Co-aligning user-centered design and software engineering courses: A case study

Abstract

Introducing students to different perspectives and roles in the development process allows them to engage in the work of cross-disciplinary diverse teams and even can enable them to change roles in designer-developer interactions. Industry work often places recent graduates in preexisting polarized relationship dynamics between different participants in the design and development process. This paper describes a two-stage attempt at co-alignment of software engineering and user-centered design courses: from full alignment with topic intersections and joint project to partial alignment through separate activities. We discuss challenges of both ways including time or technical constraints, increased effort from the program developers and instructors, students' and instructors' frustrations. We finalize by describing benefits of providing students with early experience identifying trade-offs between design requirements and architecture and opportunities for diverse group with different background in computer science.