Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction

The presentation slides on this page cover all the material needed for a university-level introduction to human-computer interaction course in the context of a computer science degree programme. I have created and refined these slides based on guidelines such as “Curricula for Human-Computer Interaction” (ACM SIGCHI) and “Curriculum für ein Basismodul zur Mensch-Computer-Interaktion” (GI, FG SWERGO) as well as a decade of personal experience teaching HCI at universities and colleges across Germany. To benefit other educators and curious learners, I have decided to publish them as an open educational resource under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license (details below).

Note for screen reader users: the slide viewer shown below has to rely on OCR for alternative text. You may find the downloadable formats of the slides to be preferable for readability.

Content and Purpose

You are browsing a set of teaching material (in the form of presentation slide decks) on the topic of human-computer interaction, intended to provide an overview from an academic perspective for a target audience of computer science students. That is to say, these slides introduce relevant psychology and design concepts from scratch, but assume basic familiarity with the principles behind operating and programming computers.

The slide decks are divided into four overarching parts: (I) fundamentals, which are intended to establish a baseline of knowledge required to properly discuss issues around HCI, UX and usability, (II) methods, which detail the usability engineering process from established process models to individual methods for each iteration stage, (III) expertise, exploring other aspects touching the field with which an HCI or UX expert should have at least a cursory familiarity, and (IV) reflection, bookending the course with a critical look at the field itself, how it has changed since its inception, and what ethical responsibilities present themselves to its experts. The slide decks are ordered roughly in the way I teach them as a course, giving students everything they need to start working on their own projects and evaluations halfway through, but there are many sensible ways to reorder the contents of these slides.

I feel it is worth reiterating that these are teaching materials, not a ready-to-consume course. I usually try to make my slides understandable without any accompanying commentary, but if you want to learn about HCI, reading these slides is probably not the most productive way to go about it. They are primarily intended for other HCI educators with relevant background knowledge and experience to incorporate into their own courses in whichever way they deem helpful.

License and Attribution

The full set of presentation slides is published under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. It is an open educational resource that I am publishing with the intent to let you adapt and reuse them as a whole or in part. This isn’t entirely without restrictions though. In particular, the CC BY-SA license requires you to (a) provide the correct attribution for whatever you are reusing, and (b) to apply the same license to any derivative works that you decide to publish. I’ll go over both of these requirements.

The requirement for attribution states that the original author and license must be obvious to consumers of these slides if you are redistributing them (in full or excerpted). The easiest way to accomplish this is by leaving the slide design intact. The footer that is shown on every slide fulfills all attribution requirements. If you would rather remove the standard footer and roll your own attribution, please make sure that you mention my name (Julian Fietkau), the project name “Introduction to HCI”, the version (year) of the slides that you are incorporating, as well as the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. The attribution does not need to appear on every slide – it is completely fine to have one place for attribution and copyright notes at the start or end of your own document as long as it is clear to readers which parts come from me and which do not. Wherever it is technically feasible, I recommend including clickable links to this page and to the license.

The share-alike requirement really only comes into play if you want to republish your adapted version of my slides. For standard classroom use with a closed audience, it doesn’t make a difference. However, if you want to make your adapted slides available to a general audience, regardless of whether for free or commercially, you are required to make them available under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 license, which may have knock-on effects on other external material you want to incorporate. Note also that in many countries, you have a right to perform limited quotation and excerption of third-party material (including my slides) without having to comply with the license, provided you meet any specific other requirements the law may have. In Germany for example, § 60a UrhG allows redistribution of sensible excerpts of any copyrighted material for classroom use.