EIT ICT Labs Master School - Human Computer Interaction Design

NOTE: DEADLINE APPLICATION ACADEMIC YEAR 2012-2013 IS FEBRUARY 15, 2012

More information and application eitictlabs.masterschool.eu

ICT Innovation for top talents

EIT ICT Labs Master School offers an international Master’s programme on ICT Innovation, combining and integrating technical majors with a fully standardized minor on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. As a student in the EIT ICT Labs Master School you not only get fundamental knowledge and skills on a technical topic, but also learn how to drive your innovative ideas to the market.

Human Computer Interaction Design

New ICT technologies are transforming our daily lives. Smart devices (mobile phones, PDAs, tablet computers), smart products (car, navigation) and smart environments (ambient intelligence) are enabling new services such as navigation, information providing, learning, making reservations or buying of goods are delivered.

Increasingly, the interaction with these devices is not through simple buttons or keystrokes but with more flexible and intuitive interaction methods such as multi-touch, speech, gestures, and with advanced display systems such as augmented and virtual reality.

Smart devices and services are also able to show intelligent behaviour recognizing intentions of the user and anticipating the user‘s needs. These technologies are central in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI).

However, the design of intuitive user interfaces is not only a matter of the right technology but also a matter of good interaction design. The HCID programme focuses on the study, design, development and evaluation of novel user interfaces and interactive systems taking into account human aspects, at the cognitive and sensory-motor levels, technological aspects, as well as business aspects.

Programme overview

Students enter the master's programmes at an entry university of their choice, depending also on their technical background. After completing the first year, students move on to their exit point university, located in a different country in Europe. All classes are however held in English.

The University of Twente is an exit-point university. The first year is offered by KTH, Aalto and Univ. Paris-Sud.

The two year- programmes (120 ECTS) includes a technical major (90 ECTS) and an Innovation and Entrepreneurship minor (30ECTS).

The Technical Majors (90 ECTS) consist of three parts:

The Innovation and Entrepreneurship Minor (30 ECTS) consists of four parts:

Second Year Programme at the University of Twente

The programme offered by the University of Twente specializes in Intelligent Systems. The programme is embedded in the regular Human Media Interaction master’s programme, and so accredited by the NVAO, the ), the Accreditation Organization of the Netherlands and Flanders.

Context-aware agents and decision support systems that perform automated reasoning and learn automatically from the user and the environment. We look at tools and methods that can deal with incomplete, uncertain and ambiguous real-life data, obtained unobtrusively from the user, at cognitive architectures and mental models that define the internal reasoning of the agents, You will learn to apply strategic interaction styles and to use existing platforms to design and develop multi-agent systems.

Mandatory Courses

·	Research methods cognition and media 5 EC, I-II

·	Multi agent systems 5 EC, I-II

·	Knowledge representation, 10 EC, III-IV

Elective Courses

·	Introduction to Philosophy of Technology, 5 EC, I-II

·	Conversational agents 10 EC, III-IV

·	Brain Computer Interfacing 10 EC, III-IV

·	Machine learning 10 EC, III-IV

Intelligent agent-based systems will be applicable within most of the thematic areas, such as Smart spaces. Within the Eindhoven node the emphasis will be on Health and Wellbeing, in particular on personal sensor networks that will diagnose and monitor bodily parameters and will provide the user with advice and feedback for a healthier lifestyle.

Career opportunities with a HCID major

Graduates from the HCID master will qualify for jobs in international and local organizations both in technical and business roles. Typical titles can be interaction or user experience designer, interactive systems engineer, human factors expert, usability engineer, business developer, product manager, or consultant.

Through their multidisciplinary attitude graduates are valuable in open innovation settings where different aspects (market, users, social aspects, media technologies) come together. They will easily find jobs within companies that provide value-added products and services, such as telecom companies, game companies, e-learning, web developers, and entertainment. An alternative path would be that they start their own company to provide product or technology development, media content, business development or consultancy services.

Relation to the EIT ICT Labs activities

Achieving the right user experience is also important for marketing products and services and a necessary component for commercial success, as is witnessed nowadays in the smart phone market. Knowing how to translate business opportunities and concepts into attractive products is strategic.

The HCID programme will have two winterschools, the I&E winterschool that will be local at the nodes, and an HCID-winterschool (end of March) with all HCID-partners that will be instrumental to prepare the students for the choice of specialisation and to get them introduced to the staff and specialisation themes at the other nodes.

At the University of Twente the research activities within the framework of EIT ICT Labs are part of the Centre of Telematics and Information Technology institute (CTIT).

More information and application

For more information on the EIT ICT Master School, entry-point schools, the application procedure or tuition fees, go to eitictlabs.masterschool.eu

More information about the EIT ICT Labs research programme, go to eit.ictlabs.eu