CS374: Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

Designing useful and usable user interfaces is much more than designing fancy and beautiful things. This course introduces fundamental principles, techniques, and methods for designing, prototyping, and evaluating user interfaces. Through this course, you’ll master the skills to design useful and usable interfaces that are carefully catered to users’ needs.

Changes from previous years: Starting in 2022, this course now has much less emphasis on web implementation and focuses more on the design process. Final projects will not be required a full web implementation and instead will be asked to submit a Figma prototype. A reduced course load is expected.

This is a highly interactive class: you’ll be expected to actively participate in activities, projects, assignments, design critiques, and discussions. There will be no lectures or exams. Major course activities include:

• Design Project: Following a user-centered design process, you’ll build an interactive prototype through a semester-long team project.
• Studios: Each week, you’ll share your team’s design progress in a studio session and exchange peer feedback.
• In-class Activities: Each class will feature activities that will help you experience and practice the core concepts introduced in the course. You’ll also get a chance to design your own activity that best captures the topic of a class.
• Programming Assignments: In a series of web programming assignments, you’ll learn to add interactivity to a web interface.