Almost every thing today is either a computer, or controlled by one (or two or more), which, in turn, is supposed to be controlled by a human. Examples: cell phones, microware ovens, cars, etc.
Yet, every time you (or I) try to get something done we almost always get frustrated, if not outright fail.
Why is it that in Firefox (my favorite browser otherwise) right-click-t = 'open new tab' in the browsing window but 'delete bookmark' in the bookmark management one?
How come that, in order to enter the area code during initial setup of a caller-ID-able phone I need to click one button 9 times instead of hitting the '9' key once (a true story!)? we could continue with many more examples -- you can add your own.
The truth is that Human-Computer Interaction -- in my opinion -- is really not what people care about; what people really care about is Human-Information Interaction! Computers are just the tool, one tool, to accomplish it.
The goal of this course is to first take that more general, higher-level view at our interface with information.
We will study design and analysis theories, analyze existing interfaces -- the good (can you show me one?), the bad, and the ugly (I can show you plenty of those) -- and design our own (only excellent ones).