The Information Science Colloquium series welcomes Kyle Harms, a PhD candidate in the department of Computer Science and Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Harms' primary interest in research is to provide mentoring opportunities to undergraduate students. He is currently researching methods to support independent learning of programming concepts for middle school kids.

Title: An Introduction to Understandable and Usable User Interfaces

Abstract: Have you ever downloaded an app, only to realize that you have no idea what to do? Examples of bad user interface design are all around us and can severely limit a software program's success. Fortunately, there are several straightforward design principles that can readily help us improve the usability of our software. In this 50 minute lecture, we will briefly explore using four characteristics for designing effective user interfaces.