[What’s the name of this course, anyway? Changing the title of course requires numerous time-consuming bureaucratic niceties.  This is a field that changes its name (and emphases) over time. Sometimes the changes are only in terminology, sometimes in substance.  The transition from “usability” to “user experience” is both of these. So don’t worry about the title as much as the course number (for consistency) and the description below.]

This is a course on investigating user experience. Design of useful, effective, efficient, and attractive technologies and systems requires that we know and understand who will be using them; for what; and in what context, including the technosocial network of other technologies, practices, understandings, people, and so on.

This course is not about design but about understanding the situation in which the design will operate. Without it, the design may please the designers but not but useful, effective, enjoyable, or aesthetically-pleasing to the users/consumers.

Prior to design comes the work of investigating user experience. After implementation, user experience research provides (1) feedback and (2) early warning on new developments.

This course addresses methods and concepts of user experience research. How do we identify target or actual users? How do we understand their activities, needs, preferences, and so on? Credibly, under real-world constraints? How do we interpret, describe, and communicate what we learned? How do we work with (or as) designers to build on this understanding?

Thia course addresses both quantitative and qualitative methods, with a practical and a user-experience bias. (Some people also take courses in quantitative and/or qualitative methods; this course ccomplements those.)

This course is appropriate for all iSchool master’s students, but also for people in other disciplines who address questions of how to design systems and applications that are useful and usable — that speak to the needs, desires, preferences, and capabilities of users.

This course is for people interested in being usability professionals, but also for designers, evaluators, marketers, user advocates, and others concerned with connecting design to its consumers.

The primary product (and source of grading) is a project, usually but not necessarily a group project. There will also be periodic assignments, keyed to the projects when possible, aimed at allowing students to practice the various methods discussed.

If some sources show IS203 as a pre-req, that is left over and no longer the case. (“Permission of instructor” of course covers all kinds of possibilities.)