Computing Students' Learning Difficulties in HCI Education

Software developers often make interface design decisions and work with designers. Therefore, computing students who seek to become developers need some education about interface design. While prior work has studied difficulties that educators face when teaching design to computing students, there is comparatively little work on the difficulties computing students face when learning HCI design skills. To uncover these difficulties, we conducted two qualitative studies consisting of surveys and interviews with (1) computing students and (2) educators who teach interface design to computing students. Qualitative analysis of their responses revealed 18 types of learning difficulties students might experience in HCI design education, including difficulties around the mechanics of design work, project management skills, the wicked nature of design problems, and distorted perspectives on design.