This course is required for the Visual Computing and Games Stream.

Prerequisites:  COMP 2001, or the former COMP 2710

Availability: This course is usually offered once per year, in Fall or Winter.

Course Objectives

This course provides exposure to traditional desktop, mobile and games contexts with respect to interaction design theory and practice. The impact of context on design principles is explored. An introduction to each programming context will be provided and a minimal set of software development tools for each context will be introduced. Practical application of interaction design principles will involve design and prototyping of desktop, mobile and games applications.

Representative Workload

• Original Implementation Assignments (3) 60%
• Test and Design Problems (3) 40%

Representative Course Outline

• Introduction to Interaction Design (9 hours)
• Interaction Design goals, guidelines and principles
• Cognate areas of impact: cognitive psychology, graphic design, industrial design, ergonomics, human-computer interaction, media studies, user-interface design
• Design methodology
• Prototyping tools
• Desktop Context (7 hours)
• Desktop design constraints and objectives
• Introduction to a Desktop GUI builder (WindowBuilder/Eclipse)
• GUI component frameworks and systems
• Mobile Context (10 hours)
• Mobile device design constraints and objectives
• Introduction to a Mobile App development suite (Android Studio)
• Mobile App programming
• Games Context (10 hours)
• Games design space and objectives
• Introduction to a game design suite (Unity3D)
• Games programming

Page last updated May 24th 2021