🦆 Interaction Nerds by UXA
This week from Investigation & Connection: our “What is HCI” event, Persuasive Design, and designing for good with Daniel Le Compte!
👋 Announcements — What is HCI and New HCI Opportunities!
What is HCI?
We hope everyone had a great, restful fall break! This week with UXA: our “What is HCI” event will take place on October 25, 7pm at 407 South Craig, in Room 104. Come to learn about what exactly HCI is, what you can do with it, and all the specifics of the different undergraduate HCI programs offered at CMU. RSVP through the QR code or this link! We hope to see you there!
Also, subscribe to our calendar below to never miss an event! 🌟
HCI Opportunities
In our last issue, we sent out a form for our new opportunities section to feature different opportunities in CMU HCII. Through this form, we received information on a new research assistant position. Check out this page for more details on this opportunity! 🔬
Want to see your opportunity advertised? Fill out this form with some information about what you want to advertise, and we’ll feature your project/opportunity in an upcoming UXA newsletter! 💡
🎃 Campus Compass — Persuasive Design
💻 05315 Special Topics: Persuasive Design
How do technologies persuade us in our day-to-day lives? Is using technology to persuade a good or bad thing? In Persuasive Design, students learn how to apply psychological theories and strategies to designs intended to persuade with the chance to use what they learn to create a hands-on semester project.
🤔 What is Persuasive Design?
This project-based course focuses on the ethical, human-centered design and evaluation of persuasive technologies that aim to change users attitudes, emotions, or behaviors in ways that benefit the self and/or society. In addition to exposing students to an array of psychological theories and strategies for implicit and explicit persuasion, the course will cover a variety of topics illustrating both the pitfalls and possibilities in designing for positive impact in HCI.
🧐 What do you do in Persuasive Design?
Through individual and small group design exercises, students are expected to gain proficiency in translating theory to the design of persuasive interventions by identifying which theories are most applicable to an intended attitude/behavior change and designing experiences or interactions with techniques or strategies derived from those theories. The focal point of the class will be the semester project, for which student teams will iteratively conceptualize, prototype, implement, and evaluate a tool, system, or change to a ubiquitous computing environment that intends to stimulate and sustain belief or behavior change (such as reducing cognitive or social biases, building healthy or prosocial habits, or resisting other persuasive forces one encounters on a daily basis).
😯 Who should take Persuasive Design?
This course is interdisciplinary and highly collaborative and is thus appropriate for students from diverse academic backgrounds, including computer science, psychology, social and decision sciences, design, visual and performing arts, business, engineering, and the humanities. There are no prerequisites, but students should have some experience in at least one of the following areas: programming or web development; rapid prototyping; graphic design; creative writing; game design; or prior coursework in social psychology, behavioral economics, marketing, or a related social/behavioral science discipline.
🌟 Field Trip — Designing for Good with Daniel Le Compte
Wondering how you can use your design skills for good? Want advice on how to find and get involved in UX and HCI organizations working to make the world a better place? Join us as we chat with Daniel Le Compte about his own personal journey with design for good! 😆
“Ideally, design for good is in its truest sense user-centered. We’re focused on what users want and need; they want to be happy, live a better life, do things more efficiently, get more enjoyment out of something. Design for good is a re-framing of what the core focus of our work is.”
— Daniel Le Compte
🤔 Who’s behind the scenes?
Thanks for reading this week’s Interaction Nerds by CMU UXA! The editors behind this work are Sophie McGrady, Caleb Sun, and Rebecca Jiang.
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