Lecture Format

Classes are held from 12:30-2pm Tuesday and Thursday in 405 Soda. Based on feedback from a related course, the usual format for each class will have 4 parts:

  1. A student presentation on the reading(s) for that class.
  2. Some commentary by the instructor with additions and talking points.
  3. Class discussion on the readings in small groups.
  4. Group summaries to the rest of the class and final discussion.  

I expect to have occasional guest speakers, in which case we would skip step 2.

Its likely that sometime during the semester, we will experiment with in-class shared note-taking using wireless PDAs. This is part of an ongoing research project in my group called Livenotes.

Topics

The course will cover the following topics in some depth:

In addition and depending on student interest, there will be classes on one or more of the following: perceptual UIs, Intelligent UIs, Tangible UIs, Information retrieval, Info visualization, E-commerce, Voting systems,... The course contents link at the top of this page will be updated regularly with the topics and readings.

Homework

Every enrolled student needs to hand in a short summary at the beginning of each class of that classes readings which should comprise:

  1. Three strengths of the reading. Including especially powerful ideas that might be applicable elsewhere.
  2. Three weaknesses of each reading. If a paper doesnt have obvious weaknesses, talk instead about what issues werent covered in it by comparison with other work in the area.

One or two sentences for each bullet should be enough.

Projects

The course requires a semester-long project. Normally projects are individual efforts, but two-person projects are possible. Project proposals will be due soon. For samples of projects from the last offering of CS260, see
http://bmrc.berkeley.edu/courseware/cs260/fall99/final-projects.htm