Why are there two sections of this course?

Since this course is project-intensive, it is desirable to break up into smaller sections for design presentations and critiques. Both sections often meet together, and will cover the same material.

Which section should I sign up for?

If you have previously taken a course with either Scott or Bill, it would be good to sign up for the section of the other (Scott will lead section 1, Bill will lead section 2). If you'd like to partner with someone on projects, you both should sign up for the same section.

What applications will we learn in this course?
Do we need to know how to program?

The point of this class is to learn interaction design. In the course of gaining experience in design, you will pick up some practicible skills in observation, sketching, prototyping, demonstrating and building. This quarter we will be using d.tools to do physical prototyping of interactive devices; as such, we will be using Java and the Eclipse IDE. Visual prototyping may be done in Flash, Visual Basic, Java, Powerpoint, Dynamic HTML or any other language you may be familiar with. It is not necessary to know how to program to start this course, but you should allot extra time for learning how to program this quarter.

Please feel free to e-mail us at cs247@cs if you have additional questions not answered here.