The programme in one page

Almost every consequential system in public life now has an interface. A hospital record, a benefits claim, a court hearing, a school report, a bank account, a tax return. The interface decides who can use the system, what they can find out, what they are asked to do and what happens when they get it wrong. Human-computer interaction is the discipline that studies those decisions and teaches people to make them well.

This is an integrated master's degree: four years, 480 credits, one award, with the master's year built in rather than added on. Years one to three build the three literacies the work requires. You learn how people perceive, attend, remember and decide. You learn to write software that responds, at the level where you can diagnose a slow interface rather than complain about it. You learn to reason about evidence. That is the difference between a designer and someone with opinions: you can show which one the evidence supports.

Year four is a master's year in the proper sense. You work at the research frontier, you run studies, and you finish with a 30-credit project held to the standard of a peer-reviewed short paper.

Why this programme exists

The field has changed faster than the degrees that teach it. Ten years ago an interaction designer worked mostly on screens that a person sat in front of deliberately. Now the same designer works on systems that are probabilistic rather than deterministic. They run on a wrist or in a room. They speak, recommend, and make decisions about people. The interface is no longer the front of the system. In machine learning products it is the system as far as the user is concerned.

Most programmes have added a module on artificial intelligence and left the rest alone. This one treats the change as structural. Evaluation changes when ground truth is expensive. Design changes when the same input can produce different output. Ethics changes when the system's behaviour emerges from data rather than from a specification. Those consequences run through all four years, not one module.

The second change is professional. HCI graduates now work inside regulated industries. A medical device interface must satisfy IEC 62366. A public sector website must satisfy accessibility regulations with legal force. A product handling personal data must survive a data protection impact assessment. A designer who cannot read the regulation is not qualified to sign the design.

What makes this programme different

Every claim has a source, and the source is online

The teaching here is written against the primary literature, not a textbook summary of it. Every module names the papers, standards and guidance it rests on. Each source carries a note on what it is, what it supports and where its evidence is weak. The reference library is part of the programme, not an appendix to it. When you write an essay for us, the standard you are being held to is the standard the library demonstrates.

Studio from the first term

Design is learned by doing it in front of other people. There is a studio in every year. You bring work that is unfinished, you explain what you were trying to find out, and you receive critique. The critique is not a matter of taste. You are asked to separate the objection about evidence from the objection about preference, and to answer both. The industry project in year three runs for a full year against a brief from an external organisation.

Accessibility is a thread, not a topic

One module teaches accessibility in depth. The rest assume it. Every interface you build in this programme is expected to work with a keyboard, with a screen reader, at 200 per cent zoom and on a phone. That is a technical standard, a legal duty and a design position at once. It is easier to hold all three if accessibility is never a specialist extra.

Measurement rather than confidence

Interaction design attracts people who are good at arguing. This programme teaches you to settle arguments with evidence. That might be a measured task time, a confidence interval or a coded corpus. You will also learn where measurement fails, which is why qualitative method is taught to the same standard as statistics rather than as a softer alternative.

Chartered status is designed in

The programme is written to BCS accreditation expectations. That means computing science, professional practice, a group project and mathematics are all present and assessed. Graduates meet the educational requirement for Chartered IT Professional registration, and the master's year counts towards the further learning that Chartered Engineer status requires. Accreditation is not a badge added at the end. It shapes what is in the timetable.

Structure

Eight modules of 15 credits in each year, so each year carries 120 credits and the programme carries 480. Years one and two are entirely compulsory. Year three has seven compulsory modules and one elective: a student takes exactly one of HCI3107 Professional practice and the HCI profession or HCI3109 Data visualisation in practice, and both satisfy the same 15-credit requirement, so the year stays at 120 credits. The master's year is six taught modules plus a project split across two linked modules of 15 credits, examined at the proposal and the defence. The programme therefore holds 33 module specifications and a student takes 32 of them.

What you will be able to do

These are the programme outcomes. They are what the degree certifies, and every module maps to at least two of them.

• Analyse a human activity and describe the cognitive, social and material work it involves.
• Design an interactive system that fits that activity, and justify each design decision with evidence.
• Build a working interactive product to a professional standard of engineering.
• Evaluate an interface with methods appropriate to the setting, and report the limits of what the evaluation shows.
• Analyse qualitative and quantitative data at a standard a reviewer would accept.
• Apply accessibility standards and the law that enforces them.
• Assess a system's ethical, legal and social consequences and act on that assessment.
• Design for systems whose behaviour is probabilistic, and communicate their uncertainty honestly.
• Work in a team, take individual responsibility for a shared deliverable, and give and receive technical criticism.
• Scope a piece of work with a client, deliver it and hand it over.
• Read, critique and produce research at the standard of the field's peer-reviewed venues.

How you are taught

A module is typically two hours of lecture and a three-hour studio each week. The set reading is discussed, not summarised. Lectures exist to give you the shape of a topic and the argument inside it. They are not where the learning happens. The learning happens when you apply a model to a real interface, measure something, or defend a decision to a room.

Assessment follows the same principle. Most modules are assessed by coursework that produces an artefact you could show an employer. Examples are a study, an audit or a prototype with its evaluation. Examinations are used where there is knowledge that must be available without a search engine, which is a smaller set than tradition assumes.

Entry requirements

Typical offers are made on three A levels at grades AAB, including Mathematics, Computer Science, Psychology or a science subject, or an equivalent qualification. International Baccalaureate: 34 points with 6, 5, 5 at higher level. Access to Higher Education and BTEC Extended Diploma routes are accepted with a science or computing background.

No prior programming experience is required for entry, because the first year teaches it from the beginning. We look for an interest in how people use technology at interview. The strongest evidence is usually something you made.

Applicants whose first language is not English need IELTS 6.5 overall with no element below 6.0, or an equivalent recognised qualification.

Placement year

Students may take an optional professional placement between years three and four. The placement does not carry credit and extends the degree by one year. Placements are found with partner organisations in product, research and public sector design, and are supported by a placement tutor. Students who do not take a placement proceed directly to the master's year.

Where graduates go

Interaction design and user research in product organisations. Human factors and clinical informatics in health. Accessibility and inclusive design, which is now a legal requirement in several sectors and chronically short of qualified practitioners. Research engineering and data visualisation. Public sector digital services. Doctoral study in HCI, which this programme prepares for directly through the master's year.

The master's year is also the qualification that research employers look for. A graduate of this programme has run a study, analysed the data and written it up, which is a rarer claim at graduation than it should be.

What this programme is not

It is not a media production degree. It is not a coding bootcamp with a design module bolted on. It does not teach you to make things look contemporary, which is a craft you will acquire by looking at good work. It does teach you to make things that work for the people who have to use them, and to show the evidence when someone asks you how you know.

How to read this site

Each module has a specification: its code, credits, level, assessment, the outcomes it certifies and the reading it rests on. The teaching narrative sits underneath, written the way the module is taught. Every module ends with questions that test understanding and questions that ask you to apply it, with a model answer behind a button. The reference library holds every source in the programme.

This site is a programme specification, not a marketing page. It is written for a validation panel, an accreditation visitor, or a student who wants to know what the four years contain.