CS 410/510 Top: Introduction to HCI
Credit Hours:
4/3
Course Coordinator:
Not currently offered
Course Description:
This course will introduce you to the fundamental principles of human-computer interaction (HCI). This course will cover a brief history of HCI, and will expose you to a variety of user research and design techniques through hands-on engagement with a creative interaction design process. The course will also introduce you to some open questions and challenges in current HCI research. No prior programming experience is necessary to succeed in this course.
Goals:
Upon the successful completion of this class, students will be able to:
- Know why, when, and how to engage stakeholders in an iterative human-centered design process.
- Use fundamental HCI principles (e.g., affordances, constraints, Fitt's law) to improve the design of computer systems.
- Conduct human-centered research techniques such as interviewing, observations, and cultural probes to better understand stakeholder needs.
- Use techniques such as storyboarding, user stories, and personas to synthesize research and incorporate findings into a design process.
- Use sketching to capture, envision, and critique design ideas.
- Develop a low-fidelity prototype suitable for basic user evaluation, and perform some basic types of evaluation.
- Identify some of the current research areas and open questions within HCI.
- Ask questions about how computer systems influence human experience, and recognize the value of human-centered design practices for computer systems development.
Major Topics:
- Week 1: Course Overview & HCI History
- Week 2: HCI Fundamentals
- Week 3: Observations & Ethnography
- Week 4: Interviews & Contextual Inquiry
- Week 5: Cultural Probes & Collage
- Week 6: Making Sense of Data
- Week 7: Brainstorming & Ideation
- Week 8: Storyboarding
- Week 9: Prototyping & Evaluation
- Week 10: Future Trends in HCI