Interactive Systems

Advanced information and communication technologies make interactive systems ever-present in the users’ private and business life. They are an integral part of smartphones, devices in the smart home, mobility vehicles as well as at the working place in production and administration (e.g. in the form of dashboards).

With the continuous growing capabilities of computers, the design of the interaction between human and computer becomes even more important. The aim of this course is to introduce the foundations, theoretical grounding, key concepts and principles as well as current practice of interactive systems. The contents of the course abstract from the technical implementation details. The students get the necessary knowledge to guide the successful implementation of interactive systems in business and private life.

Content:

• Basics
• Theoretical foundations
• Key concepts and design principles for specific interactive systems classes
• Capstone project

Learning goals:

The students

• know what interactive systems are and how they can be conceptualized
• explore the theoretical grounding of interactive systems leveraging theories from reference disciplines such as psychology
• know key concepts and design principles of specific classes of interactive systems (e.g. assistance, behavior change systems)
• get hands-on experience by analyzing existing interactive systems and suggesting enrichments based on the lecture contents.

The lecture is complemented with a capstone project assignment, where students analyze and review existing interactive systems and suggest areas of improvement / extensions.

The lecture bases to a large extent on

· Benyon, D. (2014). Designing interactive systems: A comprehensive guide to HCI, UX and interaction design (3. ed.). Harlow: Pearson.

Additional literature will be provided in the lecture.