The user experience is an important design consideration in the development of any product or system. In this course, the foundations of user-centered design and human / computer interaction (HCI) are introduced through team-based projects, in-class activities, and individual work. Students will be introduced to a development lifecycle, from idea generation, requirements gathering, research and benchmarking, project planning and team roles, design development through storyboards and prototyping, usability evaluation through iterative testing.

Students will survey and apply contemporary techniques used in analyzing and modeling information requirements. Requirements will be elicited in a variety of domains and abstracted at conceptual, logical, and physical levels of detail. Process, data, and state modeling will be applied in projects that follow a systems development lifecycle. Object-oriented modeling will be explored and contrasted with data and process oriented modeling. Individual and team modeling assignments will be required.