[Spring 2026] CSE/ISE/EST 323 Human-Computer Interaction

This course provides an overview of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), a discipline focused on designing, evaluating, and implementing interactive computing systems for human use. You will learn guidelines, principles, methodologies, tools, and techniques for analyzing, designing, and evaluating user interfaces and interaction techniques. Topics include:

Human Information Processing System

Interaction Behavior Modeling

Interface Design Principles and Process

Usability Testing

Heuristic Evaluation

Goal: Learn to design, evaluate, and implement interactive computing systems that are intuitive, efficient, and user-friendly.

Prerequisites: CSE 214 or CSE 230 or CSE 260 or ISE 208

Class Location	Melville Library, E4330
Class Hours	Tuesday & Thursday 12:30-1:50PM
Instructor	Shubham Jain
Email Address	j [email protected]
Office Hours	TBA
TA	TBA

Grading Policy

(Subject to minor tweaks throughout the semester.)

Midterm I Exam: 25%
Midterm II Exam: 20%
In-class Quizzes: 20%
Project: 30%

Points breakdown: execution (10%) + final report (10%) + presentation (5%) + project description slides (1%) + project review (4%).

Grading rubric:

Execution: Evaluated based on the quality of the prototype. Score range: 10 (Excellent) to 1 (Poor).
Report: Submit a research paper-style report explaining the design motivation, rationale, and evaluation results. Score range: 10 (Excellent) to 1 (Poor).
Presentation: Present your work in class, explaining the design motivation, demonstrating the prototype, and showing evaluation results. Score range: 5 (Excellent) to 1 (Poor).
Project description slides: 5-page slides. Submitted (1) or not submitted (0).
Project review: Evaluated based on project progress. Score range: 4 (Excellent) to 1 (Poor).
In-class participation: 5%

Course Schedule

(Subject to minor changes throughout the semester)

Week	Date	Topic	Assigned Reading
Week 1	Jan 27	Introduction to HCI and Ubiquitous Computing	The Computer for the 21st Century. Mark Weiser. Scientific American. September 1991
	Jan 29	**NO CLASS.
INSTRUCTOR AWAY AT CONFERENCE.**
Week 2	Feb 3	Human Performance Modeling:
Human Information Processor
	Feb 5	Human Performance Modeling:
Fitts’ Law
Week 3	Feb 10	Human Performance Modeling 3	Beyond Fitts' law: Models for trajectory-based HCI tasks. In CHI '97. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 295-302.
	Feb 12	Human Performance Modeling 4
Week 4	Feb 17	Human Performance Modeling 5
	Feb 19	Quiz 1
Week 5	Feb 24	~~Common interaction paradigms~~
NO CLASS DUE TO BLIZZARD
	Feb 26	Guest lectures
Week 6	Mar 3	Accessibility
	Mar 5	Case Study: AccessWear
Week 7	Mar 10	Keyboard Layout Optimization
	Mar 12	Midterm I Exam (Javits 103)
Week 8	Mar 17	SPRING BREAK. NO CLASS
	Mar 19	SPRING BREAK. NO CLASS
Week 9	Mar 24	Gestalt Laws
	Mar 26	HCI Experiment Design
Week 10	Mar 31	Heuristic Evaluation
	Apr 2	Human-Centered AI
Week 11	Apr 7	Quiz 2 (Javits 111)
	Apr 9	Cognitive Models
Week 12	Apr 14	Accessibility
	Apr 16	Trends in HCI research
Week 13	Apr 21	Midterm II Exam (Javits 111)
	Apr 23	Project Presentation 1
Week 14	Apr 28	Project Presentation 2
	Apr 30	Project Presentation 3
Week 15	May 5	Project Presentation 4
	May 7	Project Presentation 5

Textbook

There is no official textbook. The course content was developed based on the cutting edge research published in the premier HCI conferences such as ACM CHI and UIST, and the following seminal books: