Kickstarting the Master’s Capstone/Thesis Class of Human-Computer Interaction (Fall 2022)
Co-Writer: Shruthi Chivukula
This HCI Capstone/Thesis is a two-semester course crucial for master’s students at Indiana University Bloomington led by Dr. Sai Shruthi Chivukula. In this course, students will learn to develop, manage, and execute their own design research plans, showcase and communicate their design projects, and also critique the design processes, decisions, and outcomes of their peers.
In the first week, the second year masters student in HCI design brainstormed their capstone ideas and discussed ideas in groups of three.
In the end, all 23 students that attended the class put up their Post-its on the wall in the sense of an affinity diagram.
Topics that students were interested in included:
- Mental health
- VR/AR
- Mobile applications
- Self-tracking
- Food / Cooking
- Haptics
- Sexual health
- Fitness
- Wearables
- Transportation / Traveling
- Inclusive design
- Design systems
- Accessibility testing
A portion of the students expressed interest in health, whether it be physical health (fitness, exercise, skincare, …), mental health, specific illness (e.g. eating disorder), sexual health. Relationship wellness was also a topic that some wanted to focus on for their capstone project.
Others were interested in certain technologies, such as designing for machine learning, VR/AR.
Also some were interested in building design systems and establishing guidelines / conducting research on design languages. Inclusive design and accessibility were also discussed.
Nest week, students will take turns in two groups to present their progress on planning their projects in the form of a gallery walk for advisors and peers to provide comments on.
