Undergraduate Major

This page describes the requirements for the HCI major.

The major consists of 12 prerequisite and required courses. Students must take four electives, which they need to submit beforehand for approval by the program director. Elective approval requests need to be submitted through the EASY system. Electives from a restricted list of courses describing applications of HCI will be approved automatically. However, students can request approval to count an elective in any HCI-relevant course in all departments, even if it is not on the pre-approved list, as long as the course is not a basic course in their primary major. Students can only double count up to two core courses with their primary majors (prerequisite courses do not apply to the double-counting rule).

Graphically, the required curriculum for the HCI undergraduate major is shown in the chart below. The arrows in the chart represent prerequisites. For example, the Intro Programming and Statistics requirements are prerequisites for the User-Centered Research and Evaluation course. The major involves courses in human behavior, design, computer science, statistics and a project course.

Psychology 85-211 or 85-213 or 85-241

 

Interaction Design Studio 1
05-651c

 Statisticsb
36-200 or 36-201 or 36-207 or 36-247 or 36-220 or 36-225 & 226 or 70-207		 Introduction to Programming
 15-104 or 15-110 or 15-112 or 15-121 
 
HCI Electivesf
four 9 unit (or more) HCI related courses		 Interaction Design Studio 2
05-650		 User-Centered Research and Evaluation
05-410		 Interface Programminga
05-430
 
 
  Project Course
05-571

You must maintain a 3.0 average in the HCI core courses (non-prerequisite) to graduate with the HCI major. Students admitted to the major must pass core courses in the major with at least a B grade. You can check your progress in the major and request approval for electives using the EASy system. If the information about your progress in EASy is inaccurate, please submit a request through the system.

Special Notes

  • aThe required HCI programming course 05-430 (Programming Usable Interfaces) is only guaranteed to be offered in the Fall. Spring offerings are only when instructor resources are available. When you register for this course, you must also sign up for a recitation time, which is equivalent to the User Interface Lab. The labs differ on their computer science prerequisites. Section D should be taken by students majoring in computer science or with advanced technical skills. Section A through C require only an introductory course in computer science as a prerequisite, and can be taken either by computer science majors or non-computer science majors.
  • bThe statistics course is required so that majors will be able to understand and conduct empirical research in HCI. Therefore a mathematically-oriented probability course, such as 36-217 (Probability Theory and Random Processes) does not fulfill either requirement. However, the sequence of 36-225 and 36-226 (i.e., a mathematical statistics course followed by a statistical inference course) fulfills the statistics prerequisite requirement. 
  • cDesign majors do not need to take 05-651 Interaction Design Studio 1 as a prerequisite, since they learn similar material in other courses for their major.
  • dA list of popular electives is available here. All electives must be submitted through EASY for audit purposes.

Electives

Electives are intended to provide HCI double majors advanced concepts and skills relevant to HCI or breadth of experience not available from their primary major. Given these goals, most electives will be 300-level courses or higher. Courses at the 100-level and 200-level in ones primary major will not count as electives, although the same course taken by a non-major may. For example, a communication design student cannot take 51-247 Color and Communication as an elective, although a computer science major can.

Students can take electives in the HCI Institute or courses relevant to HCI from many other departments on campus. All electives are approved on a case-by-case basis. Undergraduate majors requisition approval of an elective using The HCI Institute’s EASY requirements management system. The director of the undergraduate program will approve the request, ask for more information or reject it. The EASY system then keeps a record of the electives approved for a particular student. A list of popular HCI electives is available here.

Prerequisites

Statistics

The Statistics prerequisite requirement can be satisfied by taking any of the following one or two semester courses, or by receiving credit for courses taken elsewhere (which must be approved by the Undergraduate Advisor prior to signing up for the course). As noted above, the statistics course are required so that majors will be able to understand and conduct empirical research in HCI. Therefore a mathematically-oriented probability course, such as 36-217 (Probability Theory and Random Processes) does not fulfill the requirement.

  • 36-200 Reasoning with Data
  • 36-201 Statistical Reasoning and Practice
  • 36-220 Engineering Statistics and Quality Control
  • 36-225 Probability and Statistics
  • 36-226 Probability and Statistics
  • 36-247 Statistics for Lab Sciences

Admissions

Applications for 2020 are now closed. 

Submit application packet here 
 

Undergraduate Program Information

Vincent Aleven
Director of the Undergraduate Programs
Professor
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Newell Simon Hall 3531 

Andrea Gnessin
Undergraduate Program Coordinator
Human-Computer Interaction Institute
Newell Simon Hall 3509

  • hciibachelors [at] cs.cmu.edu