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Vol.28 No.2, April 1996
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This report describes a panel session on HCI Education held at the HCI'95 Conference. During the debate, expert views were expressed about many of the key issues affecting HCI teachers today, including: how can educators cope with the flood of new HCI ideas? should HCI be fully integrated into software engineering courses or taught in specialist modules? what are the core elements of HCI that all students should learn? there are perceived cultural differences in HCI teaching in the UK, USA and Scandinavia -- are these differences real and are they important? should we be sharing educational materials? can HCI design be taught or are creative designers born not bred?
HCI education deserves greater emphasis at conferences than it typically receives. It is not usually recognized as a hot topic. Most people attend HCI conferences because they have particular research interests in the development of the body of knowledge or in its application. While many also teach HCI, this seems to be a secondary interest for them when meeting their professional peers in a conference setting. There is a need to raise the profile of HCI education and training, and an attempt was made to do so at HCI'95. An attempt had also been made at the Interact'95 Conference, earlier in the year. Despite planning a whole stream on papers on HCI Education and Training, the number of papers submitted to Interact'95 on this topic were disappointing, resulting in just one education session, and that was poorly attended. The number of education papers submitted to HCI'95 was also very low, so an alternative approach was sought to promoting interest in educational issues. The approach was to invite a plenary speaker to talk on HCI Education and Training and to follow it up with a lively panel session later the same day. This was successful. As an invited paper, there were no parallel sessions competing for delegates' attention and HCI Education was explicitly recognized as an important issue for the field, deserving consideration by all delegates and not just a specialist minority. A great majority of delegates attended the presentation and the speaker, Jean Gasen, gave a very well received presentation on some of the realities of teaching HCI (Gasen, 1995). She addressed three main problems facing HCI educators: i) scanning and filtering a growing multi-disciplinary domain; ii) extending acquired HCI knowledge into a learning framework; iii) integrating material into existing courses and existing teaching units. None of these problems is trivial in an environment which places educators under increasing pressure to teach swelling numbers of students with increasingly diverse capabilities. And this is in addition to the pressures to do more research. The presentation served to raise the profile of HCI education and training above that of a highly specialized interest of a small minority. It also helped to ensure that the subsequent panel session was the most popular panel at the conference.
The panel was organized by the HCI Education & Training Working Group of the British Computer Society. As well as following up the points raised by Jean Gasen in the plenary presentation, some additional topics were discussed, arising from the working group's work. One of the purposes of the group is to identify the HCI knowledge and skills that computing professionals need, so that professional exams and courses may be designed. In doing this, the group has examined the context of HCI from both the practitioners' and educators' points of view. The group's findings (see Kirby et al. 1995) suggest, among other proposals, that there is a need for research into the effectiveness of HCI education, a need to really integrate HCI into the mainstream, and a need to change the attitudes of Computer Science students to HCI so that it is taken to be a serious area of study. The group has also proposed a framework for designing HCI courses. The panel session provoked discussion of issues raised by the group and helped group members to gauge potential reaction to their proposals. The set of issues for discussion was circulated in advance of the panel via the conference adjunct proceedings (Allen et al. 1995)
The panel members included the invited speaker, authors of the two best selling HCI text books in the UK and members of the aforementioned HCI Education and Training Working Group:
While the panel members had plenty to say, there were also many valuable contributions from the floor.
Once the panel members had been introduced, Mark Kirby led the discussion by raising the points that had been circulated in advance. An overview of the discussion relating to each point follows.
There were differing opinions on whether or not the "flood of new ideas" really exists. Some just see developments of old ideas, or the merging of ideas from different subject areas. Others see the problem as one of capturing and fully monitoring all the information out there on the world-wide-web (WWW), in journals and in other sources. If this problem can be solved then there is still the problem of compressing this ever expanding field of HCI into the available teaching time, which means making difficult decisions about the breadth and depth of course.
Getting the balance right is important to industrialists as well as educators. Industry needs education to provide the impetus on HCI teaching and ideas. As new graduates are employed they take new HCI ideas from academe into industry and commerce. Industry and commerce needs to be able to make use of its new recruits, and teachers of undergraduates need to provide them with new knowledge which employers will find useful.
It was argued that one of the problems of including more "leading edge" HCI in courses is that some of the "bread and butter" material must be left out. Making this decision is difficult. It is even more difficult on courses such as Business Information Technology or Computer Studies where the whole course includes not just IT and related teaching units but also business, economics and other IT environmental issues.
Jenny Preece made the point that HCI people are slow to be socially conscious. New technologies are developed and applied without consideration being given to the social consequences. In our teaching we should encourage students to be more socially aware. This applies to HCI specifically but also to the more general fields of Computers Studies and Computer Science. This may be seen as a new idea by some teaching academics.
During the discussion, examples were given of two courses where HCI is given greater prominence than usual. Howell Istance (DeMontfort University) and Angela Sasse (University College London) briefly described how the inclusion of prominent HCI components has improved student performance in areas such as system development and project work. While such improvements do not surprise those of us in the field, it is not always easy to convince our colleagues from more traditional areas of computing that they will see a benefit.
Jean Gasen proposed that HCI should be a part of Computer Science -- but that for this to occur it will be necessary to change the views of computer scientists about HCI. One perception is that HCI is "soft" and therefore unscientific, while computer science is "hard", maths based and therefore would be weakened by the inclusion of a soft science.
One limitation of HCI people is that they often, but not always, lack an understanding of the difficulties of implementation that arise from the constraints of programming and system architecture. There is a perception that HCI specialists tend to trivialize computational problems and have no concept of the programming behind the interface. It was not suggested that programming should be a part of HCI courses but it was realized that this may leave a difficult problem to overcome, i.e. effort being expended on nice HCI ideas that are not technically or economically feasible.
The other side of this problem is that the technical specialists are obsessed with technical capability and feasibility, leading to computer systems with too much functionality and too little usability. The result is a costly system which does not meet organizational needs in terms of increased efficiency or effectiveness. Thus there is a need to find a way to integrate functional design with HCI design and to find project time to put this into practice. A move towards "generic systems" where users are provided with very flexible systems for which they have to design their own ways of working, and appropriate supporting interfaces, only solve some of the problems. Users rarely have the knowledge necessary to use such systems reliably.
It is difficult to conclude the "separated" versus "integrated" debate. HCI is difficult to integrate for a number of reasons, even if this is thought to be desirable. There seemed to be feeling that computer scientists and software engineers should be taught, early in their courses, to focus on the user, perhaps by teaching good user analysis skills and prototyping. However, trying to alter courses to do this may meet with resistance.
A key issue here is the difference between industrial and academic views. Educators take a long term view of the knowledge and skills required by computing professionals, preparing them to cope with a world that will undergo much change. Industry takes a shorter term product-oriented view, looking for skills which can be used to a company's advantage immediately. Both points of view need to be considered. HCI as an academic field exists in an industrial and commercial context. This balance problem is related to the chronic tension between the needs of industry and the purpose of higher education: skills and training for specific jobs versus a broader education in concepts and a deeper, transferable, understanding of the field.
In considering what HCI students should be taught it is necessary to consider the composition of the student population. The point was made that some aspects of HCI should be taught to non-HCI specialists such as managers, accountants and users groups (marketing, personnel, etc.). This would make it easier for HCI ideas to be adopted, as decision makers would be aware of the benefits HCI practitioners have to offer. At present this is rarely understood.
Maggie Williams (Usability Services, National Westminster Bank Group) differentiated between groups of students. Computer Scientists should have a good grasp of their subject and have the ability to apply it in a user centred way. For dedicated HCI students there should be a greater emphasis on practitioner skills such as requirements gathering, interviewing and facilitation skills. This raised the issue of what mix of skills would be appropriate for a hybrid student -- would they be expected to be as good as the best computer scientists and the best HCI specialists, or would they be rejected as being as inferior to both?
It was argued that the HCI Education Framework proposed by the working group (see Kirby et al. 1995) goes some way to solving these problems. Rather than considering all of the possible components of HCI and then eliminating the least important according to the time available and the biases of the educator, the framework allows the background knowledge of groups of students and their "future destinations" to be taken into consideration and their education to be tailored accordingly. As well as guiding on the topic areas to be covered the framework also considers different levels of knowledge: knowing of, knowing about, and able to apply in practice. Thus the framework guides educators when designing courses or units for computer scientists, HCI specialists, or managers and accountants.
Perceived cultural differences in HCI teaching in the UK, USA and Scandinavia -- are these differences real and are they important?
The reaction was that there are cultural differences but that is not a problem -- each culture has its own strengths. Cultural differences with respect to HCI in the design process were categorized as:
Each culture was represented in the audience, and all felt that the above statements are stereotypes which do not really reflect the breadth of views adopted in their countries.
HCI is still a developing subject and curricula do vary according to the influences of culture and research interests. Individual differences between countries are not perceived as problematic but as complementary. This is more likely to lead to interesting developments than if there was global homogenization of the subject.
Differences in opinion where sharing materials was concerned; the idealists thought people should contribute and share. Pragmatists were more worried by the thought that managers would simply look for the cheapest mechanism to deliver courses. This was countered by the argument that a range of excellent text books is now available and has not been used to push down the costs of teaching by allowing the employment of lower paid staff.
Research findings need to flow to educators faster than the present journal/conference based system allows. The WWW would allow this, but, for a number of reasons, publishing on the web is not yet academically credible. Thus lecturers may be aware of developments in the field but find acknowledgment of sources difficult to do in a reliable and acceptable way. A further problem with journals is their tendency to only publish positive results -- lessons learned from mistakes rarely appear in print; so the mistakes may be repeated. A better way has to be found to get the latest ideas into the classroom or lecture theater.
It was suggested that if properly managed, the Web would be able to solve the problem. Simon Buckingham Shum (York University) has volunteered to administer a web reference site for HCI. This could be used as a first point of contact for teaching but would be linked to both teaching and research material. In this way HCI educators may be able to find suitable, up-to-date materials for their courses without having to trawl the web. Some material is already available (contact Howell Istance on hoi@dmu.ac.uk for details). It is expected that the BCS Education and Training Working Group will develop structures and standards for this Web material to facilitate access.
With time running out, the discussion moved on finally to considered the significance of "design". In this context, design was taken to be the imaginative and creative aspect of generating possible solutions and then selecting the most appropriate given the contextual requirements and constraints. Part of the discussion revolved around the question of whether or not creative design skills can be taught. On the basis that architects, graphics designers and others are taught design as a matter of course, the conclusion was reached that design can be taught and that it should be taught. This would be a departure from common practice for most courses.
A number of issues were raised which, in the experience of those at the panel session, are rarely considered on mainstream or non-mainstream HCI courses. Whether or not HCI can ever be regarded as a mainstream subject is itself an arguable point. It is still not agreed that HCI should be recognized as a distinct and teachable subject discipline rather than a "flavor" to be added to all units of Computer Science or Business Information Technology courses. That aside, there still remain the questions of what should be taught, to whom should it be taught, and whether or not national cultural differences affect these decisions in a significant way.
Creativity is not a subject widely taught on computing courses or HCI units. If it were, then computer systems may have more imaginative and effective interfaces, and may even be more usable. There seems to be some support for the notion of making core material and optional material contingent on the practitioner demands expected to be placed on particular graduate groups. The framework developed by the BCS Education and Training Working Group copes with this and as such should be applicable to a wide range of courses.
HCI is not a static subject. Keeping up with the subject is a perennial problem for teachers of advanced courses. The trends in HCI and the increasing availability and use of the Web and similar technologies make a rigorous and exhaustive search impossible. But, optimistically, these same technologies will allow wider dissemination of teaching materials and so redress the balance. HCI is an interesting subject to teach, and looks set to remain so.
Barbara McManus, Department of Computing, University of Central Lancashire. b.mcmanus@uclan.ac.uk
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