Advancing the Multidisciplinary Nature of Human Computer Interaction in a Newly Developed Undergraduate Course

Human computer interaction is a multidisciplinary field, which often involves the design, implementation and evaluation of interactive systems for human use. Therefore, an ideal designer of these systems would have expertise in a wide variety of topics which include but are not limited to psychology, sociology, ergonomics, computer science and engineering, business, art and graphic design, and technical writing. However, it is impractical to assert that any one designer should have expertise in all these areas. Furthermore, when the concepts of HCI are introduced, the course is typically taught in a computer science department, by a computer science professor, to computer science majors. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of an undergraduate HCI course that is taught from a multidisciplinary perspective to a multidisciplinary audience using themes from the various disciplines that are encompassed within HCI. Suggestions for future changes to the course are also provided.