The courses offered are part of the HCI stream Advanced MSc courses. Students choose four from a selection of courses in user modelling, interactive system design, virtual environments and multimedia, natural language, OOPS, User Interface Management systems, some of which do not run in all years. Assessment is by coursework and examination. The primary aim is to enable students to become familiar with the kinds of problem to be solved in interactive system design. The emphasis is on teaching students how to build user-centred interactive applications, based mainly around seminars looking at the design, evaluation and evolution of designs.
Assessment is by coursework only.
The Multimedia course addresses the impact of multimedia on HCI and computer systems design. The course covers the representation, storage, and transmission of audio, video, still image, graphics, and test within a single digital environment, but the main focus is on the empowerment of users and new applications enabled by these facilities. The fundamentals of multimedia technology and networking requirements are covered. The course introduces sufficient background in linguistics and cognition to characterise the kinds of knowledge and range of skills exhibited in using and understanding natural language. It poses the question whether interactive interfaces can put this theoretical background to use, not only in engineering natural language interfaces, but in informing the design and engineering of all forms of interactive interface.