CMSC 434 Final Exam New Topics General Outline

You can use this as a guide, but this overview outline is not necessarily exhaustive or in the exact order of presentation and discussion. Also, the nature of the course is cumulative, so material from earlier in the semester should still be considered.

  1. Lecture Topics
    1. Time Predictions
      1. Fitts' Law
      2. Keyboard Level Model
      3. Purpose/Goal of Formulaic Approach
    2. Human Participants: Ethics and Effects
      1. Psychology Effects and HCI
        1. Hawthorne
        2. Pygmalion
        3. Clever Hans
        4. Von Restorff
      2. IRB origins
      3. Managing Subjects
      4. Belmont Report Ethical Principles
        1. Respect
        2. Beneficence
        3. Justice
    3. Heuristic Evaluation Foundations and Practice
      1. Design Principles
      2. Usability Heuristics
      3. "Discount" Usability Engineering
      4. Heuristic Evaluation overall process
      5. Phases of Heuristic Evaluation
      6. Performing Evaluation
      7. Use of Severity Ratings
      8. The Nine Heuristics
    4. Graphical Design (General)
      1. Metaphors, Cognitive Models, Look & Feel
      2. Visual Language elements
        1. Layout
        2. Typography
        3. Imagery
        4. Sequencing
        5. Visual identity
        6. Animation
        7. Color and texture
      3. Consistency
        1. Internal
        2. External
      4. Use of Grids
      5. Navigational cues
      6. Relationships between screen elements
      7. Legibility and Readability
      8. Levels of abstraction
      9. Imagery and Idioms
    5. Web Design
      1. Breadth -vs- Depth
      2. 7±2
      3. Navigation -vs- Content
      4. Card Sorting
      5. Seller -vs- Buyer
      6. Colors, Images
      7. Information Scent
      8. Issues with download time, browser versions and screen resolution
      9. Content Formats
      10. Prototype and Framework modeling
      11. Universal accessibility
    6. Information Visualization and Representation
      1. Characterists of Good Info Viz
      2. Use of Metaphors
      3. Role of Direct Engagement and Manipulation
      4. Object-Action -vs- Action-Object
    7. Quantitative Evaluation, Experimental Design, and Controlled Studies
      1. What types of things are best tested via quantitative evaluation?
      2. Experimental Design Process
      3. Experimental Hypothesis Formulation
      4. Experimental Methods
      5. Within-Subjects versus Between-Subjects
      6. Independent and Dependent Variables


  2. Other sources of information
    1. Homework Assignments
    2. Project Phases
    3. In-class Exercises
    4. Linked readings in slide decks
    5. The optional readings could provide additional examples and discussion.



NOTE: One exception in terms of things in the slides deck readings being testable material is that I will not ask you about the statistical analysis details (ie: ANOVA tests, T-Tests, and how to use them) that are STAT400-type topics. However, the other topics leading up to that are important to review in that slide deck.


Web Accessibility