An exemplary order of study is illustrated below, reflecting a typical HCI study starting in winter semester. The HCI Master degree consists of mandatory and elective modules, as well as a practical part and interdisciplinary courses.
Courses
The following courses‘ and/or modules‘ descriptions are summaries, complemented by students‘ comments. A more formal, detailed course description can be found in the examination regulations.
Basics of HCI
These lectures (18 CP) must be attended by all HCI-students. This is where the study foundations are laid – a general understanding of HCI in theory and practice, user experience and further relevant areas, such as research methodology and sketching techniques.
The new HCI lecture brings all new HCI students to the same level. Here, the Siegen study’s main concepts of Human Machine Interaction are instructed, which are mainly focused on User Centered Design, user participation in its development as well as ethnography and user studies.
Analysis and Evaluation is thematically divided into two blocks. The first block covers central usability models, norms and processes. A collaborating work with the Fraunhofer Institut für Angewandte Informationstechnik takes place for this purpose, which assigns the nationwide most known usability certificate. The second block of the lecture covers usability research methods such as workshops, focus groups or interviews, as well as related sociological analysis methods. As soon as a related project takes place, it is approached with real application situations and real study subjects.
The User Experience Design (UXD) lecture has its main focus on positive user experience, especially on how good UX mainframes are assembled in the design and development process. For this purpose, creative, prototyping and sketching techniques are employed and exercised. During the semester, a group or individual UX design project is also developed. Departing from topic approaches, either individually chosen by the student or from actual research projects, a technical system is planned and developed up to a prototype status with a user approach. Examples of previous work can be seen in the
Showroom.
This lecture focuses on: xperience and behavior in organizations; Organizational Theory: Scientific Management (Taylorism, Fordism), Human Relations, Bureaucracy; Group work, virtual teams, group dynamics; New forms of work, action regulation; Organizational development and organizational learning; Organizational and technical development; Work analysis, assessment and work design; Work and health, and legal and ethical aspects.
Consolidation
One of these modules (9 CP) must be chosen. Specializing on psychological or technological issues, students can further explore the opportunities of HCI.
Learning processes are at the centre of all HCI issues regarding how users appropriate new systems. Henceforth, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) lectures give an overview of various behaviorism learning theories up to the latest models and links them. For that purpose, a big focus is on learning with digital media.
In the CSCW lecture you learn basics about software-architectures for synchronous and asynchronous group work, workflow management, but also organizational and technology design. Furthermore, theoretical and methodological basics on ethnographic and human-centered research and organizational theories. There will be an overview on workflow management systems, media spaces and cooperative virtual environments (CVE) as well as groupware systems. You will learn about how to support group awareness, what this awareness is all about and how it works and what it’s good for. You will also learn about development methods for cooperative systems and a bigger theoretical framework „Integrated Organizational and Technology Design“. In the end of the course you will understand cooperative work processes and you will know how to support and evaluate them within socio-technical systems. Also you will know about the relevant applications.
Introduction into Ubiquitous Computing, mobile und wearable devices, communication, sensors and context; ubiquitous and wearable user interfaces; security and privacy.
The course consists of two main parts. The first part contains of 6 lectures in which you will learn about fake reviews and how to conduct qualitative research. In the second part you will be do qualitative research in a group project. In the group project you will write a report and hold a presentation.
Practice
A great deal of emphasis is placed on practical work from the beginning. In three projects throughout the programme (27CP), the methodology learned in the lectures can be put into practice. Each semester, you can choose from a changing variety of projects and specialize on a topic of your interest. Here, students undergo a project by themselves or in small groups. The projects may result in an actual concept, product, prototype or similar.
One of these projects aims at the Usability Challenge by the German Society for Informatics. Any student wishing to take part can submit their work to the Challenge, in which Siegen students have been extremely successful (1st and 3rd place in 2013, 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in 2012,…) Examples submitted works to the Challenge can be seen in the Showroom!
Current Research in HCI
The student requires a total of 18 credit points. Here, students either choose three modules, or two modules and an internship. Each module consists of two seminars which can be combined independently. Diverse lectures or seminars are offered each semester, especially conceived for HCI and also deriving from student’s requests. Sometimes, this category includes modules from other departments which are thematically relevant to HCI. Previous examples of this include a seminar about Axure prototyping tool or Visual Awareness – a lecture offered by a different department but approved for HCI.
The seminars in this area cover and approach HCI topics with a deep perspective, where each seminar student undergoes a personally given topic. For that purpose, he/she researches independently with the corresponding relevant literature with the support of the seminar teacher. The results are usually presented by the students during the seminar, discussed in group and finally worked in written form. A HCI combination seminar consists of two single seminars.
The importance of practical relevance has to be underlined. Therefore, the HCI Master course includes an internship, weighted with an appropriate number of credit points. The placement must be at least six weeks long and must take place either in a domestic or foreign company or in a foreign research institution. The division of the internship time into separate moments is not possible. Before starting your internship please approach the
Academic Advisor and have an
internship preliminary talk in order to make sure that you are taking the right decision and that it is complied on the
Internship Regulations. During the
post-internship talk, you will discuss about your internship experience and
internship report with your Advisor. Both talks are fundamental for the recognition of your internship into the Master framework.
Interdisciplinary Contexts
Two whole modules from other faculties have to be attended in this area (18CP), which must be thematically interrelated to HCI. Here, the students can choose between two modules with 9CP each, or three modules with 6CP each. The following modules are available:
The main objectives are the acquisition of knowledge and skills regarding the mathematical modeling of practice-relevant issues, description of problem complexity and solution complexity to ensure adequate choice of method, and techniques enabling decision support. From these knowledge, students are capable of proceeding both systematically and methodically in the analysis and solution of current problems as well as making efficient decisions.
This module teaches the basics of both internet economy and its framework conditions. Particular emphasis is placed on transaction cost theory as a basis. Building on this groundwork, various business models in e-commerce and e-business are approached in detail.
Cultural technologies can be thought of as systematic connections between people, objects and symbols; as forms of practice in which artefacts are embedded. Prominent examples are practices in dealing with pictures, sound, words and figures but also „body techniques“. Such cultural techniques allow a differentiated analysis of media technologies. This module discusses not only the historical context, but also fundamental theoretical discourses.
Media aesthetics are concerned with the anthropological and technical forms of aesthetics transmission in two directions: sensory perception (aesthesis) and sensory interpretation. Master students reinforce the academic discussion with specific questions relating to the four module elements: text and tone, picture and film. For each module element, theories, terminologies and artistic practices are argued in the course of phenomenological, historical-comparative and aesthetically-critical examinations.
The dynamics and dialectics of culture and society shape the focus of this module. In this context, culture is often seen as a variable regulatory framework, which elements and subsystems design, constitute and modify society. One of the key components is the decoding of media functions in terms of the distribution of cultural practices and with regard to knowledge acquisition processes, as well as in terms of the social construction of reality. Furthermore, the potential and limits of sociocultural media analysis are shown. Models and methods of both intercultural and transcultural communication are discussed as well as new forms of social participation, cultural education and socialization practices.
A number of testing methods in HCI are based on quantitative procedures. Even though the University of Siegen’s understanding of HCI does not centrally focus on these procedures, competence in this area is still extremely important. The statistics module teaches the basics of inferential and multivariate statistics, both of which find application in the third part of this module when they are practiced in the course of an independent quantitative study.
The students acquire basic knowledge regarding central topics of the Constitutional Media Laws (Medienverfassungsrecht) as well as elemental knowledge in central topics of Private Media Law, especially in oral and visual media coverage. They also learn about the most actual and important challenges on this legal field as well as the available legal instruments in between and skills for solving simple legal cases in media aspects.
More information coming soon
The teaching goal is gaining knowledge in the following areas: concepts and application of information technology (especially in the service sector), transaction phase model, business models of e-business, systems and applications like ERP, CRM, SCM. Based on this, students are able to evaluate IT concepts according to the later application field of existing infrasctructures and evaluate questions of IT security management from economic, technical and legal perspectives.
More information coming soon
More information coming soon
You will learn about strategic IT controlling, IT infrastructure controlling and IT project controlling. Based on this, students will be able to assess and apply knowledge on profitability and effectivity of planning and controlling of information processing and according resources.
More information coming soon
More information coming soon
Master Thesis
The master thesis is an examination work which concludes the scientific HCI programme. It must demonstrate that students are able to independently work on a problem from the HCI area thoroughly using scientific methods, as well as properly reflect and documentthe process. The topic is discussed between the student and their supervisor. You can find work examples in the Showroom.
