Human-Computer Interaction
What you'll learn
- Gain an understanding of the field of HCI, its history, its theory and its applications.
- Understand the guides and rules of HCI, as well as the laws and tools of UX.
- Identify the cognitive science principles and design theory which underline good visual design.
- To talk with confidence about the field of human-computer interaction.
Requirements
- No experience needed. You already have some of the skills as HCI has no core competencies and borrows from lots of other disciplines.
- An interest in how we shape technology and it shapes us.
- A desire to learn some of the history, tools and, techniques of interaction design (IxD) and user experience (UX).
- A willingness to 'think' on paper even though we are dealing with technological design.
Description
In this course you will learn all about the field of human-computer interaction as you journey through:
* History: Learn how and why the terms human-computer interaction (HCI), interaction design (IxD), and user experience (UX) came into common parlance.
* Computer I/O. You will consider the pros and cons of the input and output of computers from barcodes to touch screens.
* Human I/O: Your will learn about your users' mind with cognitive science so that you can better understand how to manage their expectations and meet their needs.
* Design theory: You will learn about familiar yet old concepts such as: 'Form Follows Function' (think cutlery) and 'No Function in Structure' (think Pinterest) along with the more buzzy: 'The Medium is the Message' (think marketing) which are so important in the visuals aspects of your system.
* Designing Interaction: You will learn why the desktop metaphor is as useful as it is annoying, some classic HCI techniques: Task Analysis and GOMS, and you will understand different classifications of interaction types.
* Knowing your user: You will learn some tools to capture and then summarise the users for whom you are designing.
* Defining your data: Garbage in means garbage out, so we need to be clear on what data we need, where it comes from and how we are going to use it.
* HCI Guides and Rules: You will learn all the jargon: 'Affordances' (does the design give me a clue as to how it works?), 'Mimicry' & 'Transference' (which do exactly what they say), 'Internal Locus of Control' (empowering your user) and 'Recognition over Recall'' (a concept made famous by the first graphical user interface at Xerox Parc) and pull them altogether for your own set of rules.
*UX laws and tools: You will pull together all the UX laws and tools to support your HCI guides and rules so that you can create your own framework from which to design.
*Designing your design: Here you will step through everything you have learnt so far to create a design.
*Evaluation: You will understand the different way of how to evaluate your design and create a UX strategy.
* Social media: You will learn to consider social media from the perspective of data collection, game theory, social psychology to see if your design could use social media data.
By the end of the course, you will have all the skills you need to design a mobile app or website and then think about ways to extend this using social media and big data.
Finally, you will be able speak with confidence about the interaction between people and the increasingly complex computer systems our modern culture demands, thus becoming an agent for change, yourself.
Last Course Update 13/9/2024
Who this course is for:
- Students who wish to learn exactly what human-computer interaction is and why it is so important today.
- Students who want to acquire some practical UX skills underpinned by HCI theory.
- Students who wish to understand cognitive science and social psychology so that it is easier to design better software and also to see why technology has become so pervasive.
Instructor
- 4.1 Instructor Rating
- 189 Reviews
- 1,076 Students
- 1 Course
Ruth Stalker-Firth, PhD (EPFL), began lecturing human-computer interaction (HCI) back in 2001 and alongside teaching has worked as a web designer, UX consultant and programmer for various companies.
On her website she blogs about all things technology and storytelling which gets over 1.2 million hits a year, and gives talks about AI and women in computing to organisations such as the Women's Institute and Vox Feminarum. She is fascinated by how people use technology and vice-versa, and believes that good human-computer interaction is the key to making us all happier with our computers, so that we can use them to solve the problems that will make life better for everyone.