• Offered for Year: 2025/26

• Module Leader(s): Professor Dave Kirk
• Lecturer: Dr Caroline Claisse

• Owning School: Computing
• Teaching Location: Newcastle City Campus

Semesters

Your programme is made up of credits, the total differs on programme to programme.

Aims

The discipline of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has been developing, and increasing in importance for more than 40 years. HCI knowledge comes from a large academic and industrial research community and underpins an area of professional practice in the tech sector (often referred to as ‘UX’ for user experience in industry), which explores how interactive digital systems (across all digital platforms) can be designed to be useful, usable and provide users with an engaging user experience.

HCI is a fundamentally cross- and multi-disciplinary field, and over the course of its history various academic disciplines and practices have influenced its approaches to studying people and evaluating how they interact with, understand and use of technology. Equally, it has fundamentally influenced the ways in which we design interactive digital technologies, from command line interfaces, graphical user interfaces (GUIs), through mobile interactions, apps, embedded systems, physical/tangible computing, and on to robotics and AI systems. This module is focused on providing students with a thorough grounding in the development of HCI as a field of study, and its basic principles of human-centred design. Students will learn about the user-centred development lifecycle for digital technologies and will practice and become familiar with the basic skills of requirements elicitation and usability evaluation.

The aims of this module are:

1. To introduce students to the field of Human-Computer Interaction, its key concepts, technologies and
professional practices.
2. To overview the development of HCI as a discipline and the shifts in how the field has conceptualised and
studied Human-Computer Interactions over time.
3. To provide students with knowledge of different HCI methods for understanding users, stakeholders, contexts,
and requirements.
4. To give students practical experience of basic methods for requirements elicitation, interface design and
usability evaluation.

Outline Of Syllabus

Basic topics for the course will likely include:

Intro to module and HCI.
UCD Basics, Framing Concepts and the Context for HCI.
Evolution of interactive technologies.
Understanding Users.
Fieldwork for Design.
Usability Evaluation.
Interface design and prototyping.
Contemporary topics in HCI.
Practical skills for HCI.
UX industry.

Teaching Methods

Teaching Activities

Teaching Rationale And Relationship

As the students will originate from a diverse range of disciplinary backgrounds, the teaching of this module is intended to combine opportunities for introductory reading and learning around the development of Human-Computer Interaction and critical analysis and reflection on how approaches and concepts of human interaction with technology have changed over time.

Students will receive a series of lectures on relevant topics covering the development of the discipline of HCI. They will also be directed to read specific text book chapters and research papers prior to weekly group teaching sessions (held present in person) and will be expected to take an active role in discussing this work. Practical sessions will introduce practical skills for both requirements elicitation and interface testing/usability evaluation.

Students will try out these different methods, collecting user data.

Notes from practical activities will be shared in class viewable blogs and discussion forums on the module’s online learning environment.

At the end of the module, students will be assessed on a a group design project which will showcase the skills they have been developing. Students will engage in class presentations and creative design activities in response to a brief intended to develop their team-work skills. They will also engage in producing a usability report which further encourages the development of professional skills.

Students are expected to spend time studying independently outside of the group teaching sessions. Independent study will be focused around the students identifying further background literature in HCI of relevance to their specific areas of interest and critical reflection on how methods of studying human behaviour relate to technological contexts and issues of import at specific times in HCI history.

Assessment Methods

The format of resits will be determined by the Board of Examiners

Other Assessment

Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment is an assessment which develops your skills in being assessed, allows for you to receive feedback, and prepares you for being assessed. However, it does not count to your final mark.

Assessment Rationale And Relationship

The assessment has one formative and two summative components (equally weighted). The first summative component is an individually marked usability report, using a standardised format to present the results of a usability evaluation. This written report gives practical experience of industry standard reporting formats for these kinds of activities and demonstrates competence in the skills evaluated alongside transferable communication skills.

The second summative assessment is a group project (with a group mark) showcasing students responses to a mini-design brief. This allows them to demonstrate their fieldwork, requirements generation and concept design skills, alongside working in diverse project teams (a critical component of professional practice). The second assessment is delivered through a team presentation, where equal participation is expected

The formative assessment is a design crit, with oral feedback from staff and peer evaluation of developing responses to the design brief.

Reading Lists

• CSC8606's Reading List

Timetable

• Timetable Website: www.ncl.ac.uk/timetable/
• CSC8606's Timetable