Teaching HCI Design With the Studio Approach

The studio-based method of teaching has been used for almost 100 years to teach product and architecture design. With ever increasing pressure on HCI to teach competence in designing interactive objects, new ways of teaching need to be explored. This article begins with a review of the studio-based teaching concept and how it has been used in architecture, science/engineering, and computer science education. We then present and discuss the evaluation of an HCI design studio course which we created and taught in spring 2002 in the Computer and Information Science Department of the University of Oregon. This course was based on our observations and study of studio courses in the School of Architecture. Finally, we review general issues about studio teaching including the promises and challenges that it presents to widespread acceptance in the computer science curriculum.