Five Pedagogical Principles of a User-Centered Design Course that Prepares Computing Undergraduates for Industry Jobs

We present a new user-centered design course that prepares computing undergraduates for software industry jobs such as UI/UX designer, product designer, and product manager. Our course aims to bridge the academia-industry gap and innovates upon prior published HCI courses due to its targeted focus on job preparation, inclusion, and scale. Nearly 200 students (55% women) have taken it in the past two years. We developed its curriculum to align with the needs of modern industry employers and implemented five theory-backed pedagogical principles: 1) industry-relevant project prompts developed in consultation with recent course alumni, 2) final project deliverable optimized for job-seeking, 3) no coding required to foster inclusion, 4) low-stress effort-based grading to further foster inclusion, 5) weekly feedback and chances for revisions. We discuss the theoretical rationale behind these five principles and how instructors can potentially apply them to a broad range of project-based courses across many areas of computing.