Involving End-Users in HCI Education: A Case Study and Steps Forward

Users are at the core of HCI—they are the focus of our designs, evaluations, and HCI pedagogy; however, limited research exists on how HCI/design students engage with end user populations in their coursework. In our CHI’20 paper, we provide a case study of a graduate-level HCI/design course working with children to co-design an interactive STEM learning experience. Our findings highlight communication strategies and challenges, power dynamic issues, and the students perceived value in engaging with users. In this workshop paper, we first summarize our CHI’20 research and then outline key pedagogical and process changes made to the next course offering. We close by describing initial observations between the 2019 and 2020 course. This ongoing research contributes empirical evidence of how HCI students directly interact with users in a formal course context, principles for reflective pedagogy, and the need for more intentional investigation into HCI educational practice.