CS 350 – Computer/Human Interaction
Fall 2006 – Exam 1 Review Sheet

Exam 1 will be on Friday, October 27. The exam is open book, open your own notes (but not anyone else's notes). You may bring printouts of your prototypes and examples.

The exam will consist of questions on the material in Chapters 1-5 of the textbook and covered in lectures and assignments through Wednesday, October 25. It will consist of short answer questions similar to the exercises in the textbook.

The following is a list of topics that will be emphasized, but it is in no way to be construed as an exclusive list.

1. Application of scenarios and claims analysis to requirements analysis and the design of activities, information, and interaction.

2. Application of techniques and concepts used in requirements analysis such as identification of the root concept, identification of stakeholders, task analysis, etc.

3. Application of techniques and concepts used in activity design (i.e., system functionality) such as designer's model vs. user's mental model, conceptual metaphors, participatory design, etc.

4. Application of techniques and concepts used in information design (i.e., how objects are represented to the user and arranged) such as the Gulf of Evaluation, Gestalt perception, affordance, hierarchical information model, etc.

5. Application of techniques and concepts used in interaction design (i.e., mechanisms for accessing and manipulating information) such as the Gulf of Execution, direct manipulation vs. command language, task decomposition, articulatory directness, performance optimization, etc.

6. The technologies used in the prototypes (HTML/CGI/Perl, VB.NET, and Java Swing) to the extent needed to produce an interface similar in scope to the prototypes. In particular, file handling and networking will not be on the exam.