Info Sci Human Centered Design

A Human Centered Program

Are you looking for a career in the behavioral sciences? Design? Do you want to make an impact? Improve people's lives? Work with people?
The behavioral sciences are a significant and growing part of the Information Science degree and fields. Key disciplines including UX, Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human Centered Design (HCD) use frameworks and methods that rely on behavioral science practitioners for research, design, scalability, inclusiveness, and fairness.

People are at the heart of what we do. Our Information Science degree is highly interdisciplinary and blends, technical and human-centered methods to achieve public good. You'll learn to work with people and capture and leverage data to gain insight into human behavior, sentiment, and needs, then translate those insights into actionable design, policy, technology, or services.

Areas of focus:

UX/ User Experience Design

User Research

Human Centered Design

Human Computer Interaction

Information User Needs Assessment

Sentiment Research & Analysis with AI & ML

Data Modeling and Visualization

System Ethnography & Ethics

Participatory & Co Design

Ready to learn more and explore if this degree might be right for you?

Interdisciplinary + Collaborative Across Sectors

Government Agencies and Public Health

Behavioral Research: Our researchers work with agencies and organizations to analyze data sets, social media, call center transcripts, survey responses, and interview transcripts, to monitor the public sentiment and anxiety around major issues like disease outbreaks, economic changes, or new public safety policies.

Shaping Needs Assessment: We don't simply employ User-Centered Design principles we challenge them and design better, more ethically, inclusive user centered design tools, ensuring products and services are intuitive, reliable, and accessible to a diverse user bases.

Evaluation & Shape Policy: Learn to modeling data to shape policy. Help policymakers understand the true impact of existing programs and identify where to allocate public resources for maximum social impact.

Schools and Educational Technology

User Centered Learning & Teaching: Research and design rich educational environments, centered on the whole child. Learn to measure emotional experiences and attitudes in learning environments and create experiences that consider the whole child including learning ecosystems, diversity, UDL, accessibility, and culture.

Predictive Analytics: Our researchers and designers in this area work with learning analytics to identify early signs of low-performing or disengaged students, informing educational strategies for proactive behavioral and academic support.

Designing Learning Tools: Learn to master Human Centered Design, Participatory Design and Usability Testing, working with teachers, administrators, and students to design new educational products and programs that are engaging and effective for diverse learning needs.

Non-Profit Organizations and Social Impact

Measure Program Effectiveness: Help non-profits manage their client/community data to quantify and prove their impact.

Community Needs Identification: Learn to capture and use data from community forums, online discussions, and local data partners to identify specific, unmet needs such as food insecurity or gaps in mental health services, and to inform the strategy, outreach, policy needs, and services.

Ethical Data Sharing: Learn to develop secure and ethical data-sharing frameworks. Partner with community organizations and state agencies to work with data projects that can guide effective policy responses without compromising individual privacy.

Businesses and Organizations

Corporate Social Responsibility: Our researchers consult with businesses to help them measure the social impact of their CSR initiatives or supply chains, using data to ensure transparency and ethical practices.

Human Centered Design & Accessibility: Learn to apply Human Centered Design principles to products and services to ensure they are accessible to users with disabilities and align ethical design with broader market reach.

For Public Good

Designing for Accessibility: Combined, behavioral and information science students understand the need for products and services to be accessible, and learn to actually design, build, and advocate for accessible systems.

Ethical Technology Design: In government and non-profit work, data handling must be highly ethical. Our courses in Information Ethics and Privacy and Security teach students how to manage sensitive data and ensure that digital services do not introduce bias or harm.

Explore Classes

User-Centered Design

Prototyping and Development Studio

Game Design

Designing Patient-Centered Technologies

Technology Design Ethics

Database Design and Modeling

Information User Needs and Assessment

Decision Making for Cybersecurity

Fundamentals of Technology Innovation

Technology Socialprenuer

Competitive Business Intelligence

Technologies, Infrastructure and Architecture

Designing Fair systems

Design Across Campus

Designing Tools for Tinkering and Learning

National Rankings

UMD is #1 in the USA in producing computer science and information science bachelor’s degrees among non-online universities (The Chronicle of Higher Education) and #3 in the nation overall
UMD is #18 in the USA as a Public Research Institution (NSF HERD Survey)
UMD is #7 in the USA as a University for Undergraduate Entrepreneurship (The Princeton Review)
InfoSci is the fastest-growing undergraduate program at UMD and Shady Grove