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viii Preface

work through chapter by chapter. Readers will also have different needs. For ex-
ample, students in Psychology will come with different background knowledge and
needs from those in Computer Science. Similarly, professionals wanting to learn
the fundamentals in a one-week course have different needs. This book and the
website are designed for using in various ways. The following suggestions are pro-
vided to help you decide which way is best for you.

From beginning to end

There are fifteen chapters so students can study one chapter per week during a
fifteen-week semester course. Chapter 15 contains design and evaluation case studies.
Our intention is that these case studies help to draw together the contents of the
rest of the book by showing how design and evaluation are done in the real world.
However, some readers may prefer to dip into them along the way.

Getting a quick overview

For those who want to get a quick overview or just the essence of the book, we
suggest you read Chapters 1, 6, and 10. These chapters are recommended for
everyone.

Suggestions for computer science students
In addition to reading Chapters 1,6, and 10, Chapters 7 and 8 contain the material
that will feel most familiar to any students who have been introduced to software
development. These chapters cover the process of interaction design and the activi-
ties it involves, including establishing requirements, conceptual design, and physi-
cal design. The book itself does not include any coding exercises, but the website
will provide tools and widgets with which to interact.
For those following the ACM-IEEE Curriculum (2001)*, you will find that this
text and website cover most of this curriculum. The topics listed under each of the
following headings are discussed in the chapters shown:
HC1 Foundations of Human-Computer Interaction (Chapters 1-5, 14,
website).
HC2 Building a simple graphical user interface (Chapters 1,6,8,10 and the
website).
HC3 Human-Centered Software Evaluation (Chapters 1,10-15, website).
HC4 Human-Centered Software Design (Chapters 1,6-9,15).
HC5 Graphical User-Interface Design (Chapters 2 and 8 and the website.
Many relevant examples are discussed in Chapters 1-5 integrated with dis-
cussion of cognitive and social issues).

*ACM-IEEE Curriculum (2001) [computer.org/education/cc2001/] is under development at the time of
writing this book.