles on the diagnosis, treatment, and impact of technology on mental health. HCI and Affective Health: Taking stock of a decade of studies and charting future research directions. Pedro Sanches, Axel Janson, Pavel Karpashevich, Camille Nadal, Chengcheng Qu, Claudia Daudén Roquet, Muhammad Umair, Charles Windlin, Gavin Doherty, Kristina Höök, and Corina Sas. 2019. . In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 245, 1–17. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300475 Student Perspectives on Digital Phenotyping: The Acceptability of Using Smartphone Data to Assess Mental Health. John Rooksby, Alistair Morrison, and Dave Murray-Rust. 2019. . In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 425, 1–14. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300655 Empath: A Continuous Remote Emotional Health Monitoring System for Depressive Illness. Robert F. Dickerson, Eugenia I. Gorlin, and John A. Stankovic. 2011. In Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Wireless Health (WH ’11). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 5, 1–10. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1145/2077546.2077552 Evaluating the Impact of a Mobile Neurofeedback App for Young Children at School and Home. Alissa N. Antle, Elgin-Skye McLaren, Holly Fiedler, and Naomi Johnson. 2019. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 36, 1–13. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300266 Virtual reality in the assessment, understanding, and treatment of mental health disorders. Freeman, D., Reeve, S., Robinson, A., Ehlers, A., Clark, D., Spanlang, B., & Slater, M. (2017). Psychological Medicine, 47(14), 2393-2400. doi:10.1017/S003329171700040X Virtual reality in the treatment of persecutory delusions: randomised controlled experimental study testing how to reduce delusional conviction. Freeman, D., Bradley, J., Antley, A., Bourke, E., DeWeever, N., Evans, N., ... & Slater, M. (2016). The British Journal of Psychiatry, 209(1), 62-67. We will also have a round robin show and tell session of Apps that you have found and tried out for some aspect of mental health monitoring, education or treatment. Each of you find one an post it and a brief description on the class Moodle Page Forum called "There is an App for That DSM Diagnosis". Look to see that no one else has posted the App the you found. Each person needs to find a unique one. (First Find and Post claims ownership!).
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| Wed. Oct. 18 | Large Language Models AI Agents (ChatGPT and friends)
Here are 3 articles to read about the one of newest AI Chatbots ChatGPT, that has generated a lot of interest and controversy! van Dis, E. A., Bollen, J., Zuidema, W., van Rooij, R., & Bockting, C. L. (2023). ChatGPT: five priorities for research. Nature, 614(7947), 224-226. Taecharungroj, V. (2023). “What Can ChatGPT Do?” Analyzing Early Reactions to the Innovative AI Chatbot on Twitter. Big Data and Cognitive Computing, 7(1), 35. Floridi, L. (2023). AI as Agency without Intelligence: On ChatGPT, large language models, and other generative models. Philosophy and Technology.
After reading the articles, spend 20-30 minutes "talking" to ChatGPT to see if you can get some useful information for your Final Web Project. Be ready to report what was helpful and what was not!
Tonight we will will be looking at research on technology for promoting peace in various ways.
Nilsen, E., LeDonne, R., Klemperer, E. & Olund, S. (2011) Conflict Resolution With a Serious Game for Peace. Proceedings of Games + Learning + Society Conference, June 2011, 175 - 184. Klemperer, E., LeDonne, R., & Nilsen, E.Promoting Human Rights While Polarizing Political Perceptions With a Serious Game. (2011) Proceedings of Games + Learning + Society Conference, June 2011, 161 - 168. Organizations devoted to developing games for peace. https://www.gamesforpeace.org/ https://www.usip.org/serious-games-and-simulations-peacebuilding https://mgiep.unesco.org/gamesforpve
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| Wed. Oct. 25 |
Topic 1: Human- Infant Robot Interaction Breazeal(2000).pdf Infant-like Social Interactions between a Robot and a Human Caregiver. Enjoy this reading about the cute Kismet robot for today's class. Class discussion will revolve around how Kismet embodies theories of emotion and expressive states. Pay particular attention to the experiments described (and graphed) of Kismet interacting with faces and stuffed animals! Kismet is a sociable robot being developed at MIT which uses facial expressiveness as a central feature. Browse around the Kismet web site to get a feel for the goals of the project and what they have accomplished to date! Be sure to check out Kismet's "space of emotive facial expressions" and look at the pages concerning social interaction and how Kismet "learns". Leonardo is Kismet's kin that has taken some major steps forward in abilities, most notably, it has arms, understands some language and has a fairly sophisticated representation about the beliefs of others in reference to it's world of faces and objects. check out the Leonardo project web site and this video of Leo learning a new concept from a human! Meet Leonardo, Kismet's Kousin at the MIT Personal Robot Lab. Breazeal(2009). An Embodied Cognition Approach to Mindreading Skills for Socially Intelligent Robots.
What have Cynthia and her MIT Personal Robotics Group been up to lately! Kids learning to tell stories with social robot named TEGA! A spectacular failure when trying to take a social robot named JIBO to the marketplace. But Maybe JIBO isn't dead yet?!?! Topic 2: Cyborgs and Brain Machine Interface - Where Software and Hardware meet "Wetware"
Here is a former HCI student's web site project on Transhumanism that I recommend to you for a good overview of the topic and model for what your website can become!
A scientifically sound and accessible overview of the approaches to BMI (Brain Machine Interfaces). Lebedev, M. (2014). Brain-machine interfaces: an overview. Translational Neuroscience, 5(1), 99-110. For a more "out there" approach to Technologically Driven Logical Positivism I give you Cyborgs: Elon Musk and the new era of neuroscience.
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| W Nov. 1 |
Tonight's Topic - Website Usability Guidelines and Best Practices. Aliaksei Miniukovich, Michele Scaltritti, Simone Sulpizio, and Antonella De Angeli. 2019. Guideline-Based Evaluation of Web Readability. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 508, 1–12. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300738
I just ran across a mindblowing article online that I have to share with you about 3d printing food to help in healthy eating!! This reminded me that in preparing for the term, I found 3 recent CHI articles related to Human Food Interaction! I am attaching them here. Don't feel like you have to read them unless they seem appetizing!! Altarriba Bertran, F., Jhaveri, S., Lutz, R., Isbister, K., & Wilde, D. (2019, May). Making sense of human-food interaction. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-13). Ilaria Zonda, Dan Xu, Mick Jongeling, and Gijs Huisman. 2019. Growkit: Using Technology to Support People Growing Food at Home. In Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI EA ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper LBW1421, 1–6. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290607.3312834 Simon Robinson, Jennifer Pearson, Mark D. Holton, Shashank Ahire, and Matt Jones. 2019. Sustainabot - Exploring the Use of Everyday Foodstuffs as Output and Input for and with Emergent Users. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Paper 226, 1–12. DOI:https://doi-org.library.lcproxy.org/10.1145/3290605.3300456
I am requesting that each of us bring a favorite comfort food (or picture of it if you don't currently have it on hand) to share with the group at our class on Wednesday!! Tell us what it is why you like it and anything else you want to about it and its roll (intentionally misspelling) in your life!
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W Nov. 8
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Student Led Final Website Presentations (4-5 per night)
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| W Nov. 15 | Student Led Final Website Presentations (4-5 per night) |
| W Nov. 22 | Tofu/Turkey Day Break (no Class)
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| W Nov. 29 |
Student Led Final Website Presentations (4-5 per night) |
| W Dec. 6 |
Student Led Final Website Presentations (4-5 per night) |
M. Dec. 18 FINAL Exam Period 6 - 9 p.m. |
TBD, but some type of techie blowout! |
Nilsen's Search Engines and Document Repositories of Choice
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The source for most of our class readings, free downloads of full text files from on campus |
A place to search for the meaning of those Computer Acronyms and "Geek Speak" terminology |
A 2nd site for elucidating High Tech obfuscation |
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News article summaries and links that can serve as stimulus ideas for your Web Site Project
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Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction
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HCI Specific
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Erik's 15 minutes of Fame in Cyberspace. My research is reported in Wired News online edition.