In the 1990s, organisations rely heavily on information technology to support their operations and give them a competitive edge in the local and global marketplace. The need to incorporate human-computer interaction (HCI), and especially 'usability', into software design and system development is increasingly evident. If industry is to pay more attention to improving the usability of its software and systems, courses need to be established so that students can gain knowledge and skills that are important in the real-world and can experience realistic situations that address usability issues.
To date, the provision of HCI education for practitioners has not been addressed substantively by most universities in Australia. This seminar gives a brief description of the situation in Australia and presents a new university course that responds to industry needs. The paper describes the course, its objectives, content, resources and some teaching strategies, provides some insights into the problems and future development of conducting courses relating to industry needs.
Judy Hammond heads Human-Computer Interaction studies in the School of Computing Sciences, University of Technology, Sydney, where her research and teaching is industry-oriented and information systems focussed. Particular interests are in user-centred systems development and in usability evaluation and testing. She has established a large, industry-standard formal usability laboratory in the School which provides a focus for her research, and is available for industry use as well as within the university.
Judy Hammond chairs the International Federation for Information Processing Technical Committee on Human-Computer Interaction (IFIP TC13) and was Conference Chair of the recent highly successful INTERACT '97 conference held in Sydney Australia. She is a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (host society for INTERACT '97) and is NSW convenor of CHISIG, the Australian Special Interest Group on HCI.
For more information about this talk please contact judy@socs.uts.edu.au