Why Human Centered Design & Engineering?

In the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE), students are designing the future by building innovative technologies and systems. Putting people first, HCDE students and faculty research, design, and engineer interactions between humans and technology.

HCDE is housed within the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. HCDE students learn to center on human needs and interests as they solve design problems and build engineering solutions. Students in the College of Engineering learn to center on multifaceted grand challenges as identified by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Bachelor of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering

Students in the HCDE Bachelor of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering (BSHCDE) program build a strong foundation in designing user experiences and interfaces, creating information visualizations, conducting usability research, designing for the web, and building web technologies. In addition to traditional coursework, our students have direct access to faculty through small research groups, addressing a wide range of research and design challenges. Our graduates go on to jobs such as multimedia and web developers, usability engineers and interface designers, user experience researchers and designers, and information architects at high-tech companies (e.g., Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Amazon, Google, and Boeing). Click on the thumbnails below to see examples of student projects, classes, and research!

As part of the major, HCDE undergraduate students complete 52 credits of complete core coursework in design and research. Students also complete 19–23 credits of elective courses. The elective coursework allows students the flexibility to:

• Create a specialization targeted to their professional and academic goals
• Build on their foundation in HCDE
• Increase their knowledge about the field of HCDE

Learn more about the flexibility of the HCDE major!

Some students choose to pursue a specialization in human-computer interaction (HCI) in order to design, evaluate, and implement interactive computing systems for human use, and to study major phenomena surrounding them. For this specialization, HCDE has created a Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) degree option.

A degree option is an area of study officially recognized by the University of Washington. Upon completion of their degree, students with this option will see "Bachelor of Science in Human Centered Design & Engineering," as well as the designation "Human-Computer Interaction" on their UW transcript.