First year - Mandatory courses

Courses Credits (ECTS)

Design experience

The course consists of two parts: 1) Cognitive ergonomics: the modules aims at providing a theoretical base on the cognitive aspects of interaction design as well as the methods and techniques derived from cognitive models of interaction; 2) Partecipatory design: the module aims at providing a theoretical framework and empirical experience of Participatory Design, including planning a PD project, running it, communicating the results.

12

Social interaction

Building on the basic concepts of social cognition, the current course aims to provide a comprehensive overview of the emotions, attitudes and behaviors that products and their interfaces can elicit on the self, and how they can impact interpersonal and intergroup interactions in different cultures.

6

Visual brain and design

The course's objective is to provide the basis for understanding the relationships between structure and function/mind and brain with particular emphasis to the neural mechanisms underlying visual and multisensory perception, and attention. These processes will be explored through the study of cognitive neuroscience paradigms, and discussed in the framework of visual design and human-computer interaction.

6

Research methodology – quantitative

The course covers some basic/intermediate statistical and computational analyses for conducting empirical quantitative research. The statistics introduced will serve to explore quantitative data and organize data for statistical analysis and modeling. The statistical procedures will be illustrated using the R statistical package. Topics in the course will include: experimental design, questionnaires and surveys (both paper and pencil format and online format), social network analysis, and inferential statistics including generalized linear mixed models.

6

Research methodology – qualitative

The course intend to analyze the theoretical and methodological framework of the qualitative research and to teach how to use the main qualitative methods and tools.

6

Design epistemology and ethics

Students will be provided with solid theoretic-philosophical tools to understand the role that emotions play in interpreting verbal and non-verbal messages (i.e. whether they are assessed positively or negatively and are considered to be plausible). Students will acquire theoretical knowledge about the role emotions play in persuasive communication, in moral judgments, in situations that can potentially trigger empathic processes and, more generally, in the assessment of/reactions to various kinds of messages. At the end of the course, students will be able to recognize various kinds of persuasive messages; to identify what principles underpin various persuasive strategies and how these are based on moral judgments, emphatic mechanisms and other kinds of emotional reactions; what emotions are involved and how these can influence our understanding of the message.

6

First year

  Courses Credits (ECTS)
6 credits to be chosen from

Bridging HCI to Psychology

The course objective is to provide a common perspective on HCI terminology and approaches and an historical perspective on the disciple specifically on its relation and historical evolution with cognitive psychology. Students will acquire theoretical knowledge about the role cognition plays in interacting with digital technologies and the importance of the recent advances in neuroscience for the future of HCI.

6

Bridging HCI to Computer Science

The course objective is to provide a common perspective on HCI terminology and approaches and an historical perspective on the discipline specifically on its relation and historical evolution with computer science. Students will acquire theoretical knowledge of the main components of computer programs, and start practicing computational thinking to solve simple real-life problems.

6

Second year - Mandatory courses

Courses Credits (ECTS)

Affective computing

This class explores computing that relates to, arises from, or deliberately influences emotion. The aim is to identify the important research issues, and to ascertain potentially fruitful future research directions in relation to the multimodal emotion analysis and to human-computer interaction. In particular, the course will introduce key concepts, discuss technical approaches, and open issues in the following areas: interaction of emotion with cognition and perception; the role of emotion in human-computer interaction; the communication of human emotion via face, voice, physiology, and behavior; construction of computers that have skills of emotional intelligence; the development of computers that "have" emotion; and other areas of current research interest.

6

Prototyping interactive systems

The course covers methodologies for designing and prototyping graphic user interfaces. Principles of design research and visual communication are presented in the context of interaction design, cognition and user behavior.

6

Internship

18

Final Exam

18

1° and 2° year

  Courses Credits (ECTS)
6 credits to be chosen from

Cognitive Neuroscience and Neurotechnology

The course analyzes how interactive technologies may benefit from careful consideration of cognitive and brain processes. Specific emphasis will be devoted to the the application of such knowledge to implement technological devices to help individuals suffering from psychological and neurological problems.

6

Design for social inclusion

The course will explore the interaction and institutional conditions for the design of physical, technological and organizational devices able to provide greater chances of inclusion of disadvantaged groups.

6

Visual design

The course covers principles of visual design that will allow for efficient organization and presentation of information using technological interfaces. Topics will include typography, information architecture, layout, color, and design principles with specific reference to mobile devices.

6
6 credits to be chosen from

Educational technology

This course focuses on the theory and the practice of the design of Interactive applications for human use in reali life contexts. The theme of the course may range from e-learning, to mobile computing, game design, or e-health. The objective of the course is to develop an awareness of the theoretical and practical assumptions a designer needs to make in order to develop useful, usable and engaging application for real life use.

6

Multisensory interactive systems

This course introduces new paradigms of interaction beyond graphical users interfaces and in particular multisensory, physical and tangible interactions. In particular it aims at providing students with an understanding of concepts and techniques for designing usable and engaging interactive systems within these paradigms including the introduction of a tools for building prototypes.

6
12 free choice credits

Free choice subjects

12
Aggiornato il
21 December 2023