SIGIA-L Mail Archives: Re: SIGIA-L: user experience curriculum
Re: SIGIA-L: user experience curriculum
From: Victor Lombardi (victorlombardi_at_yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Mar 21 2002 - 10:03:32 EST
It might help to define what you will _not_ teach. Anthropology? Cognitive
Psychology? Courses that are already taught in other departments?
This might focus your task and could be especially useful as you adapt the
curriculum to changing needs over time.
At 3/20/2002 -0500 03:31 PM, jess_at_cognissa.com wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I'm meeting this week with the program coordinator at the local university
>where I teach user-centered web design on a continuing education basis.
>I'll be disussing the creation of a user experience certificate. Right now
>it's all very preliminary, but I've been thinking about the curriculum.
>What works for HCI is still too academic - I'm not able to sell
>"scientist-practitioners" as an outcome for the program. I just need to
>develop "user experience practitioners" who are reasonably well rounded,
>with some advanced courses for specialization if there's demand (say in
>IA, interaction design, or usability evaluation).
>
>Here's the brainstormed course list I've got sitting on my desk right now:
>
>- User experience introduction (background, history, goals of field,
>process, canon, future)
>- Fundamentals of human-computer interaction (basic cognition, Fitts' law,
>goms, hick's law, affordances, etc. Humane Interface meets Design of
>Everyday Things meets Readings in HCI)
>- Information Architecture 1 (content focused - taxonomy, labeling, polar
>bears)
>- Information Architecture 2 (more content - facets, metadata, search,
>information foraging, Claude Shannon)
>- Business requirements & ROI (requirements gathering, business metrics,
>ROI literature, ROI calculations, requirements spec.)
>- User requirements & ROI (participatory design research, field research,
>contextual inquiry, user goals, task analysis, creating requirements spec.)
>- Branding (what is brand, touchpoints, communcations. User & Task
>Analysis for Interface Design + Mike Kuniavsky's book + Andy Dillon's book
>when they're done)
>- Interaction design (goals of interaction design, user flow, work
>processes plus Prototyping Techniques (paper, wizard of oz, scenario
>design, wireframing, Visio, HTML. IDEO + Cooper)
>- Information Design (Tufte. more tufte. Wurman. Other accessible things?
>Cognitive artifacts.)
>- Visual interface design (color theory, typography, visual rhythm, layout)
>- Usability evaluation (heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthrough,
>discount usability testing, formal usability testing, remote testing)
>
>What's missing? What's extra? If you wanted to specialize in say,
>interaction design, what would you hope for after going through the
>basics? For that matter, should all these courses be required? If not,
>what are the required courses, & which are electives? Do you see other
>courses as electives, required, or prerequisites? Potential topics for
>advanced courses?
>
>Typical course lengths in the university's Faculty of Extension
>certificate programs are 2-3 days (16-24 hours, over evenings & weekends).
>Some courses may be longer, some shorter.
>
>My current course follows a "introduce the concept. discuss the theory. do
>a related exercise, often in a group" instructional model. Something I
>think is core is lots of hands-on exercises.
>
>Offering the courses online isn't under discussion at the moment. Some
>topics lend themselves to online learning, and some don't (those that
>don't are particularly courses with group projects doing physical
>prototyping, or usability evaluation with real users).
>
>many thanks for your thoughts on this.
>
>cheers,
>
>Jess
>-----------------
>www.interactionary.com
>
>
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>mail2web - Check your email from the web at
>http://mail2web.com/ .
Victor Lombardi
http://www.noisebetweenstations.com/
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