Session S3F Work in Progress - Development of a HCI Course on the Microsoft Surface Aaron Striegel, Dirk Van Bruggen University of Notre Dame,
[email protected],
[email protected] Abstract - With the advent of multi-touch devices, there exist exciting new opportunities for course development in the area of Human Computer Interfacing (HCI). From the most recent set of devices, the Microsoft Surface offers a set of unique capabilities and challenges for teaching a HCI course. The natural trend of the device towards simultaneous interactions with multiple users as well as the ability to recognnize physical objects via byte tags offer fascinating teaching and laboratory experiences. In this paper, we will discuss our experiences in teaching a Surface-oriented course with regards to lecture and laboratory design. We will also offer insight with respect to student performance, student feedback, comparingn those aspects versus efforts with the Nintendo Wiimote with regards to programming difficulty. Finally, we will conclude with Figure 1 - Microsoft Surface (surface.com) suggestions for future course refinement. target audiences. The size, cost, and mechanisms for Index Terms – Microsoft Surface, Human Computer interaction (touch, byte tags, Surface API) represent a Interface, Course Development. sizeable departure from other gesture-based systems. It is these departures and their subsequent impact on a Human INTRODUCTION Computer Interface course that form the basis for this paper. In the past few years, there has been an explosion of portable In this paper, we describe what we believe to be the first of devices capable of responding to multi-touch input. While its kind in offering a course primarily dedicated towards the notion of touch as an interface is certainly not new to the teaching HCI on the Microsoft Surface.