UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — In the human-centered design and development bachelor’s degree program offered by the College of Information Sciences and Technology at Penn State, students learn to identify, design, build and evaluate technologies to enhance people’s lives. The program, which launched in fall 2019, focuses on putting human needs and use contexts at the center of technological development.
Now, as the program graduates its first classes of students, its capstone course is following a problem-based approach to learning and is designed to get fourth-year students in the major asking questions, finding solutions, and using knowledge from previous classes to pursue a semester-long group project.
Throughout the semester, students work individually and in teams to complete research reports and presentations, helping them gain practice with new concepts and skills. Ultimately, the course helps students develop their research orientation and creative problem-solving skills.
Assistant Professor Syed Billah, who taught the course last fall, believes it is extremely valuable due to the intellectual freedom it allows when students create their projects.
“They can utilize class time for group work, fieldwork, and end-user evaluation, drawing on their prior knowledge of human-centered design and development concepts,” he said. “Then, they can exercise those concepts in different settings.”
Anily Allsopp, a senior majoring in HCDD, and her team worked on a project that helps students better manage their meal plan funds at Penn State’s dining halls. Allsopp noticed there was no simple way for students to access their dollar total, so she and her group set out to create an accessible platform to solve this issue.
Allsopp’s favorite part of the class was the amount of creative freedom in designing their project.
“Most classes have prompts or guidelines, but this class was up to the team,” she said. “We were able to explore the ideation process completely on our own terms.”
A main component of the course design is allowing students to test and develop their ideas, and then work with their team to improve the product.
“This class offers all the tools, but the instructor takes the back seat,” Allsopp said. “He was there to assist but he wants you to put in the work to find the answers, which is similar to the real world where we won’t always have notes to look over in order to complete our project.”
Madison Borkovich, a senior majoring in both HCDD and film production, and her team chose to expand and improve current online technology in the post-pandemic world. Her group created a virtual reality career fair so that students could meet with job recruiters from the comfort of their home.
“When it comes to human-centered design and development, I am passionate about making life easier for others,” she said. “Technology continues to advance more rapidly than users can keep up with, so deploying features to assist this is essential.”
The course gives students an opportunity to introduce themselves to technology they could be using in their jobs upon graduation. It provides a safe environment where they can make mistakes and seek out challenging problems.
“My favorite part of teaching the class is witnessing students’ growth, how they translate and abstract into a testable prototype, and how this translation process increases their confidence and maturity in thinking at different checkpoints,” Billah said.