After this course the student understands the key principles of human-centered design process and is able to conduct a full human-centered research and design process in practice. The student can apply the methods in different types of design processes and application areas. The student has enough experience to take responsibility of a small design project. The student can analyze and model different types of user research data from various sources, and identify the most relevant user-related aspects that affect the design of ICT.

This course can be taken during B.Sc or M.Sc. studies.

You can not take HTIS85 Methods in Human-Centered Design if you have done:

• TIEVA38 Graphical User Interface Design Project, 
• TIEVA30 Käytettävyystyön menetelmät - Graafisen käyttöliittymän suunnittelun työkurssi (8 op) or
• TIEVS69 Human-Centered Design Project (TUT/TIE-41406).

Preceding studies

Some basic course in HCI (compulsory), e.g.

• Principles of Usability, User Experience and User Interfaces, or User Experience: Design and Evaluation;
• User Interface Design or corresponding course;
• Usability Evaluation Methods (compulsory, can be taken during same academic year).

Contents

The most common human-centered design (HCD) methods are learned both in theory and practice. The methods are introduced and discussed in the weekly meetings and learned in practice during the course work in small design projects.

The student will learn the most common HCD methods and techniques, including techniques for gathering, modeling and analyzing user research data, methods for specifying and designing products and services, and principles of interaction and interface design, and prototyping. These include, among others, observation, interviewing, consolidating models for interaction, artifacts, physical and cultural models, affinity diagrams, personas, scenarios, sketching, storyboarding, wireframes, design patterns, interactive UI mock-ups etc.