HCI Comprehensive Exam
Last Updated: August 20, 2010
This page provides information for students enrolled in the Communication
and Information Sciences PhD program who planning to take the primary or
secondary exam in Human-Computer Interaction.
You will need to read a selection of specified books and articles before taking
the exam. The readings are here. Some readings
have been placed on reserve. A conceptual taxonomy
of HCI may be found in this
pdf document
written by Chris Hundhausen. The rules for taking the exam are below.
Rules
- You must take two HCI core courses (listed below) before your first attempt
at the exam.
- The secondary exam is given in the morning, and the primary exam in the afternoon.
- If you intend to take the primary you normally take the secondary and primary
in the first attempt. If you pass only the secondary you may take the primary later. It is not possible to pass the primary without having passed the secondary.
- You are allowed a maximum of two attempts.
- No books, materials or notes will be allowed.
Core Courses
You are required to take two HCI core
courses before taking the exam. The following are the regularly scheduled core
courses.
- ICS 464 Intro. to HCI Design
- ICS 469 Intro. to Cognitive Science
- ICS 664 Human Computer Interaction
- ICS 665 User Interfaces and Hypermedia (for spring 2008)
- ICS 667 Advanced HCI Design Methods
- ICS 668 Social Informatics (also used for the Social Informatics area)
- LIS 677 Human Dimension in Information Systems
Occasionally a relevant ICS 491 or 691 is offered: ask in advance whether
it will count! For example, these courses may be used to meet the requirement:
Faculty
- Martha Crosby (uh email crosby): adaptive user interfaces based on human physiological and eye tracking data
- Rich Gazan (uh email gazan): interdisciplinary collaboration, social computing environments, integration of diverse types of knowledge
- Curtis Ikehara (uh email cikehara): biometrics, human-computer interaction, robotics
- Diane Nahl (uh email nahl): information technology literacy, Affective-Cognitive taxomony of search behavior
- Scott Robertson (uh email scottpr): human-computer interaction, digital government, digital democracy
- Dan Suthers (uh email suthers): representational affordances, computer-supported collaborative learning, online communities
As of fall 2010 the exam committee consists of Ikehara (chair), Gazan, Robertson and Suthers.
Pau