The degree requirements vary a bit between different schools, but the principle is to select min. 5 ECTS from each ‘foreign’ curriculum in addition to the two USchool courses (USchool Intro; User Experience Design in Practice).
In Aalto, the minor consists of 20-25 ECTS, and in Helsinki University min. 25 ECTS
This course is compulsory to all Uschool students:
CS-E3900 USchool Intro 2cr
One of these courses is compulsory for Uschool students under the condition that
he/she has not studied either one as part of his/her major. If the course is part of
his/her major, it cannot be part of the minor and therefore is not compulsory in Uschool. This means that a student, who has studied one of the courses below
as part of the major, will only have 2 ECTS compulsory studies.
CS-E4900 User-Centred Methods for Product and Service Design 5cr
MUO-E3024 User Inspired Design Knowing L 6cr
Period I - Mon 10 Sept - Fri 26 Oct 2018
Period II - Mon 29 Oct - Fri 14 Dec 2018
Period III - Mon 7 Jan - Fri 22 Feb 2019
Period IV - Mon 25 Feb - Fri 12 Apr 2019
Period V - Mon 15 Apr - Fri 31 May 2019
After this course, you will understand the foundations and scope of human-centred design, as well as the need for and practices in multidisciplinary design.
The course is compulsory for all USchool minor students.
The course provides a broad background of the need for HCI and how it can be effectively incorporated into the design of interactive products and services. The course will primarily focus on each stage of a User-Centered Design process.
After completing the course, students are able to develop an interactive user interface that can be used for usability testing. Students know how to use user-centred principles, guidelines and patterns in the design and implementation of user interfaces.· Prerequisites: CS-C3120 or CSE-C3800
Literature based essay and peer-reviewing on methods for user-centred product development, group assignment in user research and service design.· Compulsory prerequisite for courses CS-E5200 and CS-E5210.
The course introduces several usability evaluation methods including both usability inspection and user testing methods. The methods are applied in project works conducted in cooperation with companies aiming at an improved prototype of the evaluated system. The methods are applied to project works conducted in cooperation with companies in groups of 3-5 students. · Prerequisites: CS-E4900
Period I - Mon 10 Sept - Fri 26 Oct 2018
Period II - Mon 29 Oct - Fri 14 Dec 2018
Period III - Mon 7 Jan - Fri 22 Feb 2019
Period IV - Mon 25 Feb - Fri 12 Apr 2019
Period V - Mon 15 Apr - Fri 31 May 2019
The emphasis in design has increasingly shifted towards solving the questions of what should be designed instead of only dealing with challenges defined in apolished design brief. In User Inspired Design (UID) course the traditional designerly problem solving and novel approaches to involve users into design decision making are applied to find out and describe emerging practices and design opportunities. UID projects do not aim at proposing feasible designs but propose decision making options and stimuli for a range of different business purposes.
A design extension to User-Inspired Design Knowing course.
The Strategic Service Design course addresses the application of design competence in the context of public service. The course runs in collaboration with the City of Espoo municipality, which provides real-world challenges each year. Typically, challenges pilot Espoo service units moving towards more strategic use of design, through the application of human-centred and participatory practices leveraged in a service design process. The course aims to equip students for professional life working as strategic/service designers, responsible for leading, facilitating, and mobilizing customer-centred transformations, embedding and developing design capabilities in (service) organisations.
DPSC course provides students understanding and competences to practice design participation for social change. Extending design from professionals to impacted peoples and relevant stakeholders is often a prerequisite for fostering social change. The interests, resources, legitimacy and enthusiasm of these peoples need to be met for a change initiative to have a chance to succeed. This is very difficult for designers to approximate these in their studio alone. DPSC features lectures, readings and a set of hands-on exercises on key aspects of planning and running different types of design participation in different settings. To these ends the course also covers also theories for analysing sociotechnical change and sociotechnical contexts for design projects and how to bridge such contextual analysis to the nitty gritty details of design participation action (… and back again).
The course will consist of invited talks and project work. The invited speakers from academia and industry will introduce the state-of-the-art of biomaterials for smart textiles, advanced fabrication methods like weaving and printing, embedded machine learning, emerging user interfaces for extended reality applications, smart wearables for health and wellbeing, as well as practice of user-centered design.
The project work will be done in small groups. We encourage students from different disciplines (e.g., design, engineering) to work together. Student groups can choose one topic provided by the teachers, or define own topics. The project works are supposed to be relevant with the topics covered in the invited talks. Each group will have a tutor to provide guidance during the course.
The aim of the course is to provide students fundamentals behind successful interaction design as well as in-depth competences with interaction design methods and tools. The focus is on those design steps which take place after background research and basic requirements have been done: modeling, creating design framework, and refining design through evaluations.
The course will introduce the fundamentals of user experience for MA-level students. Theories, methodologies, and pragmatic considerations on design for the interaction between humans and a wide range of systems and services are covered, from desktop computers to embedded and ubiquitous systems.
By participating in the course, students get acquainted with practical methods and tools needed to grow to a role of user experience designer in industry.
This course introduces the fundamentals of e-textiles and basic machine learning techniques (e.g., classification, regression, clustering) for transforming e-textile sensor signals into meaningful information. In addition to lectures, hands-on tutorials cover basic circuit design, fabrication methods, and embedded programming to support building simple wearable e-textiles prototypes. Working in small teams, students will complete a project—for example, creating a smart glove for gesture recognition.
On this course, you will learn to analyze the position of user experience -related work in an organization, apply a suitable employee inquiry method in a workplace setting, and reflect on your own approach to improving user experience in a multi-disciplinary environment.
Note! Helsinki University has only 4 periods
I teaching period 4.9.-22.10.
Examination and independent study week 23.10.-29.10.
II teaching period 30.10.-17.12.
Examination and independent study week 18.12.-22.12.
III teaching period 15.1.-4.3.
Examination and independent study week 5.3.-11.3.
IV teaching period 12.3.-6.5.
Examination and independent study week 7.5.-13.5.
A broad introduction to cognitive science, its methods and theoretical foundations, including perception, memory, reasoning, computation and representation, human and artificial intelligence, language, meaning and consciousness.
A non-technical introduction to computational models of cognition and behaviour, covering symbolic modelling, information theory, reinforcement learning, neural networks, dynamical systems, control theory, predictive processing and the Bayesian brain.
Covers brain structure and function, the neural mechanisms underlying cognition and behaviour, and cognitive-neuroscience methods, including research on learning, memory, perception, motor functions, attention and executive functions.
Examines perception, action and consciousness through topics such as sensory information, attention and awareness, affordances, perception-action coupling, intentional action, motor coordination and theories of consciousness.
Explores philosophical questions in cognitive science and AI, including mental representation, computation, embodied and extended cognition, predictive processing, machine learning, large language models, and ethical and societal challenges.
Focuses on the neurobiology of language, the relationship between language and cognition, and the neural mechanisms of language processing and acquisition.
Introduces experimental research in cognitive science, from study planning and experiment construction to data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting.
NOT OFFERED IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2026-2027
Introduces experimental research in cognitive science, from study planning and experiment construction to data collection, analysis, interpretation and reporting.For academic year 2026-2027 spesifically.
NOT OFFERED IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2026-2027