UMSI offers four new courses for fall 2022

The field of information is ever changing. With new interests and technologies emerging, the University of Michigan School of Information is ensuring students graduate with knowledge that is both relevant and forward looking. 

This is why UMSI is adding four classes in special interest topics for graduate and undergraduate students. New on the list includes courses on UX research at scale, automotive UX, how to change the internet, and privacy and surveillance. 

Lecturer James Rampton will be teaching automotive UX. The course is available to undergraduates. Rampton brings years of experience as a lead product designer at General Motors. 

“The vehicle is becoming a new frontier of digital design,” Rampton says. “A car has specific requirements and specific psychological principles that need to be considered for design, so this class will explore some of those principles.” 

Rampton describes the class as a “crash course” on how information is organized in vehicles. Students will consider safety, usability, audience and ethics. 

Vehicles, depending on their purpose, have different UX needs they need to serve, he says. 

“If you’re designing for a truck driver, they love gauges that give feedback on the health of the vehicle because they’re sometimes carrying expensive material,” he says. “If it's an autonomous vehicle, you could watch a movie. If you’re just cruising down Sunset Boulevard, you may want some cool audio graphics showing your album cover.” 

Rampton is hoping to inspire students through his love of automotive design while helping them consider ethical concerns and safety. He says he loves working at General Motors and seeing his products come to life. 

“Seeing people’s reactions when they start using the product, testing it and trying to figure out how everything works is really, really fun for me,” he says. “You also get a little bit of a high every time you see your products go commercial.”

Cliff Lampe, professor of information at UMSI, says the new course emerged after the school noticed a significant percentage of graduating students entering the automotive industry. 

“I think it’s a great offering for our undergraduate program,” he says. “We think it’s beneficial to gain knowledge in a specific industry.” 

Also new for the undergraduate roster is a class on privacy and surveillance, taught by Sol Bermann, executive director of information assurance and chief information security officer at U-M and clinical assistant professor at UMSI. 

On the graduate level, two new courses are available: UX research at scale and how to change the internet. 

UX research at scale will be taught by intermittent lecturer in information Lija Hogan. The course will provide students with a framework for developing and executing research programming to understand user needs and evaluate products and services in enterprise settings. 

How to change the internet will be taught by adjunct lecturer in information and research investigator Nathaniel Borenstein. Borenstein has been involved in building the internet since 1980. He brings copious amounts of history on how the internet has changed and developed through the years and was involved in the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), which later became the technical foundation for the internet. 

Borenstein says students can look forward to exploring issues of democracy, free speech, false information and influence in the course. He’s hoping to inspire students to feel empowered to help change the internet for the better within corporations, government structures and as individual citizens. 

“I lived through an era when the internet was very undefined,” he says. “It could have become a number of different things. I fear that people growing up today think of the internet as a given and that it has to be the way it is, that there's no changing it. And in fact, that's just not true.” 

All four courses are currently available for students to enroll. Interested students should visit Wolverine Access or speak to an adviser to see if they fit into their educational path. 

Learn more:

Automotive UX: SI 311-150 

Privacy and surveillance: SI 311-149

UX research at scale: SI 467

How to change the internet: SI 512

Full names and course numbers are available through the course guide on Wolverine Access.