<aside> 🌈 Pictured to the right are CMU students Julianna, Nicole, Sophie.
Are you still looking for HCI related classes to take next semester? Read what Julianna, Nicole, and Sophie have to say have to say about their favorite HCI related classes (that may count as electives) they would recommend!
😭 Julianna Bolivar – Linkedin
🌞 Nicole Xiang – Linkedin
⭐ Sophie McGrady – Linkedin
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😭 Julianna: Design for Digital Systems (51328) with Andrew Twigg.
🌞 Nicole: Persuasive Design (05315) with Geoff Kaufman.
😈 Sophie: Digital Service Innovation (05470) with Skip shelly and Adam Paulisick.
😭 Julianna: It’s definitely a lower stakes class compared to PUI (05430), and we also used PHP in the last project. The coding lectures helped fortify my skills, and the professor who teaches it (Andrew Twiggs) is very helpful and approachable.
🌞 Nicole: Being intentional with design: since our project has a very clear focus (on helping college students cope with adulting), we approach the problem from a psychological focus, brainstorming ways we can utilize psychological concepts such as endowment theory. I think this class broadened my approach to design by incorporating these persuasive concepts and taught me how to be intentional with every design decision (especially when you are dealing with a sensitive topic).
😈 Sophie: This was the class where I first learned about value flow diagrams and stakeholder maps so there was definitely an emphasis on the people involved in creating a service. The course also spent a lot of time looking at what makes a service a service and how users can cocreate value with services.
😭 Julianna: The project is more open ended and requires you to code. I worked on a movie search website for people who are seeking non-objectified female characters in movies for my final project.
🌞 Nicole: It is a team based project, and allows you to choose any project as it’s persuasive in nature. You choose from a set of topics (i.e. sustainable design, bias), and the final project doesn’t need to be a website or app. It can be in the form of a card game, an app, a website etc.
😈 Sophie: There were a few different individual projects, but I mostly remember the group project that you worked on for the last half of the semester. We came up with a digital service and then developed the idea through interviews, research, and critique. At the end of the semester we pitched the idea to groups of real investors.
😭 Julianna: It’s great for students who might want to pick up more technical skills and is a good alternative if you’re intimidated by other coding classes.
🌞 Nicole: I’d say it’s for people who are interested in psychology alongside design, as a way of persuading people, storytelling, and approaching different way of thinking.
😈 Sophie: I would recommend this course to people that are interested in business. It felt geared towards making a pitch towards investors at the end of the semester so that took a lot of business thinking of how to formulate the pitch and how to best show how your idea is a good idea.