Welcome to CS-839 Building Interactive Systems!

Course Overview

This course will introduce graduate students in computer science to core topics, methods, and principles related to building systems that interact with people. Students will learn from lectures; reading seminal and state-of-the-art papers on interactive systems; completing in-class and take-home assignments; and engaging a semester-long team project. The course will cover approaches, methods, devices, and algorithms for user sensing, decision making, and system behavior, integrating methods from machine learning, computer vision, robotics, and human-computer interaction. 

The course will integrate three modules: learn + hack+ integrate:

• learn provides students with an overview of each topic through lecture, readings, and multimedia material prior to and during class;
• hack enables students to gain hands-on experience with the topic through a structured group activity, starting in class and resulting in an assignment submission;
• integrate involves student teams to bring components together to design, build, demonstrate, and evaluate an integrated interactive system.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites to taking the class. However, fluency in at least one programming language (e.g., Python, C++); familiarity with machine learning and/or computer vision libraries; and/or experience working with sensors, mobile devices, and other embedded systems is strongly recommended. Students who do not fit this profile must seek permission from the instructor prior to enrollment.

Course Topics

In the first two weeks, the course will define interactive systems and present ways of thinking about interactive systems. Over the course of the following 12 weeks, the course will present a range of system elements that fall under (1) sensing, modeling, and tracking users; (2) decision making; (3) interaction paradigms; and (4) action and representation. The semester will conclude with a discussion of how to evaluate interactive systems and present HCI systems contributions. Below is a map of topics.

Course Resources

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