CSI 5122: Software Usability

This page contains general information about the course CSI 5122 (Winter 2012), taught by Professor Tim Lethbridge.

My objectives in teaching this course are 1) to raise your awareness of usability as a key software engineering quality; 2) to teach you up-to-date knowledge regarding usability engineering and human-computer interaction; 3) to teach you skills in UI design and evaluation; and 4) to help graduate students to learn to be be better researchers by emphasizing research techniques and paper writing.

Some students will have taken a user interface design course (such as SEG3120/SEG3125) before taking this course, but not all students will have had the opportunity to do this. If you have not, don't worry. I will review key undergrad knowledge in the first part of course. I will also ask you to do some extra reading, but not an excessive amount of this.

Course notes

Please click here for the course notes. As we work our way through the course, I will update these from the previous offering of the course, so they should only be considered final just before each week's lecture.

Blog posts by students in the class

The following are blog posts by students in this year's class. These are awarded marks in the class.

• David Lareau: Inverted Analog Stick Camera Controls: Inverted to what?
• Let the maps win: Google Map (“GM”) or Bing Map (“BM”) - Shruti Sharma
• VS2010 Auto-complete Usability - Mahmoud Orabi
• VS2010 Missing Import Quick Fix Usability - Ahmed Orabi
• Usability of New Gmail Design - Enhanced or Deteriorated - Shruti Sharma
• uoZone usability issues - Hamoud Aljamaan
• Second life usability issues - Shruti Sharma
• Facebook android app usability issues by Pratik Parikh
• Google docs by Nisita Tappata
• Eclipse Usability: Refactoring Abstract classes By Ahmed Orabi
• Eclipse Open Declaration has usability issue with upcast variables By Mahmoud M.Orabi
• The Issues of CTV iPad's Application By Chujia Wei
• IBM Help Support Portal System usability issues By: Habib Abid
• Consistent with what? Tool and object consistency in Inkscape by Dan Minor
• The Usability Issues of Google Chrome By Xuelin Ma
• Usability Issues of Football website – Goal.com By Pratik Parikh
• Usability Issues of Gnome Shell 3.0 by Vafa Khoshaein
• Hotmail Search Usability Issues By Ahmed M.Orabi
• Skype Audio/Video Conversations Usability Issues By Mahmoud M.Orabi
• IE Developer Tools Usability Issues By Ahmed M.Orabi
• VS2010: Objects Navigation Usability Issues By Mahmoud M.Orabi
• Usability Issues of University webmail (SquirrelMail) By Pratik Parikh
• Unity Shell Interface Usability Issues by Vafa Khoshaein
• Chrome Browser restore option is not usable By Mahmoud M.Orabi
• Firebug CSS handling Usability Issues By Ahmed M.Orabi
• Why Modal Dialogs should be used with extreme caution ? By Renaud Bougueng
• FaceBook: Towards More Beautiful Picture and More Usable Viewer by AlShammari, Fayzah
• M for Metro, C for Control by De Youngster, Dela.

Weekly schedule

The following is the current weekly schedule. As students' presentations and paper-leading slots are filled up, the schediule will be adjusted. You must download and read all the papers required for each week. This material will be tested on the exam.