The Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) is a department within the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is considered one of the leading centers of human-computer interaction research, and was named one of the top ten most innovative schools in information technology by Computer World in 2008. For the past three decades, the institute has been the predominant publishing force at leading HCI venues, most notably ACM CHI, where it regularly contributes more than 10% of the papers. Research at the institute aims to understand and create technology that harmonizes with and improves human capabilities by integrating aspects of computer science, design, social science, and learning science.
HCII offers Human Computer Interaction (HCI) as an additional major for undergraduates, as well as a master's degree and PhDs in HCI. Students from various academic backgrounds come together from around the world to participate in this program. Students hold undergraduate degrees in psychology, design, and computer science, as well as many others. Students enter the program at various stages in their academic and professional careers. HCII research and educational programs span a full cycle of knowledge creation. The cycle includes research on how people work, play, and communicate within groups, organizations, and social structures. It includes the design, creation, and evaluation of technologies and tools to support human and social activities.
Video Human-Computer Interaction Institute
History
The idea for a Human-Computer Interaction Institute can be traced back to 1967, with the founding of the computer science program at CMU. Founders Allen Newell, Herbert A. Simon, and Alan J. Perlis believed that the new discipline of computer science should include the study of phenomena surrounding computers, not just the theory and design of computation devices themselves. In 1985, Bonnie John opened the first user study laboratories for faculty and student use, and the department was officially established in 1993 when John offered the first CMU course in human-computer interaction. The HCI Masters program began in 1995, the undergraduate major began in 1997 and the doctoral program, the first in the United States to offer a Ph.D. in HCI, began in 2000.
Maps Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Academics
The HCII department at CMU offers multidisciplinary undergraduate and graduate educational programs that emphasize technology for the benefit of people and society. With membership from Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, the College of Fine Arts, the Tepper School of Business, the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Robotics Institute, and the Software Engineering Institute, the HCII is one of the few institutions in the country with the breadth of expertise to offer such programs.
Undergraduate Program
The undergraduate major in HCI offered by the department is available only as a second major. The program is devoted to the design, implementation, and evaluation of interactive computer-based technology. This includes products such as intelligent computer tutors, wearable computers, and highly interactive web sites. The Human-Computer Interaction Institute also offers an undergraduate minor, which only requires two breadth courses (Designing Human-Centered Systems and Interaction Design Overview) as well as four electives.
The undergraduate curriculum concentrates on the three main stages that form the cyclic and iterative process of constructing an HCI product. This includes the design stage which involves studying the principles of human behavior and understanding how human factors and cognitive models should inform design. Students also learn about communication design and understand how implementation constraints should inform design as part of this phase. Next comes the implementation stage where students are taught the principles of computer science. This involves becoming familiar with different programming languages and learning about various algorithms and data structures. Lastly the students learn about the evaluation process which involves usability testing and statistical analysis of the constructed product.
Hence the undergraduate program covers the four topical areas of human behavior, design, implementation and evaluation. The HCII department offers over a hundred elective courses relevant to these areas that are offered by eight different departments in four different colleges at CMU.
HCI undergraduates are expected to complete a capstone project in their final semester of the program. During the project, students work in teams to produce a working prototype of an idea or service for a client. This process requires students to integrate skills learnt from various other courses, including user-centered research, psychology, design and programming. Unlike the MHCI capstone project, the duration of the undergraduate capstone is a single semester and thus takes place at a much faster pace.
The HCI Undergraduate program also offers the possibility for the Accelerated Masters Program in HCI. Eligible students must be finishing their degree in HCI, and begin Masters program the last semester of their senior year, working with a capstone group through the entire year and taking electives. Students can finish their Masters in Human-Computer Interaction in two extra semesters instead of three.
Masters Program
The Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University offers five interdisciplinary master's degree programs: a professional Master of Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) degree, Accelerated Master of Human-Computer Interaction, Masters in Educational Technology and Applied Learning Science (METALS), Master of Human-Centered Data Science (HCDS), and Master of Science in Product Management (MSPM).
The HCII's Masters Program (MHCI) is known by the software and technical industries for its interdisciplinary nature, rigor and deep knowledge in Computer Science, Psychology and Design. It is a two-year master's degree set into a 12-month duration spanning 3 semesters from August to August the following year. Students will need to take seven core classes and five electives to graduate with a Master of Human Computer Interaction. Core classes include Programming for User Interface, User Centered Research and Evaluation, Interactiion Design Studio I and II, HCI Pro Seminar, MHCI project I and II. During their first semester, students learn core knowledge in programming, design, psychology and HCI methods. During their second and third semesters, students are allowed to choose any electives across the University, while they participate in an eight-month substantial industry capstone project with an external client.
The MHCI capstone project course provides students with the unique opportunity to apply all of the skills they obtained from the MHCI program. It provides a "real-life" opportunity, similar to an actual experience in a research, design or development setting. Students will work in groups with 4 to 5 MHCI cohort, and solve a complex real-life problem initiated from clients. Students will work in groups with 4 to 5 MHCI cohort, and solve a complex real-life problem initiated from clients. In previous years, clients included NASA, Bloomberg L.P., Eaton Corporation, Mastercard, PNC Financial Services, and Samsung. Clients represent a full range of industries, from healthcare, education, automotive, financial, government, startup, nonprofit, and others. Historically, the capstone project is divided to research phase in the spring and design in the summer. Starting from 2018, capstone project adopts a new structure: Discover and Conceptual Design in the spring, following Detailed Design and Production in the summer. The idea is to get concepts validated from early stage, collect user data to inform design, and quickly iterate for a mature product in the end.
At the end of the twelve months, students are expected to be able to effectively lead and collaborate in the design and implementation of easy, desirable, and thoughtful software and technical systems. Students are taught to contribute to the multi-disciplinary teams that typically construct software and technical systems and interfaces. Students learn about techniques for building successful user interfaces, design principles that make user interfaces visually clear and appealing, techniques for identifying needs for software and its success, and the people and organizations that will use their systems.
MHCI program admits about 60 students every year. The tuition is about $65,000. To apply for the MHCI program, applicant needs to have a bachelor degree or a equivalent degree. Applicants also need to prepare for a current resume/CV, a personal statement or a statement of purpose, transcripts from previous degrees, 3 letters of recommendation, a portfolio website (optional), and application fee as $100. The deadline of MHCI admission is Jan 15th. People who apply to MHCI in CMU also applies to University of Washington, University of Michigan, Georgia Tech, Indiana University of Bloomington.
Over the past seventeen years, the program has graduated over 700 students. Right out of school, students graduation from the HCI masters program have taken on various roles in technical and software companies. Some of these include: Interaction Designer, Usability Engineer, Design Team Lead, User Researcher, and User Experience Designer.
Alumni from the MHCI program have gone on to become Senior Designers, Technical Directors, Usability and Design Group Leaders, Senior Product or Project Managers and CEOs.
The HCI Institute also used to offer a dual-degree program in collaboration with the University of Madeira launched in the Fall of 2007, but is no longer accepting new students starting the 2017 admissions cycle. The Madeira program is set into a sixteen-month duration divided into three semesters with the inclusion of a summer break in the academic calendar. The students spend the first semester at Carnegie Mellon University and the remaining two at the University of Madeira's Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute. The last class of students in this program graduated in December, 2017.
The Masters in Educational Technology and Applied Learning Science (METALS). METALS is an a one-year (two years for part-time students), interdisciplinary program jointly taught by the Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computer Science and Psychology in Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences. The program is an outgrowth of the extensive research conducted by the National Science Foundation's Science of Learning Center, LearnLab, in which more than 200 researchers produced over 1600 publications and talks. This program aims to train graduate students to become learning engineers who will apply science of learning principles, evidence-based research, and large-scale data analysis to design, create, and improve educational resources and technologies.
- Curriculum: The program integrates fundamental skills with project-based studio classes culminating in a final capstone project. All METALS students are required to take at least five elective courses and six core courses including the final capstone. The final capstone is structured to cover the end-to-end process of a research and development product cycle, while working closely with a corporate sponsor on new ideas or applications that may work with their existing human-to-machine technology. The goal of this 32-week capstone is to give each student two opportunities: the first is to apply all of the skills they obtained from the METALS program, and the second is a "real-life" opportunity, similar to an actual experience in a research, design and development setting.
- Skills: METALS offers students who have a bachelor's or master's degree in psychology, education, computer science, information technology, business, or design the opportunity to improve their training with advanced study in educational technology and applied learning science. METALS students will gain the knowledge, skills, and techniques to develop and evaluate programs in learning settings that range from schools to workplaces, museums to computer-based environments--as well as other formal, informal and non-traditional educational settings. Upon completion of the Masters in Educational Technology and Applied Learning Science, graduates will:
- Be able to design, develop, and implement advanced educational solutions that make use of state-of-the-art technologies and methods such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, language technologies, intelligent tutoring systems, educational data mining, tangible interfaces.
- Understand how these technologies can be applied to engineer and implement innovative and effective educational solutions.
- Understand cognitive and social psychology principles relevant to research-informed instructional design.
- Have skills for instructional and interaction design needed to create solutions that not only enhance learning, but are also desirable.
- Understand the role of and have skills in using psychometric and educational data mining methods in evaluating and improving educational solutions.
- Be able to develop continual improvement programs that employ "in vivo" experiments and educational data mining to reliably identify best practices and opportunities for change.
- Employment: Graduates of the program will take key positions in corporations and private and public universities and schools; they will become designers, developers, and evaluators of educational technologies and learning environments as well as domain experts, learning technology policy-makers, or even chief learning officers. METALS graduates are trained to be: 1)Learning Engineers; 2) Instructional Designers and Evaluators; 3) Curriculum Developers; 4) Project Managers; 5) Educational Data Scientists; 6) Educational Technology Consultants; 7) UX Designers; 8) Entrepreneurs.
Master of Human-Centered Data Science (HCDS) focuses on the human aspects of data science, and looks at techniques applied to web interaction data, educational data, and other human-centered data. This major is in the Masters of Computational Data Science program, which is a collaboration between the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Language Technologies Institute (LTI), and Computer Science departments (CSD).
Master of Science in Product Management (MSPM) aims to educate future product managers to lead the teams that bring new products and services to market. The Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science and Tepper School of Business collaborate on this 12-month, full-time program to give students the knowledge and skills in business, management, technology, and user experience needed to be successful product managers.
The program is designed for early career technical professionals with an undergraduate degree in computer science, computer engineering or software engineering from a top-ranked institution who want to change their career trajectory and become a product manager. Students receive technical education from the HCII in courses ranging from digital service innovation to data science for product managers. Tepper School of Business will supply courses on management topics that include marketing for high-tech product managers, product strategy, and managing people and teams.
The program starts in the Spring semester every year, with the first class enrolled in January, 2018. In the Spring semester, students are required to complete 8 core courses, with topics ranging from business, product management, to data science, covering fundamental knowledges required for product managers in the industry. All students participate in an approved summer internship in product management as part of graduation requirements. These internships are opportunities to help students integrate what they learned in lessons into work, and experience the relationship between theories and practice. Fall semester, which is also the final semester in this program, students will take a capstone course called Project Management Capstone Project. This is a semester-long project course in which student teams will identify and work with an industrial project sponsor to understand unmet consumer or business needs and develop a plan to bring a new product and/or service to market to address those needs.
PhD Program
The Human-Computer Interaction PhD program offered by the HCII department was established in the fall of 2000. The program aims at teaching students how to make computers easy to use, and understanding how computing affects people. Since HCI encompasses aspects both people and technology, the program takes a strongly interdisciplinary approach. The HCII brings scientific and engineering knowledge from computing together with that of the behavioral sciences, such as psychology and the social sciences. Further, in order to produce efficient, effective and pleasing technology, this scientific basis is also combined with the integrative methods of the discipline of design which are directed towards the conception of "total products." Mirroring this diversity, the program encourages applicants from a range of disciplines and fields.
Students accepted to the PhD program participate in the wide-ranging and innovative research programs offered by the Institute. HCI PhD students are given full access to the excellent computational, and laboratory facilities of the School of Computer Science and the HCI Institute, as well as facilities of the Department of Psychology and the School of Design. In addition to wide-ranging research opportunities, students will have the opportunity to explore a rich set of course work and other activities designed to prepare them for a career in HCI research. Requirements for the PhD course of study are designed to accommodate students with a range of backgrounds by providing several different "tracks" of study. Finally, the institute anticipates that all students accepted to the HCI PhD program will be awarded a Graduate Fellowship covering full tuition and a living allowance.
In order to complete a PhD in HCI, candidates are expected to complete requirements in three areas. These include research, course work and teaching.
The PhD program is designed first and foremost to teach students how to carry out original high-quality research in Human-Computer Interaction. The primary requirement in this area is the proposal and defense of a dissertation describing original research. In addition, the program includes a research presentation-skills requirement that requires candidates to present original research to the HCI Institute community in written and oral form in the first two years of study. The program uses an apprenticeship-based approach in which students are teamed with an initial research advisor who guides and monitors the work and research done by the student.
The institute expects that all students will become involved in an HCI research project from the beginning, and continue research work throughout their course of study. The program of study culminates in a dissertation describing original research. Proposal and defense of this dissertation are primary requirements for obtaining a PhD in HCI.
The second area of required study by the PhD program is course work. To accommodate students with a wide range of interests, the program has been structured around three areas of specialization: human sciences, computer science, and design. These areas of specialization each have different specific course requirements. Conducting research requires a firm grounding in the concepts and prior work of a field. Course work requirements are designed to ensure that firm grounding. Course requirements are structured so that they can typically be completed within the first two and a half years of study. However, students are free to schedule their course work in a variety of ways to accommodate their educational needs, and in some cases additional prerequisite course work may be needed.
Lastly students are expected to complete at teaching requirement. The program aims at helping students learn the skills necessary to teach, such as organizing and presenting complex materials clearly, as they are important for all researchers. To help PhD candidates develop these skills, the program requires each student to serve as a teaching assistant for two semesters some time during their program of study.
Faculty and Research Staff
Notable Faculty:
- Jodi Forlizzi is the Charles M. Geschke Director of the HCII Institute. She has been a faculty member with the department since 2000. She specializes interaction design and received a self-defined Ph.D in human computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University in 2007. She has a background of fine arts with a bachelors degree in Illustration from University of the Arts. She is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery's CHI Academy and the Walter Reed Army Medical Center has honored her for excellence in human-robot interaction design research.
- Robert Kraut is a Herbert A. Simon Professor of Human-Computer Interaction. His interests lie with social computing, design, and information technology. In 2016 he received the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science - SCS Allen Newell Research Award for his research on "Designing Online Communities."
- Amy Ogan is an assistant professor at the HCII department with interests in emerging technologies for education. She graduated from Carnegie Mellon two times, first as undergraduate with degrees in Spanish, Computer Science, and Human-Computer Interaction, second with a doctoral degree in Human-Computer Interaction. She is a recipient of the Jacobs Foundation Research Fellowship due to her interest in youth education and development.
Research
The Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) at Carnegie Mellon University has a long history of successful research projects. Carnegie Mellon was one of the first universities to conduct research in "Human-Computer Interaction". The Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) Institute at Carnegie Mellon University was formed in 1994 to foster multidisciplinary research and education in the area of human-computer interaction. Some research topics include user-interface software tools, cognitive models, speech recognition, natural language understanding, computer graphics, gesture recognition, data visualization, intelligent agents, visual interface design, multimedia, computer-supported cooperative work, computer music and drama, intelligent tutors, technical writing, and the organizational and social impact of technology.
Some fields in which notable research is currently being done at the HCII are Learning Technologies, Tools and Technology, Human Assistance, Robotics, Arts and Entertainment, and the Entertainment Media Center (ETC). Some notable research projects in the HCII department are ACT-R by Dr. John Anderson, StepGreen by Jennifer Mankoff, Pebbles by Brad Myers, and the Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutor (PACT).
ACT-R
The ACT-R project is focused on the development of a robust and general cognitive architecture and its application to the modeling of human interaction with complex dynamic simulated environments and the creation of synthetic human-like agents. It is mainly about cognitive architecture: a theory about how human cognition works. On the exterior, ACT-R looks like a programming language; however, its constructs reflect assumptions about human cognition. These assumptions are based on numerous facts derived from psychology experiments. ACT-R has been applied to cognitive psychology, HCI, education, and neuropsychology.
Basilica: Reconfigurable Multi-Party Dialogue Environment
Based on the experiences with designing and engineering multi-party conversational environments such as collaborative learning systems that involve integrating the state of the art in text classification and conversational agent technology, the researchers are developing a framework that facilitates such integration.
Millee
Cellphones applications that enable children in the villages and slums in the developing world to acquire language and literacy in immersive, game-like environments. These applications target localized language learning needs and aim to make literacy resources more accessible to underprivileged children, at times and places that are more convenient than schools. Our design methodology is informed by best practices in commercial language learning packages and the traditional village games that children in the developing world play.
Natural Programming
The goal of the Natural Programming project is to make computer programming more accessible to novice, professional and end-user programmers. Researchers are investigating how people think about interactive behaviors. Using these investigations, we are designing interactive programming tools and languages that are easier to learn and less error-prone.
Stepgreen
StepGreen is an umbrella project that brings research from several disciplines including behavioral science, environmental engineering, and computer science. StepGreen's goal is to understand and address the problems inherent in changing energy consumption behavior. An important goal of the project is to deploy widely, reach critical mass, and study these factors in the field. One way StepGreen plans to accomplish this is by using their website to encourage individuals to reduce their energy consumption by leveraging online social networks.
Pathway: Physics Teaching Web Advisory
The Physics Teaching Web Advisory (Pathway) is creating a proof-of-concept demonstration of a new type of digital library for physics teaching. It brings together several long-standing research projects in digital video libraries, advanced distance learning technologies, and collaboration technologies, and nationally known experts in physics pedagogy and high quality content.
Pebbles
The Pebbles project is exploring how Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), such as the Palm Handheld or a device running the Microsoft Windows CE or Pocket PC operating systems, can be used when they are communicating with a "regular" personal computer (PC), with other PDAs, and with computerized devices such as telephones, radios, microwave ovens and factory equipment.
Pittsburgh Advanced Cognitive Tutor (PACT)
The PACT Center does research in cognitive psychology to create cognitive tutor technology and to create better classroom curricula. The PACT Center uses cognitive tutor technology to create an integrated classroom and computer lab curriculum that supports students' understanding of mathematical and real world concepts. Based on a computational model of thought, cognitive tutors can automatically generate the most sensible solutions to any given problem, follow students step-by-step as they work, and provide individualized feedback and advice. One product of the PACT Center that has been successful is the Cognitive Tutor Algebra. In the fall of 2004, the U.S. Department of Education "What Works Clearinghouse" analyzed research studies on 44 math programs used in grades 6-9. Cognitive Tutor Algebra was one of only two of these programs that both met the high standards of the Clearinghouse and provided quality evidence that students learn more from these programs than from other programs.
References
External links
- Human-Computer Interaction Institute Website
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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