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Unit of study_
INFO2222: Computing 2 Usability and Security
2025 unit information
This unit provides an integrated treatment of two critical topics for a computing professional: human computer interaction (HCI) and security. The techniques and core ideas of HCI will be studied with a particular focus on examples and case studies related to security. This unit builds the students' awareness of the deep challenges in creating computing systems that can meet people's needs for both HCI and security. It will develop basic skills to evaluate systems for their effectiveness in meeting people's needs within the contexts of their use, building knowledge of common mistakes in systems, and approaches to avoid those mistakes.
Unit details and rules
Managing faculty or University school:
Engineering
| Study level | Undergraduate |
|---|---|
| Academic unit | Computer Science |
| Credit points | 6 |
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Prerequisites:
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(INFO1103 or INFO1105 or INFO1905 or INFO1113) and (INFO1111 or INFO1711 or ENGG1111 or ENGD1000 or ENGG1805) |
|---|---|
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Corequisites:
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None |
| Prohibitions:
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None |
| Assumed knowledge:
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None |
At the completion of this unit, you should be able to:
- LO1. work effectively in a team
- LO2. understand the balance between risk, achieved security, and cost; experience with threat modelling and risk analysis as tools to choose this balance for a given system
- LO3. produce written reports that evaluate a web site for usability and security
- LO4. experience building a prototype interface, and learning aspects of it independently from provided resources
- LO5. knowledge of design guidelines and how to apply them to design user interfaces
- LO6. use iterative prototyping, with design and evaluation cycles, to explore a design space
- LO7. demonstrate knowledge of a core set of cognitive, physiological, organisational, and other key human factors and their implications for interface design
- LO8. demonstrate awareness of the major challenges for designing effective user interfaces, including factors associated with individual users, cultural and organisational contexts
- LO9. evaluate interfaces, following a user-based technique
- LO10. understand common security terminology in security literature
- LO11. understand different ways in which security of computer systems can be compromised, e.g. physically, remotely, operationally (esp. social engineering); and relate specific attack scenarios to the major security goals such as authentication, integrity, secrecy, non-repudiation
- LO12. understand the major challenges for security of programs, information, computers and networks, and ability to avoid most egregious (typical) flaws in designing and operating IT systems
- LO13. demonstrate a high-level knowledge of common approaches to achieve security goals in computer systems (environment control, communications security and OS security, secure operational practices).
Unit availability
This section lists the session, attendance modes and locations the unit is available in. There is a unit outline for each of the unit availabilities, which gives you information about the unit including assessment details and a schedule of weekly activities.
The outline is published 2 weeks before the first day of teaching. You can look at previous outlines for a guide to the details of a unit.
| Session | MoA ? | Location | Outline ? |
|---|---|---|---|
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Semester 1 2025
|
Normal day | Camperdown/Darlington, Sydney |
Outline unavailable
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Modes of attendance (MoA)
This refers to the Mode of attendance (MoA) for the unit as it appears when you’re selecting your units in Sydney Student. Find more information about modes of attendance on our website.
