I’m super proud to be one of the founding faculty for the Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design program at UCI! This was mainly the result of hard work by Prof. Gillian Hayes with support from myself and Prof. Judy Olson. Of course the entire Informatics department at UCI was supporting the initiative as well. We just launched the program this week. This program is rethinking the way a Master’s degree can be delivered using the latest online teaching tools and pedagogical research. Our first class is energized and super talented. They come from many different disciplinary backgrounds and are mostly trying change gears professionally or improve on their current experience.
The Department of Informatics at UC Irvine offers the only mixed format, low-residency one year masters of human-computer interaction and design (MHCID) in the world, providing students the benefits of in-person high touch learning in accelerated on campus visits with the flexibility of online distance education. UC Irvine’s MHCID program prepares its graduates to be leaders in user experience research and design, interaction design, information architecture, product design, and human-computer interaction.
I will be teaching one course during the spring quarter at UCI in an online format. I’m really looking forward to the first offering and seeing what the students are capable of. We are going to do a bunch of projects that are geared toward getting the students in a position where they are comfortable talking to the software developers at whatever company they end up working at. 
During our launch we had our first in person intensive and I really enjoyed getting to hang out with the advisory board – what a great group of mentors! We have representatives from AirBNB, Bloomberg, Google, Scopely, Amazon, Sony, Intel and Riot Games. All of them are friends of the program and many are long time colleagues of the faculty.
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