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 about:
* The Human: We look at the human through the lense of cognitive science: Perception, memory and psychology so we can manage and guide user expectations when looking at an interface. We then learn how capture information about our users thorugh cultural probes, so that we create user personas, journeys and scenarios, so that we know all about users need and preferences from I/O to operating systems.
* The Computer: We consider different inputs and outputs from barcodes to touch screens with a focus on accuracy and learnability, so we can choose the right one, as we define what data we need, and what the system architecture should look like and how that reflects the mental processing of our user group.
* The Interaction: We learn all of the HCI guides and rules and UX laws and tools and apply them all to creating an effective visual design solution.
*The Evaluation: We explore different ways of measuring whether our design is a success.
By the end of the course, you will have all the skills you need to design a mobile app or website and to 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 18/6/2025
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
- 4.2 Instructor Rating
- 205 Reviews
- 1,138 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 various organisations. 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. (Check out my website for #udemycoupons.)