Instructor: R. Jordan Crouser

Course meeting times: Tuesday 1:20pm - 4pm

Virtual Classroom:
https://smith.zoom.us/j/133608453 (password required, see Slack/Moodle)

Office hours: by appointment

A Message from Jordan, March 2020

These are extraordinary times. The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of life: how we work, play, move through the environment, and certainly how we learn. Being away from campus, spread across different time zones, many of us caring for family members and children… these evolving circumstances require us to radically rethink how we spend our time together, and we will make a lot of mistakes along the way.

In all of this, I want to you know that my commitment to you remains unchanged:

  1. To support each of you in ways that help you to learn and grow, both as computer scientists and as human beings.
  2. To provide a space where we can learn new tools for thinking about the design of human-machine interactive systems, especially those that challenge or disrupt the traditional screen/mouse/keyboard paradigm.

That said, this endeavor is going to look quite different from the first half of the semester.As we move forward with the remainder of this term, I want to acknowledge that these circumstances are unprecedented in our lifetime. This brings with it a lot of firsts: this is my first time moving a course online, and it’s probably your first time having all of your courses change the “contract” halfway through the semester. It is also our first time figuring out how to weather a global pandemic, and learning ways to cope with the stress inherent in that process.

I want to be transparent with you: I am giving myself permission to do what I can, and letting go of what I can’t. This means acknlowledging (publicly) that what I am able to do right now will likely fall far short of my standards for myself during a normal semester. This is true for all of us; right now, accomplishing anything related to your academic work is pretty spectacular.

Your health and wellness (physical, mental, and emotional) are to be your top priorities. Isolation and quarantine are extremely hard for humans to tolerate long-term, and being proactive about settling in for what may be a long period of “new normal” is critical. As such, your academic work in this course must necessarily take a distant second (or third, or fourth) place, after meeting your other needs. If at any point this becomes an issue, please let me know and we’ll figure it out.

In solidarity,
Jordan

Course Description:

In the study of human-computer interaction, a natural user interface (NUI) is an interaction paradigm in which the interface is largely invisible to the end user. Contrasted with WIMP (“windows, icons, menus, pointer”) interfaces found in traditional computing systems, NUIs rely on seamless, intuitive interaction rather than artificial control devices. While companies such as Apple and Google have rapidly popularized the NUI model, this interaction paradigm brings with it a unique set of design challenges, constraints, and ethical considerations. In this course, we will explore ongoing research in this evolving area and put these techniques into practice in various application areas.

Prerequisites:

CSC212: Data Structures required, CSC256: Human-Computer Interaction strongly recommended