Human-Computer Interaction

What you will learn

• The fundamental guidelines and heuristics of user interface design to inform the creation of strong user interfaces, from major principles like discoverability and affordances to frameworks like distributed cognition and task analysis.
• The stages of the design life cycle, including needfinding and requirements gathering; individual and group brainstorming; low- to high-fidelity prototyping; and qualitative, quantitative, and heuristic evaluation of human-computer interfaces.
• The power of human-computer interaction in the modern world and the role it can play in promoting equity, accessibility, and progress.
• The application of modern development frameworks and theories like the Agile Method, Universal Design, Activity Theory, and Value-Sensitive Design to the creation of computational interfaces.
• The state of the art in HCI, including emerging technologies like virtual reality, augmented reality, and wearable devices; new ideas like context-sensitive interfaces and social computing; and application areas like healthcare and cybersecurity.
• User Experience (UX) Designer was the #1 in-demand job for 2018 according to the Onward Search Digital, Creative and Marketing Professionals Salary Guide.
• Robert Half projects a mid-career salary of $93,500 for UX designers.
• According to AIGA, user experience design is also a top area for freelancers and contractors. UX design contractors are expected to have high retention rates due to strong competition.
• According to AIGA, UX design and UI design are among the top technical skills creative professionals would like to develop.
• According to Fortune, Human-Computer Interaction is one of the top post-graduate pursuits for job prospects due to high satisfaction, low stress, high job growth, and a high median salary.

Program Overview

Learn the fundamentals of Human Computer Interaction in this four-course certificate.

This course begins with an introduction to the field of Human-Computer Interaction as a whole and where it sits in the context of related and similar fields like Human Factors Engineering and User Experience Design. Here, you’ll learn just enough of the history of HCI to get started having real conversations about the field.

Then, you’ll learn the fundamental design principles of human-computer interaction. You’ll start with the fundamental feedback cycle that underlies all interactions between users and interfaces. With that in mind, you’ll then learn the design principles developed by visionaries in the field like Don Norman, Jakob Nielsen, Larry Constantine, and Lucy Lockwood. From there, you’ll move into more advanced theories of HCI, including situated action and distributed cognition, then conclude by looking at how interface design can impact social change.

After you’ve learned the fundamental principles and theories of HCI, you’ll move onto the design life cycle. The design life cycle covers how you iteratively gather requirements, brainstorm alternatives, prototype interfaces, and gather user feedback quickly to make fast progress in designing and improving user interfaces. You’ll cover the basics of how to develop a good survey, conduct an informative interview, and control for bias throughout your needfinding processes. You’ll then learn about running effective brainstorming sessions, and then prototyping at the just-right level of fidelity for your current confidence in your designs. Finally, you’ll learn how to evaluate those prototypes with real users, gathering their feedback for a new run through the design life cycle.

After that, we’ll briefly look at the current state of human-computer interaction, focusing on three areas: technologies like virtual and augmented reality, ideas like gesture- or touch-based interaction, and application areas like healthcare and security. In this exploration, we’ll rely heavily on cutting-edge papers and publications from the ever-changing field of HCI.

Then finally, we’ll recap the entire course contents, and tell you what to do next to further your HCI education: whether it’s pursuing a Master’s or PhD in the field, taking follow-up MOOCs, or beginning your own HCI research career.

The material in this course is borrowed from Georgia Tech’s CS6750: Human-Computer Interaction, part of its online Master of Science in Computer Science program. You’ll watch the exact same lectures as students in the for-credit program.

Courses in this program

Human-Computer Interaction I: Fundamentals & Design Principles

Learn the principles of Human-Computer Interaction to create intuitive, usable interfaces, with established design principles like feedback cycles, direct manipulation, affordances, signifiers, and more.

Human-Computer Interaction II: Cognition, Context & Culture

Get into the user’s mind and understand the role of mental models and representations, then investigate how to design interfaces that integrate with and influence the world around us.

Human-Computer Interaction III: Ethics, Needfinding & Prototyping

Build on your knowledge of HCI’s core principles by learning to design interfaces in the real world. Begin with the ethics of human subjects research, then learn critical methods for requirements gathering and brainstorming design alternatives.

Human-Computer Interaction IV: Evaluation, Agile Methods & Beyond

Complete your understand of the design life cycle by learning to take interface ideas, prototype them quickly, and evaluate them with real users. Finally, tie principles and methods together and learn the next steps you could take in HCI.

Job Outlook