Appreciating Technology and Understanding Science Through Usability Studies

本项目正在开发两门关于人机交互（HCI）的课程，一门面向普通教育学生，另一门面向计算机科学（CS）专业学生。在这两门课程中，学生将学习并实践从探索性研究到假设检验实验等严格的实证研究方法。因为许多商业和公共政策决策都是基于对实证结果的评估而做出的，所以所有学生，无论他们的专业是什么，都必须了解实证工作的方法以及它是如何报告的，这样他们才能更好地准备做出和评估这些决策。本课程为学生提供了一个独特的机会，让他们在日常生活中已经熟悉的问题背景下学习这些方法。学生们对现有的人工制品进行实证研究，并学习严格评估其可用性的方法。他们还致力于设计新的工件，并开发实验，以比较各种替代方案来衡量其设计的可用性。本课程的毕业生能够理解实证方法并欣赏精心设计的工件的可用性。

Computer Science (31)This project is developing two courses on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), one for a general-education audience and one for Computer Science (CS) majors, in which students learn about and practice methods of empirical study ranging in rigor from exploratory studies to hypothesis-testing experiments. Because so many business and public policy decisions are made based on evaluation of empirical results, it is vital that all students, no matter their major, have an understanding of the methods of empirical work and how it is reported so they are better prepared to make and evaluate such decisions. The course provides a unique opportunity for students to learn about these methods in the context of problems with which the students are already familiar from their daily lives. Students carry out empirical studies on existing artifacts and they learn ways to rigorously evaluate their usability. They also work to design new artifacts and develop experiments to measure the usability of their designs compared to various alternatives. Alumni of this course are able to understand empirical approaches and appreciate the usability of well-designed artifacts.