Two for One: Squeezing Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering into a Core Computer Science Course

Abstract

The final report of the Joint Task Force on Computing Curricula (CC2001) suggests that an updated computer science curricula must reflect the broadening nature of our discipline. Two areas that are included in the CC2001 are software engineering (SE) and human-computer interaction (HCI). While the first inclination might be to incorporate HCI concepts into a traditional SE course, we propose a different approach. This paper outlines a project-oriented HCI course in which we are able to emphasize some SE notions in the context of HCI concepts. Our course is also a maturation class for our students because they are exposed to a number of non-programming computer science activities, including project specification, software and interface design, user testing, prototyping and use of guidelines. We include an overview of course content that illustrates our approach. We also describe our coverage of specific CC2001 knowledge units and provide some feedback data for our course.