Creating Interactive Systems With User-Centered Design

Undergraduate / Graduate

Creating technologies that fit into people's lives involves more than having technically sophisticated algorithms, systems, and infrastructure. It involves deeply understanding various community needs and using this understanding coupled with our knowledge of how people think and behave to design user-facing interfaces that can enhance and augment human capabilities. When dealing with different kinds of users, achieving these goals requires us to think through how different constraints such as costs, access to resources, and various cognitive and physical capabilities shape what socio-technical systems can best address a particular issue. This course leverages human-computer interaction and the tools, techniques, and principles that guide research on people to introduce you to the concepts of user centered design. You will learn about different user groups such as children, older adults, users facing financial constraints as well as those needing assistive technology and their particular needs. In addition, you will learn how to be mindful of working with different types of user populations and how to think creatively of technology solutions that enhance human capabilities while minimizing harm. You will also put your skills into practice in a quarter long group project involving the creation of an interactive system for one of the user populations we study.