This is the archived page for the 2017 course on HCI for Digital Civics.

Central to the Digital Civics agenda is a human-centred approach to designing digital services and technologies. This approach is exemplified by the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI has developed over the last 30 years into a large research community studying how digital systems are designed to be usable, acceptable and provide a positive sense of engagement (for all citizens) – something that will be central to the success of digital civics projects.

HCI is a fundamentally cross- and multi-disciplinary field, and over the course of its history various disciplinary influences have come and gone. As a result, the approaches to understanding and concepts surrounding human interaction with technology have developed and transitioned alongside the development of technology itself. This module is focused on providing you with an overview of the history of HCI as a field, focusing on the different models and concepts of people and technology that have influenced the field at different periods of time. We will be looking at some of these changes through a combination of close reading, seminar discussion (led by you!) and self-organised activities related to questions and themes underpinning the field of HCI.

How to?

This website is pretty simple. Above you will find links to pages that provide a breakdown of each session from the module, while you will also find information related to the module assignments as well as a page of links to resources that you might find useful over the next year (and beyond).

As you should know very well by now, each week there is an expectation to upload a blog post to this website based on the reading you have done each week. Posting a blog post is very simple, especially if you are already familiar with WordPress.

First, visit the login page and enter your username and password (you should’ have been provided one). In case of problems with logging in contact Pete Wright.

Second, when logged in go to the “Posts” tab on the left-side menu. Third, click “Add New”. This will take you to a new page where you can enter in your blog post (you can use either the Visual editor, or the HTML editor if you are familiar with that). Type in your blog post, give your post a title, select the category HCI for Digital Civics 2017 and click “Submit for review” on the right-side of the page.

Add images and other media to your post and the “featured image” (bottom left of page) which will then be shown with your blog post. There is a limit on the resolution of the images you can upload, therefore you may need to reduce the size of images you want to use with a programme on your computer or an online service.

That’s it! It’s that simple.