My First OMSCS Course: Human-Computer Interaction (CS 6750)

When I started Georgia Tech's OMSCS program, I knew I wanted to ease back into school before diving into the more programming-heavy courses. Human-Computer Interaction seemed like the perfect choice. It was a way to get my feet wet with the rhythm of grad school without immediately drowning in code.

What I didn't fully expect was just how paper-heavy the course would be.

The Reading Load

Let me be direct: the reading load is intense. You will need to prioritize which content you tackle first, and you may not get through it all.

That said, the readings were genuinely interesting. I just quickly discovered that I had forgotten how to read academic papers. It had been a long time since undergrad, and getting through the sheer volume of material took some serious adjustment.

The assigned books were hit or miss. Some were just informational, others genuinely excellent. The Design of Everyday Things stood out so much that I bought my own copy to read the chapters that weren't assigned. It's one of those books that changes how you see the world around you.

One bright spot in managing all this content: Dr. Joyner's lecture videos are exceptionally well done. They're engaging, clear, and genuinely interesting to watch. A real asset when you're trying to absorb this much material.

More Than Just Design

What made this an unexpectedly valuable first course was its coverage of user research and basic statistical methods. These weren't things I had to think about much in undergrad, and having that foundation early in my grad school journey feels like it will pay off down the road.

The course structure itself was eye-opening. About half the work centered on the design lifecycle: defining the problem space, understanding your users, need finding and the various methods for doing it, analyzing outputs to create prototypes, and then having users evaluate those prototypes. While I'm not a UX designer by trade, these concepts seem like they'll translate well to technical sales. Understanding user needs, defining problems clearly, and iterating based on feedback? That's essentially what I do every day.

The other half of the papers focused on applying HCI concepts to everyday ideas. I ended up writing about surprisingly random topics: cooking an egg, the offsides rule in soccer, and at-scale learning. Despite the work involved, the papers were genuinely fun and rewarding to write.

The Challenges

My least favorite part was the group project. I work from home and I'm used to working with people who aren't in the same room, but my group members were in very different places (literally and figuratively) and alignment was a constant struggle.

The final individual project required taking a self-selected topic through the entire design lifecycle. I chose to focus on improving the experience in Apple's HomeKit app, which felt like a natural fit given my interests. The project was time-consuming, and I made some frustrating mistakes when transferring my work to Overleaf for LaTeX formatting. I lost points for errors that didn't exist in my original Word document, which stung.

Speaking of LaTeX: Dr. Joyner has a preferred format, and while you can technically use Word, it never looks quite right. LaTeX is tedious to work with, but I have to admit the resulting documents look excellent and professionally consistent.

Final Thoughts

Overall, this was a positive experience. I earned an A- and, more importantly, picked up concepts that I suspect will be useful in my day-to-day work. For anyone considering their first OMSCS course, CS 6750 offers a solid intro to grad-level thinking without throwing you into the deep end of complex programming.

Just be ready to write. And to read a lot.