Championing HCI education to CS undergraduates at a grassroots level: a case study in Egypt
Pages 8 - 22
Abstract
There is an increasing global interest in developing inclusive technologies that contribute to the social welfare of people in emerging economies. Egypt, a country facing socio-economic challenges, has been investing in an increasingly growing ICT infrastructure and human capital. The current ICT workforce is technically-oriented due to the increasing interest in global outsourcing. However, there is a need for a Computer Science (CS) workforce that is willing to engage with the bottom-of-the-pyramid users as a potential market. CS students should harness interdisciplinary skills that enable them to sympathize with users who have diverse backgrounds, perceptions, and digital literacies. Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) education programs could provide the necessary skills for local CS students to fulfill this workforce gap. Like many Arab and African countries, Egyptian higher education programs and industry have been slow in recognizing the value of HCI.
In this article, I address how introducing HCI education to students in an Egyptian engineering institute can benefit industry. I discuss a series of action research cycles focusing on the learning design of a student-centered introductory HCI short course that successfully sensitized students to the role of end-users in technology design. The learning design was planned to circumvent the challenging fact that HCI was underrated by CS students. Formative assessment results and my reflections, as the instructor, are discussed as well.
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Usability Professionals' Association
Bloomingdale, IL
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Published: 01 November 2019
Published in JUS Volume 15, Issue 1
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