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SIGCHI Bulletin
Vol.28 No.4, October 1996
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Educating HCI Practitioners: Evaluating What Industry Needs and Academia Delivers
A CHI 96 Workshop

Andrew Sears, Mary Czerwinski, Laurie P. Dringus, and Barbara Bernal Thomas

Introduction

For the last five years, there has been a workshop at CHI that focused on HCI education. This year, the goal was to begin evaluating the outcome of existing HCI courses and programs. The idea was to attempt to identify skills and knowledge that recent graduates must be taught by industry when working on HCI projects. Once the skills and knowledge that are missing are identified, we can begin to determine where they should be taught. Are these things that academia should be teaching? Or are they better left to industry? Are they fundamental issues that everyone should learn or are they specific to one organization?

The objective of the CHI 96 workshop was to bring together a mixture of industrial and academic representatives to discuss these issues. There were a total of 14 participants (including four organizers) for this workshop. The participants included industry representatives from Microsoft, Rank Xerox Parc, Bellcore, Intel, and Interval Research, and academicians from a variety of U.S. and international institutions. Some participants from industry also had connections to academia. The workshop was conducted over one and a half days.

The following people participated:

Workshop Activities

The workshop began with general introductions. Next, the results of previous workshops were summarized including those from CHI 93, CHI 94, and CHI 95. Materials from these workshops, as well as the NSF/ARPA report "New Direction in HCI Education, Research and Practice", (Strong, 1995) were distributed. Summarizing these previous activities highlighted their contributions and helped prevent participants from reinventing the wheel.

Three official goals were established for the workshop:

The participants broke into two groups to discuss each of the goals and then gathered together to discuss the results. The final activity was to develop a list of specific suggestions that may help resolve some of the issues raised and improve the status of HCI education.

Results of Goal One: HCI skills and knowledge that industrial representatives must teach recent graduates

The two groups took different approaches to dealing with this problem. One generated a single list of issues companies often expect recent graduates to have and issues companies often have to teach recent graduates. The items listed ranged from general personality traits and skills to knowledge of specific techniques and procedures. Some items seem to be included several times in slightly different ways. Apparently, these issues were considered quite important.

The second group generated three lists. The first contained issues based in computer science that graduates from other disciplines should understand. The second focused on issues often associated with the behavioral sciences and the third focused on issues often associated with graphic or industrial design. The goal was to develop lists of issues that faculty in the various disciplines could focus on when teaching HCI courses.

Computer Science

Several specific issues were included in this list. Initially, programming and data structures were suggested for inclusion. After a discussion with all participants in the workshop, programming and data structures were replaced with a more general statement. While being able to program could be useful, the conclusion was that graphic designers and psychologists did not need to understand the details of C, stacks, and queues in order to be effective members of a development team. Instead, these individuals need to understand the basic terminology, how computers work, what can be done easily by computers, what is hard, and what is impossible. In addition, understanding the basics of testing software, project management, and working on teams would be useful.

Behavioral Sciences

Data collection and analysis skills topped the list from the behavioral sciences. This referred to both qualitative and quantitative data. Fundamental knowledge was also considered important. Specific topics that were listed included mental models, cognitive modeling, basic human attributes, and basic organization behavioral issues. Students should learn not only fundamental facts about how people think, organize things, solve problems, etc., but should also learn about group dynamics. Teamwork and the ability to read and interpret published reports were also included in this list.

Graphic/Industrial Design

This list was short, but the items included were considered critical. The ability to sketch an idea was the first item included. It was stressed that this did not mean the ability to create a beautiful drawing, but simply the ability to sketch ideas so others could understand them. Storyboarding, flowcharting, and general information design were also listed.

Results of Goal Two: Techniques academia can use to convey HCI issues to students

Once an initial list of topics had been identified, the next step was to identify specific tools and techniques faculty could use to convey these ideas to students. While the initial goal was to develop a list of tools and techniques that had been proven effective, it was soon decided that a more general list was necessary. Adequate solutions had not been found for many of the topics students were not currently learning, so this collection soon became a wish-list. Some items in this list have been tested in isolated situations, but should generalize. Others are simply ideas that appear promising.

Results of Goal Three: Develop an action plan for collaboration between industry and academia

This has been a recurring goal for several workshops. Some representatives from both academia and industry recognize the importance of getting industry involved in educating students about HCI. The goal for participants of this workshop was to explore some existing collaborations and to try to find methods of increasing this collaboration. At least four different models were discussed. Each had advantages and disadvantages.

All four models involved presentations to one extent or another. Some included recruiting faculty from other departments to listen to and critique dry runs of presentations. Everyone wished they had more time to spend working on writing and presentation skills. Many participants stressed the importance of giving realistic presentations, including the duration. In general, presentations were about 15 minutes. Once again, all four models appear to involve a significant commitment from the faculty if they are to be successful.

The Monday Morning Wrap-up

In addition to the results listed above, the final part of the workshop was spent highlighting some of the more important activities we identified and thinking about future workshops on HCI education. Four activities dominated the discussions.

References

Strong G. W., Gasen, J. B, Hewett, T., Hix, D., Morris, J., Muller, M. J., and Novick, D. G. (1994).
A Report on New Directions in Human-Computer Interaction Education, Research and Practice. Washington DC: Sponsored by National Science Foundation and Advanced Research Projects Agency. (Available at: http://www.sei.cmu.edu/arpa/hci)

About the Authors

Andrew Sears, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computer Science at DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois. He is the Education Editor for the SIGCHI Bulletin, and can be contacted at sears@cs.depaul.edu.

Mary Czerwinski, Ph.D., currently works at Microsoft as a Usability Research Manager in the Interactive Media Division. She can be contacted at marycz@microsoft.com.

Laurie P. Dringus, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer and Information Sciences at Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. She can be contacted at laurie@scis.acast.nova.edu.

Barbara Bernal Thomas, is a Professor of Computer Science at Southern College of Technology, Marietta, Georgia. She can be contacted at bthomas@sct.edu.

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Vol.28 No.4, October 1996
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