So after day two, my class schedule is starting to settle down. I'm really excited about several of my classes, and I'm still on pins and needles and will be until everything's finalized.First off we have the core classes for the HCI Masters students this semester:

Intro to HCI Methods - Dealing with all the old standbys of contextual inquiry, task analysis, heuristic evaluation, and the like, only unlike my classes at Berkeley, this time we'll actually be going through the gruntwork of GOMS instead of just reading about it. (Briefly, GOMS is a 'hard math' way of doing usability analysis. Basically you assume an expert user and calculate exactly how much work, (time and cognitive effort) has to go in to accomplishing each of a suite of common tasks.) GOMS is interesting because it ignores the personal side of things, the enjoyment factor or the learning curve, but it's really valuable for those expert systems where people will be performing repetitive tasks, or will be highly trained in the tool. The class will also contain a good-sized usability project for a group on campus (25 of us are split into 6 groups, each assigned to a different campus computing effort in need of interface design or refinement). More to come soon on that front.

HCI Pro Seminar - Each week we'll have a distinguished speaker in the field come to talk to us on Wednesdays, followed by school-sponsored pizza. This time the class is so large that we'll probably trade off half-and-half for pizza chats, but we'll all get to glean the wisdom of visiting and local experts.

CDF - or Communication Design Fundamentals, is the class I'm taking because I didn't have a formal design background. This year it looks to be principly about typography, which suits me fine. As a bonus, we'll be doing all our work in Adobe InDesign, which I've been meaning to pick up for a while anyhow. I just know this class is going to make me frustrated with the web. I love typefaces almost as much as I dislike using gifs and jpegs on sites just to render specific typefaces. I'm considering putting up the occasional post in PDF, just so I can really run free with the design. As an added bonus, google will index it just the same.

Intro to Computers in Music - One of my two 'wow' classes, this is the first time Roger Dannenberg has taught this class in over five years. Prof. Dannenberg is famous (if you're into music and sound synthesis) for his work in creating Nyquist, the powerful programmatic sound-synthesis tool (open source, multi-platform, and using LISP for scripting no less! I swear I thought I'd never again use LISP after taking my AI class). Filled with CS and Music students (though more of the former), the class's final project is a choice between a ~10-minute original composition or an extension of Nyquist, to be incorporated into the package. Actually, the parameters are more broad, and those are just highly-suggested routes to realizing the final project, but I find it *really* intriguing, especially in light of my interests in realtime use of sound for ambient interfaces.

Interactive Programming - Okay, so I'm not in this class yet, but I'm really hoping (yes, this is the other 'wow' class). Led by Pamela Jennings, this class helps artists (formal or otherwise) realize their inspirations in interactive art, primarily through director and flash, relying heavily on advanced scripting in Lingo and Actionscript, respectively. Now, y'all know how interested I am in art- and computer-mediated communications (AOLiza, Randompixel (Cameo), War, Yahoo Messenger, et al). What I've always wanted is a good foundation in richer tools, because coding in javascript, perl, and html will only take you so far. Anyhow, the class is impacted, and there are about 10 of us HCI masters students and others vieing for maybe 4 remaining spots in the class. I consider this a once in a lifetime opportunity, and I think it would only be even better taking it at the same time as Prof. Dannenberg's computers in music class. I'd love to be able to share the projects with you. Here's crossing all my fingers!

As always, I'll keep y'all posted. The weather's finally cooling off in Pittsburgh, and things are finally settling down. Envy goes out to all those who have TV and could watch American Idol tonight. I've officially been TV-less for a month now, restricted to a diet of DVDs, but the cable guys' due to come a week from Friday, so my TiVo can feed once more.