2024–2025 Academic Year
Autumn 2024
HCDE 498A - Advanced Special Topics
Topic: Product Management
This course provides an introduction to product, program, and project management tailored specifically for professionals in Human-Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE). It is crafted to enhance understanding of the broader organizational context within which professionals operate, serving either as a foundational overview for better integration or as a preparatory step towards a career in product management. Participants will explore how the HCDE field aligns with the strategic goals of larger organizations and discover methods to effectively influence both organizational processes and product development initiatives. Key topics covered include strategic planning, effective communication, collaborative teamwork, leadership skills, management principles, and the phases of the product development lifecycle.
HCDE498B - Advanced Special Topics
Topic: Human Centered Entrepreneurship
This course is for anyone who thinks they may want to start some kind of venture (company, non-profit, cooperative) someday, or who just wants to better understand how these kinds of organizations are created and function. This is a ‘how to start a startup’ class with the twist.
Throughout the HCDE degree program, there are many opportunities to talk about human centered design in relation to product design. In this class, we’ll talk about how HCD can be used to guide venture design.
Over the quarter, we will do three things:
1. Learn about entrepreneurship as it is currently understood and practiced.
2. Investigate how human centered design approaches might change entrepreneurship practices in specific ways; we will tie these changes to HCDE theories and methods.
3. Work in teams to incubate an idea and develop it into a venture.
During the quarter, we will examine topics such as business models, product strategy, user and market research, value creation, and the strategic planning demanded by any new venture, all in the context of HCDE and how to create sustainable, scalable, and successful ventures.
Course is open to students who have completed both HCDE 318 and HCDE 300.
2023–2024 Academic Year
Spring 2024
HCDE 418 - Advanced Projects in Human Centered Design and Engineering
Topic: Critical Technology Practice
In this course, we will cover a combination of critical theory and methods toward a liberatory practice of technology. Technology has been an object of power and exclusion for centuries—enabling systemic injustices such as racism, ableism, and classism. This course is designed to provide foundational knowledge on what it means for students, practitioners, scholars, and technology workers alike to start questioning the role of technology in past and ongoing systemic harms. Focusing on the main structures of oppression often perpetuated via technology, we will explore counter-practices of technology research and design through which we can carry out a commitment toward dismantling such exclusionary means of technology production. Throughout, students will make artifacts conveying their interpretations of critical technology practice.