C M S I 6 9 8 / 5 9 8
IN T R O D U C T I O N T O HU M A N - C O M P U T E R
IN T E R A C T I O N ( H C I )
Summer 2005 Session 1
Midterm Review Sheet
The following bullets summarize the material that we have covered so far. The test will be open book
and notes, and thus carries the assumption that even if you don’t know something off the top of your
head, you’ll still know where to look it up. I plan to give you up to 90 minutes to finish the test; ideally,
just an hour.
• The test’s in-depth HCI material consists of Shneiderman chapters 1, 2, and 6; Norman chapters
1–2; and Nielsen chapters 2 and 5. This is material that has been reinforced by handouts and
class lectures discussions.
• Questions from this in-depth material can range from straight-up definitions or explanations of
terms, to actual execution or analysis of HCI tasks. So make sure that you understand the mate-
rial at both conceptual and application levels.
• Shneiderman chapters 3–5 are also fair game, but not in-depth — by this, I mean that you should
have scanned them at least once to know what’s in there. Questions covering these chapters will
all be answerable by knowing where to look things up.
• For Swing, we have covered overall program structure, layout managers, event handlers, and
higher-order components in class; in your homework, you have also gotten to know many of the
Swing components. These are all fair game for the midterm — you will not be asked to do any
extensive programming, but you may be asked to write out little fragments of code, critique
some code, or outline/diagram a program. Questions will not test your knowledge of the API per
se, but your knowledge of how to use it properly.
The following sample questions illustrate the points covered above:
1. Given a certain user interface problem, use a theory (such as stages of action or OAI) to analyze
what went wrong and suggest how to fix it.
2. Decompose a given user interface into a logical JPanel structure.
3. Critique a given user interface based on certain principles of good design.
4. Create a model or possible direct manipulation user interface for a given (very small) application
description.
5. Critique the design or structure of a given piece of Swing code.
Caskey Dickson will proctor the exam, and I will be available online if you have any questions. After
the midterm, Caskey will play a video lecture given by Alan Kay in the late ‘80s. It has a lot of great
tidbits and fascinating historical perspective. Have fun!
