This is an ongoing project that I intend to continue working on for the duration of my career, and undergraduates will be included in the research where appropriate. This project includes classroom activities for different Computer Science courses at BSC as well as analyses performed by students regarding campus accessibility and a user interface.
Course Activities
Most of these activities are used in my HCI/SE course. We have a small program (only two faculty members) so the Software Engineering course has been merged with HCI. This allows students to learn about the importance of design, which is embedded in other courses within the program, on the front-end and the back-end. Any project students touch in the workplace will never be maintenance free. If the back-end is well designed, it will be easier to maintain mirroring the idea that if the front-end is well designed, it will be easier to use.
| Activity | Description | Course |
| Ethics Essay | Short essay where students must research the ethics of a chosen technology. Rubric used for assessment. | CS0, CS1 |
| Impact Essay | Short essay where students must research the impact CS made in a chosen field. Rubric used for assessment. | CS0 |
| Prompt Clarification | Programming assignment where students learn the importance of clear prompts and how to implement them. | CS1 |
| Discoverability | Activity for students to better understand affordances, signifiers, mappings, and feedback. | HCI |
| Interface Analysis | High-level research paper where students select a user interface (application, ATM, gas pump, etc.), conduct a user study, and analyze the results tying conclusions to existing research. | HCI |
| HCI Foundations | Activity for students to understand the seven stages of action as well as visceral, behavioral, and reflective processing and how these ideas contribute to accessibility. Students are asked to apply these ideas to the campus course registration system. | HCI |
| Field Trip/Reflection | Activity where students get to go in person to a facility that works with people with disabilities. This allows students to see the technology being used and how it impacts people’s lives. Students then write a reflection on the experience. | HCI, SE, or Capstone |
| Interface Design | Activity where students apply the eight golden rules of interface design according to Shneiderman and Plaisant to WCAG 2.0 and Section 508. Students are also asked to analyze a website to find examples of how the website does or does not meet the golden rule and the associated accessibility guideline. | HCI, SE, or Capstone |
| Interaction Design | Activity to better understand how metaphors and pre-existing knowledge can assist with application interaction. | HCI, SE, or Capstone |
| Design Review | Coming soon: Activity for students to conduct a review on their proposed senior capstone project regarding the quality of the design. | HCI, SE, or Capstone |
| HCI/SE Syllabus | Syllabus used to teach HCI within a Software Engineering course. | HCI, SE, or Capstone |
Interface Analysis Project
In this project, three undergraduates worked together to evaluate the usability of an online grocery shopping and delivery application based on user observations. The students created a video documenting their analysis. This was an interesting project for the students and an opportunity for them to learn that there is more to an application beyond buttons, labels, and text fields. The students found it to be a rewarding experience.
Campus Accessibility Project
The goal of this project was to consider campus design in the physical and digital world. An undergraduate student researched important design factors of both, heavily relying on work in Universal Design as well as Don Norman, and she evaluated how well our campus met those design considerations. This paper is being edited and will be submitted for publication in Spring 2021.
Undergraduate Researchers
- Chloe Dunmire, Birmingham-Southern College, 2018-2019
- Emmy Kilgore, Birmingham-Southern College, 2018-2019
- Andrew Scofield, Birmingham-Southern College, 2018-2019
- Marlowe McCraney, Birmingham-Southern College, 2019
