The specialization in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) is designed to train the professional who is designing and developing technologies that fit the organization and work practices, the work to be done, and the capabilities of the user. The "interface" is broadly construed to include not just the visual/auditory display and interaction dialog, but the situation in its entirety, the group in which this task takes place, and the organizational goals and resources.
Outcome (progress toward goal)
A subcommittee of faculty in this area (J. Olson, G. Olson, G. Furnas, E. Soloway, and D. Kieras, the latter from EECS) met to determine the courses that would train such professionals. Since many of us were already teaching related courses, the main effort of this group was to discover and eliminate overlaps, fill in gaps, and devise a plan to offer these courses in a rational sequence to students.
Implementation (day to day activities)
This is the first entirely new specialty to be offered in the School of Information. We advertised for students as soon as the plans were in place (which was late in the recruiting cycle), and got widespread interest and some applicants. Our plan is to begin to offer these now rationalized and sequenced courses in fall 1996 and simultaneously engage in wider, more targeted advertising for the incoming class of 1997.
Context (what affects progress toward goals, what collaboration is there)
When initially devising this curriculum, we consulted with a number of other schools who were offering similar programs (e.g., Virginia Polytech, Carnegie Mellon, Stanford). We learned from their offerings and experience, and also found out the ways in which our program was unique. Most of the other programs are embedded within a computer science department, giving them a distinct technical bent. Ours, in contrast, has a heavy emphasis on the social sciences (psychology and economics) as well as information storage and retrieval. This program has promise. We will now learn by doing.
Future Plans
We will offer courses beginning next Fall, and evaluate as we go. We need to look closely at our staffing over the next two to four years, encouraging visitors to fill in until we have permanent research staff sufficient to the program.
Dissemination
Like the other specialties, we are happy to share our plans and experiences with others. We plan to present an "Organization Overview" at the next Computer Human Interaction meeting (spring 1997), which should at least get us known. We also plan to list ourselves on the HCI resource page on the Web, a good source for browsers as well as targeted interested people.
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