CIS 454/528 Productivity and Accessibility of Information Systems

Teacher: Adam Reed, EE, PhD, CTT (areed2@calstatela.edu)
Office Hours: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 4:45 to 6:00 PM, Room ST-616

Course Description:

An IS manager is expected to contribute to the productivity of the enterprise, and to make information accessible as needed. This course teaches the concepts and techniques for measuring productivity; evaluating accessibility; and optimizing the selection, acquisition, modification, configuration and deployment of information systems for productivity and accessibility.

Time demands:

This course requires, in addition to 4 hours of lab/lecture per week, between 8 and 16 hours per week in independent study and practice. Students with prior user interface experience will need about 8 hours per week in addition to class; students without prior user interface experience may need up to 16 hours per week in addition to class time.

Web Resources:

This page: http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/areed2/528prod.html

Books:

Donald A. Norman: The Design of Everyday Things.
Jim Thatcher et al: Web Accessibility.

Tentative Schedule of Lessons:

  1. Introduction; Measuring Productivity: User Time and Loaded Salary.
  2. User-Centered Design I. Norman, chs. 1-4.
  3. User-Centered Design II. Norman, chs. 5-7.
  4. Lab: Mirroring a website; Thatcher et al through Chapter 2.
  5. Thatcher et al through Chapter 5.
  6. Thatcher et al through Chapter 8.
  7. Thatcher et al through Chapter 11.
  8. Thatcher et al through Chapter 14.
  9. Rest of Thatcher et al.
  10. Student Project Presentations.

Grading:

The primary grading inputs are class participation, written input (e-mailed to areed2@calstatela.edu) and the course project. Since this is a graduate course, grades will be A, A-, B+, B, B-, and F. I will raise to an A or A- the grade of any student from whom I learn, by way of class participation or project, a new concept, insight, or technique. Concrete information about programs or bugs may also raise your grade somewhat, if it is useful and perceptive.

Project:

The course project is to optimize one web page (and its associated files) from an existing organizational web site, web-based service or application, or a web design tool or template, for productivity and accessibility. The site should have a work-related, education-related or public-information function; advertising, entertainment and vanity sites don't qualify. The scope of your project should be sufficient to demonstrate your mastery of the content of this course, and small enough for you to do a thorough job in the available time.

Please check with me by e-mail (and not later than the 4th week of the course) when you have selected the site you will work on - and include the URL. Your eventual presentation must make a convincing business case for the enhancements you implemented.

To mirror and work with your selected web page, please follow the following instructions. Below,

"webpage" is the name (letters and numbers only) that you have chosen for the web page that you are working with.

"winlogin" is the name of the parent folder of your "My Documents" folder in Windows. To find out what it is, search for your webpage after you have saved it in "My Documents" (below) and select "open containing folder" from its right-button menu.

"nislogin" is the name of your NIS login.

On a Windows PC with Cygwin, perform the following steps:

If there are any copies of the web_page that you have chosen in your "My Documents" folder, delete those copies and the associated files folder (webpage.htm and webpage_files).

Then open Internet Explorer and go to the page that you wish to mirror. From the File menu, select "Save As...". In the "Save Webpage" pop-up, change the filename to one with letters and numbers only - no spaces or other special characters. In "Save as type:" select "Webpage, complete (*.htm,*.html)". Then click on "Save."

If you have not done so already, start the X Server and open an Xterm. Then type the following commands:

cd /cygdrive/c/Doc*/"winlogin"/*Doc*

(You may omit the quotes around "winlogin" if it contains letters and numbers only - no spaces etc. You should now be in your "My Documents" folder - you can use the "pwd" command to check.)

zip webpage.zip webpage.htm webpage_files

sftp nislogin@shremotesun16.calstatela.edu

(give your NIS password, then in sftp:)

put webpage.zip

quit

(back in cygwin:)

ssh nislogin@shremotesun16.calstatela.edu

(give your NIS password, then on shremotesun16:)

cd pub*/a*/o*

unzip -r ~/webpage.zip

chmod a+rx * */*

exit

This completes the archiving of the original version of your webpage to shremote. Open

http://shremotesun15.calstatela.edu/~nisname/accessibility/original/

in a web browser, whence you can check that that the original version has been archived correctly.

You can now work with the files in "My Documents" and "webpage_files" to make the webpage accessible. The files that you need to work with may be edited with xvim, wordpad, or any other text-file editor. Save your work as you go, checking it by opening webpage.htm in lynx and other browsers. Periodically upload your work to the shremote suns by re-executing the zip command in "My Documents" (see above) followed by sftp and ssh, changing

cd pub*/a*/o*

on shremotesun15 to

cd pub*/a*/w*

Participation:

Questions from which students may benefit will be answered in class. I will not answer individual questions during breaks or after class. If you wish to discuss something during office hours, please send me e-mail at least a day in advance; if the answer to your question may be of general interest I will discuss it in class. Questions and insights during class are encouraged; if I learn something new to me from your question I may raise your grade accordingly.

Study Partners:

You are expected to select a study partner among your colleagues in the class (or two study partners, so that you will meet in a group of three). You will exchange telephone numbers and e-mail addresses among partners, and meet with your parner or partners each week to review your understanding of current course content. Please make sure to bring to class any issues that come up in reviewing matters with your study partner. If you miss any class work you are responsible for obtaining your study partner's notes and recollections, and for asking whatever questions you find necessary to fill out your understanding. As soon as you have begun work on your projects, you and your study partner should begin testing and giving each other feedback on your work.