Spring 2006
Sensation and Perception with Bruce Walker
We will be covering the historical development of the science of sensation and perception, talking about all five senses plus the semi-senses, and answering fun questions like "Can babies differentiate color?"

Special Problem - Designing for automotive interiors with Gregory Abowd
Gregory is supervising me this semester as I explore the HCI problem space inside the automotive. I will be surveying the current most popular areas of research, carving out a problem into which I can dig deeper, and designing a solution.

Fall 2005
Computation as Expressive Medium with Michael Mateas
We are learning Java by using Processing to create design solutions. The class consists mostly of six projects, which are displayed on the portfolio page.

Project Production with Peter McGuire
We are learning how to plan, propose, and sell our project ideas to potential funders. The work we are doing all semester will culminate in a project proposal and presentation to funders at the end.

Spring 2005
User Interface Evaluation with Beki Grinter
This class is famously mis-named at Tech. It is better known as the Qualitative Methods class.
We learned how to conduct and analyze qualitative research. The analysis method we covered in class was Grounded Theory.
Major class project: To observe people interacting with technology in a public venue. My partner and I chose to observe cell phone use in a shopping mall in two locations: the food court and a lounge area. We conducted 9 hours of observatio followed by many hours of coding and analysis.
Project partner: Leland Beauchamp

Information Visualization with John Stasko
We surveyed the entire space of study in the field of information visualization. Topics included everything in the field with a healthy dose of Edward Tufte.
Major class project: To create a visualization of the InfoVis 2005 conference contest dataset which was thirteen years of production and employment records of American companies.
Team members: Allison Sall, Parth Bhawalker, Allison Sall, and Leland Beauchamp

Principles of Interactive Design with Ian Bogost
We discussed the history and development of interactive medium over the years. We were assignmed three major interactive pieces to exercise and push our skills in PHP, MySQL, and XML.

Fall 2004
Engineering Psychology with Gregory Corso
In class we learned and created Environmental Analysis, User Analysis, Decision Action Diagrams, Functional Flow Diagrams, and Function Allocation.
Major class project: To evaluate and redesign an existing system. You will find the details of this project on the portfolio page.

Research Design with Dan Fisk
The was a course good refresher/foundation on the scientific method, designing an evaluation, internal/external validity, and research design pitfalls. We also went over survey and questionnaire creation, but only briefly which probably only makes me dangerous.

Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction with Bruce Walker
This course was an introduction to HCI and covered everything from human abilities, history of computing, design techniques, HCI principles, performance and cognitive models, interaction design, prototyping, evaluation, and alternative displays.
Semester-long project: To design, prototype, and evaluate an interface. You will find the details of this project on the portfolio page.