Ernesto
Fall Term 2000-2001
Class: 4.208 User Interface Design
Studio for Homes of the Future
Instructor: Stephen Intille, intille@mit.edu
Description:
This course explores design issues for computational and physical interfaces. Participants will solvea
series of progressively more challenging design exercises as they work in small multi-disciplinary teams to design and
implement a working device that facilitates interaction between people and a "home of the future." Participants will learn how
to evaluate their ideas using traditional interface design usability criteria but also with respect to capabilities of new and
forthcoming digital technologies. Student projects will be tested with a group of "typical potential
users" who will occasionally visit the classroom. This course is a multi-disciplinary workshop designed to facilitate
collaboration between students from architecture, computer science, and engineering.
Class: MAS.965 Out of Context
Instructor/s: Ted Selker, Henry Lieberman {selker,lieber}@media.mit.edu
Description: Increasingly, we are realizing that to make computer systems more intelligent and responsive to users, we
will have to make them more sensitive to context. Traditional hardware and software design overlooks context because it
conceptualizes systems as input-output functions. Systems take input explicitly given to them by a human, act upon that input
alone and produce explicit output. But this view is too restrictive. Smart computers, intelligent agent software, and digital
devices of the future will also have to operate on data that they observe or gather for themselves. They may have to sense
their environment, decide which aspects of a situation are really important, and infer the user's intention from concrete
actions. The system's actions may be dependent on time, place, or the history of interaction. In other words, dependent upon
context.
Class: MAS.910 Research in Media Technology
Instructor: Stephen Benton
Description:
For research assistants in Media Arts and Sciences, where the assigned research is approved for academic credit by the
Department.
January Term 2000-2001
Class: 21W.794
Graduate Technical Writing Workshop
Instructor/s: David Custer
custer@athena.mit.edu
Description: The "Graduate Technical Writing Workshop" is an overview course in technical communication, offered
expressly to graduate students. This series of three seminars focuses on writing problems faced by the professional engineer
or scientist. Workshop participants tune up their writing skills and prepare a technical document under the guidance of the
instructor.
Spring Term 2000-2001
Class: MAS.814 Digital Hard Copy
Instructor/s: V. Michael Bove, Jr.
vmb@media.mit.edu
An examination of technologies associated with hard copy and still images. Topics to be covered include printing processes,
electronic displays, halftoning, digital typography, two-dimensional image processing, color, psychophysics, the human visual
system, and image compression. Final project with both written and oral presentation required. A reasonable facility with
mathematics is assumed.
Class: MAS.910 Research in Media Technology
Instructor/s: S. Benton
Description:
For research assistants in Media Arts and Sciences, where the assigned research is approved for academic credit by the
Department.
Class: MAS.962 A Dialogue of the Senses
Instructor/s: Sile O' Modhrain sile@media.mit.edu
Description:
Class: MAS.967 Sensor Technologies for Interactive
Environments
Instructor/s: Dr. Joseph Paradiso joep@media.mit.edu
Description:
This class will explore sensor technologies for smart environments and
interactive applications; giving students a broad introduction to state-of-the-art
techniques, exposure to current research, and practical experience that will assist
in developing and fielding such systems in their own work. We will introduce
the principles and operation of many sensor families and discuss applications in
computer-human interfaces, new musical instruments, medicine, environmental
sensing, ubiquitous computing, and other current areas of interest.
