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Course Background
This course combines components that teaches programming
interactive user interfaces with one that teaches methods to improve
the usability of those interfaces. The course proceeds from the view
that interface usability is essential to successful software design
and not merely a matter of "packaging" or aesthetics. Interface
usability in fact can have a critical impact on an application's
overall quality and effectiveness: an accurate, fast, and powerful
application can be rendered useless by a poorly-designed user
interface when the people who might otherwise benefit from the
application find the interface frustrating, difficult, or impossible
to use.
The course is organized into four units. Each unit consists of a
series of topics and includes multiple-choice quizzes, practical
quizzes, and a few extended exercises, all of which will help you
gain a solid understanding of the material. In addition, the course
features three in-class exams.
**NOTE ON TAKING ONLINE ICARNEGIE
EXAMS** Unit 1,2,3 & Final Multiple
Choice Exams Students cannot use any online or book
material while taking the multiple choice tests.
Unit 1,2,3 & Final Practical
Exams Students are allowed to use all of the online
iCarnegie material, including their submitted files, while takingthe
practical exam.Use of book material Internet sites (except potential
class websites posted by the instructor) cannot be used.
**Resources** The following links are good starting points
for searching for information about usability engineering tools,
methods and techniques.
- Nielsen and Norman
Group: Respectively the guru of Web
usability and the father of the user-centered design
approach
- European
Usability Support Centre: A large
European consortium promoting usability engineering and user
interface design
- Constantine & Lockwood, Ltd:
L. Constantine is one of the top ten
software engineering practitioners. His latest book
Usage-Centered Design highlights the importance of user interface
design and proposes an approach called usage-centered
design
- Microsoft Usability Group: For several years Microsoft has established an
important usability engineering Lab
- IBM Ease of Use Group: IBM is the industry leader of the ease of use design
approach. IBM developed the OVID methodology, Web design
guidelines, etc.
- Deborah J. Mayhew & Associates Usability
Consulting: Author of one of the
most relevant books on usability engineering
- Usability Professionals
Association (UPA) Web site. UPA was formed to provide a
network and opportunities through which usability professionals
can communicate and share information about skills and skill
development, methodology used and/or proposed in the profession,
tools, technology, and organizational issues.
Visual Basic Downloads:
Unit 1 User-Centered Design and
Testing:
Difference between End and Unload statements: The End
statement tells Visual Basic to terminate the current application.
When you unload a form, you're taking the graphical portion of the
form out of memory and it should also be used in applications that
have multiple forms to ensure that the form closes fully. In
general, Unload statements are preferred.
There are three main differences between an Image and
PictureBox control:
1) A picture box can act as a
container. An image control can't.
2) A picture box has many
methods an image box lacks.
3) A picture box has a device
context. An image box uses the form's device
context.
(NOTE: Device Context is a structure that
defines a set of graphic objects and their associated attributes,
as well as the graphic modes that affect output. The graphic
objects include a pen for line drawing, a brush for painting and
filling, a bitmap for copying or scrolling parts of the screen, a
palette for defining the set of available colors, a region for
clipping and other operations, and a path for painting and drawing
operations.)
Thus if one just want to show an image, an image control is
fine. If one is looking to do more it is best to use a picture
box.
Unit 2 Creating and Evaluating
Interfaces:
Unit 3 Think-Aloud Usability
Testing:
Unit 4 Programming Beyond
Controls:
Other Programming Links:
- Javascript Links
- CSS - Cascading Style Sheets
- PHP - HyperText PreProcessor
- WAP - Wireless Application Protocol
If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail Bob
at:bscheele@bscheele.com
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