3 credits
Fall 2025 Lecture Upper Division
The goal of this course is to teach students how to design useful and usable interactive systems that address important needs of people. Students will experience the entire user-centered design life cycle, from need finding to usability evaluation. Topics covered in the course include user-centered design principles, usability heuristics, need-finding methods such as semi-structured interviews and contextual inquiry, quick prototyping techniques, usability evaluation methods such as hallway testing and human-subjects user study, and theories about user interaction and decision making. As we are entering a new era of AI, the course will also include a brief introduction on how to apply the HCI principles and techniques to AI-powered systems. This course is project-based. Students will form project teams among themselves to work on a semester-long project and apply the user-centered design principles, theories, and techniques that they have learned in class to build a useful and usable interactive system such as a mobile application. This course is also highly interactive, including a series of design studios and in-class activities that require active participation, communication, and discussion with other students.
Learning Outcomes1Apply user-centered design principles to iteratively develop interface designs to address those needs.
2Develop prototypes to concretize a design idea in different levels of fidelity.
3Critique a design idea or prototype and pinpoint design flaws and usability issues based on commonly agreed upon design principles and usability heuristics.
4Iteratively evaluate and improve upon the prototypes based on feedback from potential users.
5Communicate design ideas and findings to target users, other designers, funders, etc.
6Work in a team and succeed.
Prerequisites
GPA by professor
made by Purdue students.