Is HCI Education Getting a Passing Grade from Industry?
URL: http://www.acm.org/~perlman/chi94edu.html
Table of Contents
- Gary Perlman
-
Computer Science,
Ohio State University, USA,
perlman@acm.org
- Arye R. Ephrath
-
Usability Engineering,
Bellcore, USA,
arye@cc.bellcore.com
- Thomas T. Hewett
-
Psychology,
Drexel University, USA,
hewett@duvm.ocs.drexel.edu
- John Long
-
Ergonomics,
Univ. College London, UK,
j.long@ucl.ac.uk
- S. Joy Mountford
-
Design Center,
Apple Computer, Inc., USA,
S.Joy@AppleLink.Apple.com
- Jenny Preece
-
Computing,
The Open University, UK,
J.J.Preece@open.ac.uk
ACM SIGCHI is expending more and more effort on HCI education,
funding a variety of projects, including a curriculum report, and
IFIP working group, and a survey of programs. Is SIGCHI directing
its resources wisely and effectively? Who are the consumers of
HCI education, and who are their employers? What should be the
direction of HCI education in the 90's? Panelists from industry
and academia will "face off" to debate what industry wants,
needs, and is getting from HCI education.
KEYWORDS: [K.3.2] Computer and Information Science Education,
Curriculum; [K.6.1] Project and People Management, Staffing,
Training. Human Factors, Management, Education
ACM SIGCHI is expending more and more effort on HCI education.
It has funded a variety of education projects, including a
curriculum report [Hew92],
IFIP working group 13.1, and a survey of programs
[Perl93]. Is SIGCHI directing its resources wisely
and effectively? Who are the consumers of HCI education, and who
are their employers? What should be the direction of HCI
education in the 90's?
The multiple skills needed to develop effective user interfaces
make HCI education a demanding endeavor, but one that is critical
for continuing progress in the field. Although most CHI
attendees are not educators, all have been consumers of
education, and many are consumers (employers or coworkers) of the
product of education. CHI attendees form the market for students
trained in HCI, and it is in the best interest of HCI for
education and industry to communicate and cooperate.
Given these broad concerns about HCI education, the focus of this
panel is how to meet the needs of industry, arguably the largest
employer of students. In particular, we will not focus on PhD-
level education, which while important, is not as critical to
economic infrastructure as undergraduate and masters education.
The panelists come from: academia and industry, the USA and the
United Kingdom, computer science, psychology, and engineering.
They will discuss their views of the problems of meeting industry
needs and what can be done about them.
When I began teaching user interface development to master's
level software engineers at the Wang Institute, most of these
experienced programmers had never seen a person using their
software. My course evolved (regressed) to the point where the
goal was to have the students evaluate their own design, if only
to find out that their users found it unusable. At Ohio State,
the situation is even worse, because the students do not have the
experience of developing any real software, and they do not yet
have the skills to bring their ideas to life. Most computer
science departments view software engineering as beneath the
dignity of the field, viewing projects (especially group
projects) as a way to let weaker students get by. HCI is viewed
with even greater disdain. The same is true in other
departments, such as psychology, where human factors is viewed as
too applied. One result is that I see constant complaints from
both students and employers about inadequate preparation for the
real world.
The answer is not to revamp education. Employers like the
subjects that students learn in computer science and are not
willing to forego any of them. But there should be more group-
and project-oriented work integrated into the curriculum to
reinforce both practical applications and theoretical
implications.
Fresh graduates need to hit the ground running in an industry
environment. They don't, because at first they cannot do any
useful work. They do not know how to run user tests, they cannot
implement a graphical user interface, they do not know how to
work in teams, they have no appreciation for the importance of
making tradeoffs and no practice in making them.
Educators do provide their students with good grounding in the
fundamentals, as well as in the methodology of HCI research.
Above all, students learn in school how to learn, so they are
trainable when they come to us. We would like to see them having
more exposure in school to practical work: Iterative design of
real user interfaces using real subjects; exposure to creating
requirements and design in large scale software development
environments, and learning how to share information with those
who are doing the architecture and coding; and exposure to the
basics of computer hardware and software design.
In most cases, Computer Science graduates and HCI folks
collaborate for the first time in the work environment, and often
it proves to be a struggle for both sides. Introducing them to
each other in the simulated environment of the school might prove
beneficial to both disciplines, as well as to industry as a
whole.
The fundamental problem for HCI education and practice is change.
The world of computing technology changes rapidly, and will
continue to do so. The learning of content done in a particular
institutional context which assumes a clearly defined stopping
point is not sufficient to prepare people to deal with rapid
change. Rather, education and training must be viewed as on-
going processes which continue throughout an individual's entire
lifetime. Traditional approaches to the teaching-learning
process need to be modified to stress an emphasis on critical
reflection. It is reflection on process, on practice, and on
content which enables learners to apply their knowledge to novel
situations and to continue to learn in the future.
One step which might be taken is to create an operating
"brokerage" arrangement for establishing relationships which
would enable faculty, researchers, developers and designers to
gain work experience in alternative professional settings (e.g.,
faculty would work on the industrial development of systems;
researchers and developers from corporate labs would teach
courses and benefit from the challenges which students can pose;
industrial developers would work in research labs, etc.). Such
opportunities for retooling, reskilling, and refreshing knowledge
and skills would enable individual reflection on knowledge and
practice, contribute to the growth of shared understanding
critical to the field and foster a process of continuous
learning.
'Good' students, successfully completing a 'good' HCI course,
produce a passing grade from industry for HCI education. This
grade is not awarded by industries recruiting 'less good'
students, who have been 'less well' educated. Industry
dissatisfaction has its origins in the state of HCI education,
and of the HCI discipline.
HCI education should teach students to solve the design problem
of users interacting with computers (and other users) to perform
work effectively. Craft approaches rely on experiential
knowledge and 'trial and error' design practices, and so are
difficult to teach. Applied science approaches rely on
scientific knowledge, and 'specify and implement' design
practices, and so are difficult to integrate into the design
process. Thus, students acquire insufficient craft skills, and
their applied science skills are insufficiently integrated with
design. HCI education can obtain a passing grade only by
providing 'good' training to 'good' students.
Concerning the HCI discipline, industry may be dissatisfied
because appropriate HCI knowledge and practices do not exist, and
so even 'good and well educated' students may be unsatisfactory.
For example, HCI has more evaluation methods than design methods.
In addition, HCI substantive knowledge, e.g. guidelines and
standards, has no associated guarantee. The situation will only
ameliorate as HCI improves its knowledge and practices.
In summary, there are two origins for not awarding HCI education
a passing grade - suboptimal training, and suboptimal HCI
discipline knowledge and practices. 'Good' students with 'good'
education minimise the problem. The opposite, unfortunately, is
also true.
Successful education of Interaction/Interface Designers must be
guided by two important principles; First, teaching design must
incorporate an apprenticeship process; Second, educating
designers must encourage interdisciplinary team activity. Such
qualities are often difficult to reinforce and create from within
any one university department. These needs also bring up concerns
such as; 'Who / where are the great interface designers?' and
'How can we best evaluate team-based projects?' As the definition
of interaction design broadens, the need to educate more
interdisciplinary-trained team-oriented students increases.
I believe that the best solution to providing more meaningful
education for interface designers is to create partnerships with
industrial clients, who have experience both in solving real
world problems and in team-based activities. This goal prompted
me to establish the annual Interface Design project at Apple
Computer. Selected universities are challenged to answer an
interface design problem brief. Universities must work across
departmental boundaries such as Computer Science, Psychology and
Design, to form project teams to submit interactive software and
hardware prototypes for industry critique. The results are very
positive; professors formed new faculty relationships, students
enjoyed the project and felt it added significant value to their
education, and industry was happy to encourage a new generation
of interaction designers. Apprenticeships in such
interdisciplinary teams will facilitate the design of more usable
and aesthetic products for everyday users.
My position statement is about providing relevant HCI training
for people who are already employed in industry. People learn
best when they see the relevance of what they are learning and
when they are actively engaged in and can direct their own
learning processes. This makes it difficult to provide a formula
for HCI training in industry because:
- HCI itself is expanding; parts are ill-defined, and we don't
have a good understanding of what some topics have to offer
industry;
- 'industry' is a collective term for a wide range of different
activities done by people whose needs vary considerably;
- when you talk to people in industry they usually don't know
their own needs and they certainly don't know what their
colleagues needs are; many don't even know what most of their
colleagues do.
How do we proceed? We should give-up second guessing what
students from industry need and make our courses sufficiently
flexible for students to tailor them to their own specific needs.
Longitudinal projects selected by the students themselves and
based on their own work encourage students not just 'to see' but
'to experience' the relevance of HCI in a personal and meaningful
way.
In 1992, Michael Rees of Bond University invited the organizer to
participate in an education panel at OZCHI'92; the complaints
from the industrial attendees motivated the creation of this
panel.
Companion Proceedings of the CHI'94 Conference on Human Factors
in Computing. Copyright (c) 1994 by the Association for Computing
Machinery, Inc. Copying without fees is permitted provided that
the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial
advantage and credit to the source is given. To copy otherwise,
or republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission.
- [Hew92]
-
Hewett, T. T. et al (1992)
Curricula in HCI. ACM.
- [Perl93]
Perlman, G. & Gasen, J. (1993)
The ACM SIGCHI HCI Education Survey.
(poster submitted to CHI'94).
- Students (Graduates)?
- have little practical experience / skills
- can't (weren't allowed to) work in teams
- Faculty?
- probably do not have practical experience
- Universities?
- departments hinder multidisciplinarianism
- elitist CS/psych view SE/HF as too applied
- Industry?
- doesn't know what they need
- doesn't appreciate issues in HCI
- Engineering Education?
- design is difficult to teach
- engineering grads require further training
- Young/Changing HCI Field?
- parts are ill-defined / of unknown value
- computing technology is changing rapidly
- knowledge and practices do not yet exist
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- Design Projects
- require that students make decisions
- Motivation
- provide realistic projects
- have students select projects
- have students evaluate their work
- Interdisciplinary Teamwork
- learn about complementary skills / fields
- learn how to work in teams
- University / Industry Partnership
- students as apprentices
- practitioners as mentors / liaisons
- faculty gain experience / connections
- Lifelong Learning
- stress critical reflection
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