Welcome to CS 522 : Human-Computer Interaction

Course Details

Time and Place

Tuesdays and Thursdays: 3:30 – 4:45 PM, at CDRLC 1402

Tuesdays: 5 – 6 PM, at CDRLC 5417; and by appointment

  • Students enrolled in any College of Engineering (COE) department must be proficient in at least one high-level programming language (e.g., C++, Java, JavaScript, Objective C) — enough to complete coding assignments and build functional prototypes. COE students who are not comfortable with building systems are advised not to take this course.

  • Students from non-COE departments will have non-coding assignments and the option of either design-centered or analytical final projects. Some proficiency in or aptitude for design methods (e.g., participatory design, value-sensitive design) or data analysis (e.g., parametric and non-parametric statistics) is expected.

Students are responsible for familiarizing themselves with the syllabus. The instructor is responsible for being responsive to the diverse needs of the enrolled students and making necessary modifications to this syllabus, which will be treated as a living document. Blackboard will be used to post course grades. Piazza will be used to post announcements, FAQs, general discussions, course-related general queries, and detailed instructions when deemed necessary. The course webpage will contain links to readings, general instructions, and class schedules. Students should post general doubts publicly on Piazza and private matters anonymously (to classmates). Students are responsible for keeping themselves updated with class announcements.

Except for extenuating circumstances and emergencies, please avoid using emails for class-related doubts/inquiries. Use Piazza.

Course Outcomes​

  • Understand basic HCI theory, terms, principles, and conceptual models.
  • Apply HCI principles toward user interface design.
  • Analyze user needs and requirements.
  • Translate user requirements into system prototypes.
  • Sketch design ideas of a user interaction concept.
  • Design iteratively a user interface based on formative evaluation results.
  • Apply evaluation and usability testing methods to interactive products to validate design decisions.
  • Recommend appropriate evaluation protocols to evaluate user experience.
  • Ideate, sketch, elaborate, validate, and communicate user experiences and interface designs.

Textbooks

You are not required to buy any of these books. Either they are available online via the UIC library or relevant chapters will be provided.

Schedule

All deadlines are EOD and CST. Readings are due before the corresponding class meeting.

Course introduction and student introductions

Read Chapter 3 (Reliability and Human Error in Systems) from Human Factors in Simple and Complex Systems

Read Chapter 4 (Human Information Processing) from Human Factors in Simple and Complex Systems and Chapter 3 from Interaction Design

Attendance is required.

I will check in with students about their project proposals. Here are some examples of conceptual diagrams and user scenarios.

Link your working project document here. 

Project instructions

Read Chapters 2 and 11 from Interaction Design

Read pp. 105—151 from Buxton’s Sketching User Experiences.

  • lecture slides

TBD

TBD

Attendance is required.

I will check in with students about their project updates.

TBD

Review the detailed instructions here: Project instructions

TBD

Read Chapter 9 (Attention and the Assessment of Mental Workload) from Human Factors in Simple and Complex Systems

  • lecture slides

Bring your paper prototypes to class.

Greenberg, S., & Buxton, B. (2008). Usability evaluation considered harmful (some of the time). In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 111—120. ACM.

CW Examples

  • lecture slides

Read Chapter 15 from Shneiderman’s Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction and Chapter 4 from Interaction Design.

  • lecture slides

TBD

TBD

Read Part III, pp. 63 – 104, and Part IV, pp. 105 – 164, from Brave NUI World.

  • lecture slides

TBD

I will check in with students about their project updates.

Thanksgiving Day

Review the detailed instructions for final project presentations: Project instructions

Course policy on AI tools

You are welcome to use AI tools to support your learning in this course. When submitting assignments, you must acknowledge any AI tools you used to generate content or code. A simple citation of the tool(s) is sufficient—no explanation of how or to what extent you used them is required.

AI-generated code may be incorporated into your final projects, provided that you clearly indicate the tools used.

Because the boundary between language editing and content generation can be ambiguous, the guiding principle is transparency. If you are unsure whether or how to cite, ask the instructor.

Assignments

All assignments in this course, except for course project deliverables, are individually graded. Collaborative learning is strongly encouraged, but students should aim to learn the technical skills independently.


 

Class participation (10%)

This is a graduate-level course, and active engagement is essential. Students are expected to contribute thoughtfully to class discussions by asking questions, offering insights, and responding to their peers.

Attendance is required to receive participation credit, but it is not sufficient on its own. Meaningful contributions during class discussions are necessary to earn full participation points.


 

Homeworks (10%)

Five homework assignments will be posted throughout the course. These will consist of conceptual questions intended to deepen your understanding of the material.

Homework will be graded on completion, not correctness. There are no formal due dates; however, all assignments must be submitted by the final day of the semester (December 5, 2026) to receive credit.

For your own learning, it is strongly recommended that you complete each assignment within 1–2 weeks of posting. After this period, we will review the answers during class discussions. Completing the homework promptly will help you engage more fully in these discussions and maximize the learning benefit.


 

Paper Presentation (20%)

Each student will present 1–2 research papers in class and lead the ensuing discussion. Presentations should be approximately 20 minutes long. Both the instructor and fellow students will ask questions during the presentation, which the presenter should be prepared to answer and discuss.


 

Course Project (60%)

The course project is a core component of this class. It gives students the opportunity to apply theoretical concepts in a hands-on way while building a project that can be showcased in their portfolio.

Students will work individually or in groups of 2 members on a single project throughout the semester, following the human-centered design process. Each group will be evaluated at four required milestones.

Because deliverables are cumulative, it is important to avoid carrying mistakes forward. Errors that are propagated across multiple deliverables will result in a loss of points. Note the following:

  • Detailed guidelines and grading rubrics for all deliverables will be provided and discussed in class.
  • Each group member will receive an individual grade based on their contributions.
  • Every student must present at least once during the semester, and all group members are required to be present during presentations to answer questions.
  • The project must conceptualize and prototype a computing application that involves non-trivial human interactions.
  • Students may use any programming language(s) that best serve the project’s learning objectives and align with their strengths.
Project Proposal (10%)

Groups will submit a project proposal outlining the project scope, to be completed ahead of the midterm presentation. This helps catch scope or direction issues early, before they carry forward into later work.

Midterm Presentation (15%)

Groups will present the project scope, requirements gathered, and sketches.

Formative Evaluation Report (15%)

Groups will submit a formative evaluation report documenting early testing and feedback, to be completed ahead of the final presentation. This serves as a checkpoint to make sure evaluation findings are incorporated before the final deliverable.

Final Presentation (20%)

Groups will present the results of their formative evaluation and demonstrate the final prototype.

Grading

Grade breakdown

Homeworks: 10%
Paper presentation: 20%
Project: 60%
Class participation: 10%

Letter grade

Letter grades are determined at the end of the semester. The default cutoffs are provided above. These boundaries may be adjusted downwards if necessary because of the difficulty of the assignments or quizzes, but the boundaries will never be adjusted upwards, so a final average of 90 is guaranteed to be an A. The boundary adjustment is done heuristically, and there are no grade quotas, no grade targets, and no centering of the class on a particular grade boundary.


 
Attendance

Class attendance is not mandatory but strongly recommended. Attending 50% of the class meetings is required. Students not meeting this course requirement may be penalized up to 10% of their total grade. Students absent during a group presentation will receive a zero for that assignment. Assignment deadlines will be posted (and maybe updated) on the course page. Lectures may not be recorded, and there may not be slides. If you are unable to attend class, you should consider asking a classmate to take notes for you.

Other Course Policies

Academic Misconduct. All students should aspire to the highest standards of academic integrity. Using another student’s work on an assignment, cheating on a test, not quoting or citing references correctly, or any other form of dishonesty, unauthorized collaboration, or plagiarism shall result in a grade of zero on the item and possibly an F in the course. Incidents of academic misconduct shall be referred to the Department Head and pertinent University officials, and repeated violations shall result in dismissal from the program.

All students are responsible for reading, understanding, and applying the Code of Student Rights, Responsibilities, and Conduct, and in particular the section on academic misconduct. Refer to the UIC student affairs.

All students are strongly encouraged to read what constitutes plagiarism here. You must document the difference between your writing and that of others. Use quotation marks in addition to a citation, page number, and reference whenever writing someone else’s words (e.g., following the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association).

Cheating. Cheating is an attempt to use or provide unauthorized assistance, materials, information, or study aids in any form and in any academic exercise or environment. A student must not use external assistance on any “in-class” or “take-home” examination unless the instructor specifically has authorized external assistance. This prohibition includes but is not limited to the use of tutors, books, notes, calculators, computers, and wireless communication devices. A student must not use another person as a substitute in the taking of an examination or quiz, nor allow other persons to conduct research or to prepare work, without advanced authorization from the instructor to whom the work is being submitted. A student must not use materials from a commercial term paper company, files of papers prepared by other persons, or submit documents found on the Internet. A student must not collaborate with other persons on a particular project and submit a copy of a written report that is represented explicitly or implicitly as the student’s individual work. A student must not use any unauthorized assistance in a laboratory, at a computer terminal, or on fieldwork. A student must not steal examinations or other course materials, including but not limited to, physical copies and photographic or electronic images. A student must not submit substantial portions of the same academic work for credit or honors more than once without permission from the instructor or program to whom the work is being submitted. A student must not, without authorization, alter a grade or score in any way, nor alter answers on a returned exam or assignment for credit.

Fabrication. A student must not falsify or invent any information or data in an academic exercise, including, but not limited to, records or reports, laboratory results, and citations to the sources of information.

Plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as presenting someone else’s work, including the work of other students, as one’s own. Any ideas or materials taken from another source for either written or oral use must be fully acknowledged unless the information is common knowledge. What is considered “common knowledge” may differ from course to course. A student must not adopt or reproduce ideas, opinions, theories, formulas, graphics, or pictures of another person without acknowledgment. A student must give credit to the originality of others and acknowledge indebtedness whenever: directly quoting another person’s actual words, whether oral or written; using another person’s ideas, opinions, or theories; paraphrasing the words, ideas, opinions, or theories of others, whether oral or written; borrowing facts, statistics, or illustrative material; or offering materials assembled or collected by others in the form of projects or collections without acknowledgment

Interference. A student must not steal, change, destroy, or impede another student’s work, nor should the student unjustly attempt, through a bribe, a promise of favors, or threats, to affect any student’s grade or the evaluation of academic performance. Impeding another student’s work includes, but is not limited to, the theft, defacement, or mutilation of resources so as to deprive others of the information they contain.

Violation of Course Rules. A student must not violate course rules established by a department, the course syllabus, verbal or written instructions, or the course materials that are rationally related to the content of the course or to the enhancement of the learning process in the course.

Facilitating Academic Dishonesty. A student must not intentionally or knowingly help or attempt to help another student to commit an act of academic misconduct, nor allow another student to use his or her work or resources to commit an act of misconduct.

Right to revise. The instructor reserves the right to make changes to this syllabus as necessary and, in such an event, will notify students of the changes immediately.

Grievance Procedures. UIC is committed to the most fundamental principles of academic freedom, equality of opportunity, and human dignity involving students and employees. Freedom from discrimination is a foundation for all decision-making at UIC. Students are encouraged to study the University’s Nondiscrimination Statement. Students are also urged to read the document Public Formal Grievance Procedures. Information on these policies and procedures is available on the University web pages of the Office of Access and Equality.

Recording and Copyrights. Audio/Video Recording: To ensure the free and open discussion of ideas, students may NOT record or share classroom lectures, discussions, and/or activities without the advance written permission of the instructor, and any such recording properly approved in advance can ONLY be used solely for the student’s own private use.

Copyrighted Material: All material provided through this website is subject to Copyright and Fair Use laws. This applies but is not limited to class/recitation notes, slides, assignments, solutions, project descriptions, etc. You are allowed (and expected!) to use all the provided material for PERSONAL use. However, you are strictly prohibited from sharing the material with others in general and from posting the material on the Web or other file-sharing venues in particular.

Course Evaluations. Because student ratings of instructors and courses provide very important feedback to instructors and are also used by administrators in evaluating instructors, it is extremely important for students to complete confidential course evaluations online, known as the Campus Program for Student Evaluation of Teaching evaluation. You will receive an email from the Office of Faculty Affairs inviting you to complete your course evaluations, and you will receive an email confirmation when you have completed each one.

For more information, please refer to the UIC Course Evaluation Handbook.

Copyright © 2026 Debaleena C.