CSE 271 Readings

CSE 271: User Interface Design: Social and Technical Issues

Readings

NOTES:

The class notes are not a substitute for the assigned readings. They are often meant to supplement or correct the readings, and sometimes they are just what I felt like writing at the time, rather than what is most important. Also, please note that the lectures and the readings other than the text are often more important than the text.
To read gziped postscript files, you must first extract the postscript from the gzipped file. On Windows machines, this may be too arcane for the Winzip Wizard, but Power Archiver should work; on Apple machines, the Stuffit Expander should work. For viewing and printing postscript, use GSView or Ghostview; these can be downloaded from the net, although they may be complex to install. CSE Unix machines already have gunzip and ghostview, and older versions of Netscape call them automatically.

Due 3 April:
- Chapter 1 of Shneiderman.
- Section 1 and Section 2 of the class notes.
- Basic Webbing Notes by Joseph Goguen.
Although theoretically this material should have been read before the second class meeting, it is acceptable to have read it before the third meeting.
Due 10 April:
- Chapter 2 of Shneiderman, and Section 9.3.5 of Shneiderman (p.325).
- The Scientific American interview with Ben Shneiderman: meet our author and some of his recent obsessions, including agents.
- Agents of Alienation by Jaron Lanier.
- Read Are Agents an Answer or a Question? by Joseph Goguen.
- (Optional) Direct Manipulation vs. Interface Agents by Ben Shneiderman and Pattie Maes, Interactions, 4, no. 6, pp 42-61, 1997. Digest of a debate held at the 1997 CHI.
- One Cannot Not Interact by Mihai Nadin; if you like that, you might also (optionally) want to read Interface Design: A Semiotic Approach by the same author.
Due 17 April:
- Chapter 3 of Shneiderman.
- Section 3 of the class notes.
- Communication and Collaboration from a CSCW Perspective by Mark Ackerman. This paper is very condensed and may need to be read several times; some of you may need a dictionary, and the class notes will also help.
- The section entitled "Signs," in Semiotics for Beginners by Daniel Chandler, University of Wales, Aberystwyth; you may also want to read the "Introduction" and/or the "Preface"; if so, I recommend doing so after reading the "Signs" section. You do not need to have a deep understanding of this material; however, it is interesting to get a taste of how semiotics is used in the humanities, and the historical information is also of some interest. The most important points about basic semiotics are summarized in the reading below.
- On Notation by Joseph Goguen; a PDF version is also available. This is a short introduction to some basics of Peircean semiotics, with illustrations from computer science and mathematics.

Due 24 April:

Re-read Communication and Collaboration from a CSCW Perspective by Mark Ackerman.
Chapter 4 of Shneiderman.
Section 4 of the class notes.
A brief webpage on Speech Acts and Mitigation.
Techniques for Requirements Elicitation by Joseph Goguen and Charlotte Linde; a PDF version is also available. This is a short critical survey of methods for determining what users really need, and for evaluating interfaces.
Autonomic Computing, a call for papers that introduces a new buzzword, and makes some strong claims.

Due 1 May:

Chapters 5 and 14 of Shneiderman.
Read Section 5 of the class notes.
Providing Social Interaction in the Digital Library by Mark Ackerman.
Tour the UC San Diego Semiotic Zoo for content, not just form as in earlier homework, paying particular attention to its semiotic introduction.
Pages 1 to 11 (up to but not including Section 3) of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design; a PDF version is also available.
Semiotic Morphisms, by Joseph Goguen.
Affordance, Convention, and Design, by Donald Norman.

This may look like a lot, but each item is relatively short.

Due 8 May:

Chapter 6 of Shneiderman.
Section 6 of the class notes.
Re-read pages 1-11 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design, and read pages 11-15 (completing Section 3), and also Appendix D; a PDF version is also available.
Read some basic information on XML; this is available at many places, including www.xmlinfo.com, or the O'Reilly XML Pocket Reference by Robert Eckstein, or www.w3.org (they maintain the XML standards), or www.xml.com, or www.xml.org.

Due 15 May:

Chapter 15 of Shneiderman.
Section 7 of the class notes.
Answer Garden 2: Merging Organizational Memory with Collaborative Help by Mark Ackerman.
Re-read pages 1-15 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design (completing Section 3) and read Section 4 (pages 15 to 18); a PDF version is also available.
Read and think about the structure of the simple narrative in The Structure of Narrative, especially the BNF description of narrative structure.
(Optional) Blending and Metaphor, by Joseph Grady, Todd Oakley, and Seana Coulson.
(Optional) Metonymy and Conceptual Blending, by Seana Coulson and Todd Oakley.

The last two will help you see what is currently going on in cognitive linguistics.

Due 22 May:

Chapter 16 of Shneiderman.
Section 8 of the class notes.
Information Visualization and Semiotic Morphisms, by Joseph Goguen and D. Fox Harrell; be sure to look at the pictures, but note that the versions of these pictures in the book are better. There is also a postscript version of the paper.
Re-read pages 15-18 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design (Section 4) and read Sections 5 and 6 (pages 18-24), on blending; you can skim the difficult math and concentrate on the examples.
Formal Notation for Conceptual Blending; you should understand the technical details.
Examples of Semiotic Morphisms in User Interface Design; you should understand the technical details.
Multimedia Phase-spaces by Peter Bøgh Andersen; a PDF version is also available, with some pictures in color.
Re-read The Structure of Narrative, it has been debugged.

Due 29 May:

The "Afterword" of Shneiderman.
Section 9 of the class notes.
Re-read Section 7 of the class notes - there is some new material.
Re-read pages 18-22 of An Introduction to Algebraic Semiotics, with Applications to User Interface Design, and read Appendices A and C.
Web-based Support for Cooperative Software Engineering, by Joseph Goguen and Kai Lin; a PDF version is also available. Please focus on the Tatami conventions for the user interface, and their justifications (pages 11-14).
The Algebra of Copyright by Andrius Kulikauskas.

Due 5 June:

Section 10 and Section A of the class notes.
The Ethics of Databases, an application of semiotics to web search engines.
Review the material on semiotics in the class notes, especially in Section 3, Section 7, and Section 10; Section 7 contains the most detailed information on how to use semiotic morphisms, while Section 10 contains much new material and may be being rewritten as you read this!
Read Towards a Social, Ethical Theory of Information, for material on information, stories and values, especially pages 13-14 on narrative.
(New! Optional but recommended for reviewing the last lecture) Semiotics, Compassion, and Value-Centered Design.
(Optional but highly recommended) Reality and Human Values in Mathematics.
(Optional but recommended) Dynamic Logic by Peter Bøgh Andersen; a PDF version is also available.
(Optional) Extenporaneous blending: Conceptual integration in humorous discourse from talk radio by Seana Coulson. (It's in word.)
(Very Optional) Notes on Gradient Logic.

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