Yolanda Jacobs Reimer

Teaching HCI Design With the Studio Approach

The studio-based method of teaching has been used for almost 100 years to teach product and architecture design. With ever increasing pressure on HCI to teach competence in designing interactive objects, new ways of teaching need to be explored. This article begins with a review of the studio-based teaching concept and how it has been used in architecture, science/engineering, and computer science education. We then present and discuss the evaluation of an HCI design studio course which we created and taught in spring 2002 in the Computer and Information Science Department of the University of Oregon. This course was based on our observations and study of studio courses in the School of Architecture. Finally, we review general issues about studio teaching including the promises and challenges that it presents to widespread acceptance in the computer science curriculum.

Managing the Complexity of Design Problems through Studio-based Learning

Abstract The ill-structured nature of design problems makes them particularly challenging for problem-based learning. Studio-based learning (SBL), however, has much in common with problem-based learning and indeed has a long history of use in teaching students to solve design problems. The purpose of this ethnographic study of an industrial design class, an architecture class, and three human-computer-interaction classes was to develop a cross-disciplinary understanding of the goals and expectations for students in a SBL environment and the ways in which experienced facilitators assist students in solving complex design problems. The expectations that students are to iteratively generate and refine design solutions, communicate effectively, and collaborate with others establishes the studio as a dynamic place where students learn to experiment on their own, to teach and to use all studio members as resources in that search. Instructors support students as they grapple with complexity of design problem-solving through pedagogical practices that include assignments, associated meta-discussions, explicit prompts, reminders, modeling, and coaching. Using sample illustrations from our cross-case analysis, we present the studio method as a legitimate constituent of problem-based learning methods.

Promoting creativity in the computer science design studio

Revolutionary advances in technologies will require computer science professionals who are able to develop innovative software solutions. In order to identify techniques that can lead students to creative insights in their work, we have conducted an ethnographic study of the studio method as enacted in architecture, industrial design (ID), and human-computer interaction (HCI) classes. Our analysis of the activities conducted during studio critiques revealed that while the ID and architecture studios had a primary focus on experimentation, the primary emphasis of the HCI studios was on idea refinement. In this paper, we describe four barriers to creative thought observed in the HCI classrooms and identify ways that the architecture and ID instructors helped students to overcome similar challenges.

Emergent themes in a UI design hybrid-studio course

The goal of our research and teaching collaboration has been to learn more about how key aspects of pedagogy commonly incorporated in architecture and industrial design classes might positively impact the teaching of user interface (UI) design within a standard computer science curriculum. Toward that end, we studied a number of studio design courses, developed a set of curriculum guidelines, and analyzed the effectiveness of these guidelines as implemented in a UI design course. We discovered three emergent themes: 1) students need early and constant reminders that design is an iterative process involving user feedback and testing; 2) instructor modeling is critical; and 3) technology needs to be carefully managed at critical junctures throughout the class.

Ethnography, Scenario-Based Observational Usability Study, and Other Reviews Inform the Design of a Web-Based E-Notebook

As users turn to the World Wide Web to accomplish an increasing variety of daily tasks, many engage in information assimilation (IA), a process defined as the gathering, editing, annotating, organizing, and saving of Web information, and the tracking of ongoing Web work processes. The process of IA, which is similar to traditional note taking but in the Web environment, emerges from a literature review and an ethnographic field study, as presented in this article. Despite strong evidence which suggests that IA is critical to many Web users, however, a scenario-based observational usability study and a heuristic evaluation indicate that it is currently not well supported by existing software applications. This article, which culminates in the presentation of NetNotes-a Web-based e-notebook developed specifically to support the process of IA-illustrates how design requirements can be effectively extracted and synthesized from a variety of complementary background user studies.

Helping students with information fragmentation, assimilation and notetaking

The problem of information fragmentation is especially acute for todays college students who manage and assimilate information in various forms while completing many of their academic tasks, and who must do so within the confines of standard software applications. The goal of this research is to provide students with a novel information assimilation and notetaking tool that helps them more efficiently manage their electronic information and overcome some of the fragmentation challenges they routinely experience. Our Global Information Gatherer prototype allows students to view, edit and store files of different types from within a single interface, and provides an integrated web browser and notetaking functionality.

Turning the desktop inside-out: Evaluating information access and management through a single interface

Computer users today rely on a wide variety of software tools to manage an ever-increasing amount of information and resources. We developed the Global Information Gatherer (GIG) system to help students in higher education manage, understand, and keep their academic work. GIG provides a comprehensive, integrative interface through which students can access commonly used programs and simultaneously record notes and organize files. This article presents an overview of the GIG program before describing a large-scale, longitudinal, and unrestricted evaluation of its use. We investigate how such a program is received by nontechnical users, which features prove most helpful to students as they work to complete their everyday tasks, how it compares to other software solutions, and whether it helps with information assimilation and management tasks. Results of our study indicate that participants have a strong preference for software that minimizes program window manipulation, facilitates information consolidation and organization, provides citation support and integrated web browsing, and incorporates a progressive user interface design. When comparing GIG to their normal way of accomplishing tasks, students gave particularly high marks for its ability to save materials from the web, gather sources for academic research, manage windows, and copy/paste from the web. On the third and final survey of our evaluation, we learned that a majority (>70%) of remaining participants believed that GIG was helpful for managing and making sense of the large volume of information to which they are exposed everyday, and over half (55%) said they would continue using the software if it was freely available.

Paradigm shift? the implications of web-based notetaking

This paper explores the transition from traditional paper-based notetaking to the process of information assimilation (IA) on the Web. IA is introduced and defined, and the implications for Web-based notebook tools needed to support this process are explained. A preliminary electronic notebook prototype is described, followed by planned future work in the area of IA and Web-based notetaking.

Perspectives on co-linking design and development courses in CS

An on-going problem with many courses across the CS curriculum is finding time to incorporate programming activities that are necessary for other critical aspects of the course. For example, in UI design the practice and evaluation of good design principles typically depends on the creation of at-least a semi-functional software prototype. However, having to include software implementation in courses whose main focus lies elsewhere can distract from core concepts, and oftentimes there are pedagogical reasons to separate out implementation. By co-linking upper-division courses in our CS program, we attempted to solve this problem by leveraging concepts of software design and implementation across two courses. In this experience report, we describe how the co-linked courses were structured, what we encountered, what worked well and what still needs improvement. Other CS educators might capitalize on our successes, and learn from our mistakes, in similar set-ups within their own curriculums.

Taking studio-based learning online (abstract only)

Studio-based learning (SBL), the centerpiece of architecture and fine arts education for over a century, has become increasingly attractive to computing educators. SBL can be conceptualized as an iterative process of solution refinement that relies heavily on shared physical space and design critiques. This session will explore ways in which CS educators can transition aspects of traditional or face-to-face SBL to an online learning environment. We will discuss the potential for online studios, how they might look and function, and how their effectiveness in promoting student learning might be gauged. As more and more CS courses assume an online presence, we seek to understand both the opportunities and the limitations associated with conducting critical studio work in a digital medium.