Human-computer interaction
Undergraduate · CS / Programming
Syllabus focus
Topics typically covered
Standard syllabus
Design process
- Human information processing and mental models
- Needfinding, interviews, and contextual inquiry
- Personas, scenarios, and storyboards
- Low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototyping
- Heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthroughs
Evaluation and interaction
- Usability metrics: effectiveness, efficiency, satisfaction
- User studies: within/between subjects, IRB basics (intro)
- Survey design and qualitative coding (intro)
- Input devices and Fitts's law (intro)
- Accessibility standards (WCAG overview)
Cognition and ethics
- Attention, memory limits, and cognitive load
- Affordances, signifiers, and feedback loops
- Errors: slips vs mistakes and recovery design
- Privacy-respecting user research practices
- Bias in datasets used for personalization
- Designing for trust and transparency
STEM / applied
Building interfaces
- Wireframing tools and design systems
- Implementing prototypes in Figma/HTML/React (survey)
- Mobile vs desktop interaction patterns
- Data visualization for non-expert users
- A/B testing and analytics for UX decisions
Applied HCI
- Voice and conversational UI (intro)
- Inclusive design for disability and cultural context
- Ethics of persuasive and dark patterns
- Field deployments and longitudinal studies (intro)
- Capstone: redesign of a real system with user testing
Studio and measurement
- Running a moderated usability test end-to-end
- Synthesizing findings into prioritized redesigns
- Instrumentation for funnel and task-success metrics
- Design critiques and critique facilitation
- Collaborating with PMs and engineers on constraints
- Capstone: redesign with before/after evaluation evidence
Notes
Mix of reading, design studio, and programming varies. Social science methods may appear in evaluation modules.