Teaching HCI with a Studio Approach: Lessons Learnt Panayiotis Koutsabasis † Product and Systems Design Engineering University of the Aegean Syros, Cyclades, Greece kgp@aegean.gr Spyros Vosinakis Product and Systems Design Engineering University of the Aegean Syros, Cyclades, Greece spyrosv@aegean.gr Modestos Stavrakis Product and Systems Design Engineering University of the Aegean Syros, Cyclades, Greece modestos@aegean.gr Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos Product and Systems Design Engineering University of the Aegean Syros, Cyclades, Greece pank@aegean.gr ABSTRACT HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) education is often referred to as a ‘living curriculum’, reflecting the multidisciplinary nature of the field and the dynamics of many of its components, including interactive technology. Several educators have adopted (and adapted) a design studio approach to HCI courses, especially in MSc and design-oriented postgraduate programs. In this paper, we present an HCI design studio course offered at a department of design engineering in the University of the Aegean, Greece. The approach adopted in the course blends (a) design studio activities: design brief, desk crit, design reviews, portfolio; (b) core HCI and interaction design methods: contextual inquiry, field visits, concept design, wireframes, usability testing, etc. (c) pedagogical principles of problem-based learning (PBL): authentic context, ill-defined problem, work in groups, self-directed learning. We reflect on lessons learnt in a four-year retrospective, on the quality of the use of methods and outcomes, timing and sequencing of activities and intermediate and final assessments. We envisage that this case study provides interesting insights and information to other undergraduate or postgraduate HCI studio courses. CCS CONCEPTS • Human-centered computing • Human computer interaction (HCI) • Interaction design KEYWORDS HCI studio; design methods; pedagogical principles; lessons learnt. ACM Reference format: Panayiotis Koutsabasis, Spyros Vosinakis, Modestos Stavrakis. Panagiotis Kyriakoulakos. 2018. Teaching HCI with a Studio Approach: Lessons Learnt. In Proceedings of 22nd Pan-Hellenic Conference on Informatics conference (PCI’18). Athens, Greece. 1 Introduction and related work 1.1 HCI teaching: some challenges HCI teaching presents particular challenges for educators, which have been identified from the early days of the field [1][2] and they are still being discussed in academic literature [3][4][5]. In an attempt to realize these challenges, one has to consider that HCI is a multidisciplinary scientific field, synthesizing theories, methods and tools (mainly) from the fields of computer science, psychology and design. Currently, there are dozens of textbooks in HCI as well as in neighboring fields or subfields (e.g. interaction design, participatory research, usability), while there is a growing number of postgraduate and undergraduate HCI course programs. Therefore an HCI educator must make a purposeful selection from a very wide pool of topics, according to the objectives and context of the course. This is not an easy decision, given the fact that HCI courses are offered in various academic levels and curricula. Additionally, HCI is a highly dynamic field in both theory and practice. In theory, there is a large and growing corpus of design and evaluation methods of interactive systems mainly drawing on design thinking, software engineering and empirical testing. In addition, we are constantly witnessing an evolution of the meaning and content of core HCI concepts like user experience, usability, accessibility, flow, engagement, presence, etc. Furthermore, the technology component of an HCI course is also highly dynamic due to the rapid evolution of natural user interface technologies, which creates the need for educators to update laboratory exercises and related educational content regularly. Finally yet importantly, the penetration of computing technology to all aspects of our everyday life has led to new HCI applications, moving from the desktop, to the public space and from personal to social computing; this trend has also been described in retrospect as ‘waves of HCI’ [6] and students must be acquainted (at least) with it in practical terms. 1.2 The design studio pedagogy for HCI courses Several HCI educators have adopted (and adapted) a design studio pedagogy to HCI teaching, which promotes active learning, project work in an authentic context, student practice and tutor oversight. The design studio includes a unique set of concepts and processes like [7] the design brief, the desk crit, the design review (or jury), the portfolio and presentation to the client(s). The design brief is a Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from Permissions@acm.org. PCI '18, November 29-December 1, 2018, Athens, Greece © 2018 Association for Computing Machinery. ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6610-6/18/11…$15.00 https://doi.org/10.1145/3291533.3291561