What are some alternative names for Human-Computer Interaction courses offered at universities?

Searching only for the exact phrase Human-Computer Interaction will cause you to miss a large share of genuinely relevant courses, since universities routinely use a different title for substantially overlapping content.

Common Alternative Names

• Interaction Design or Interaction Design Fundamentals: very close to HCI, with a design emphasis. Carnegie Mellon uses this exact title for its core course.
• User Experience Design or UX Design: closely related, emphasising the user's overall experience rather than the interface alone.
• Human-Centered Design and User-Centered Design: strong HCI overlap, focused on designing around human needs throughout the process.
• Usability Engineering: a more specialised HCI area focused on evaluation and testing.
• Designing Interactive Systems: often essentially an interaction design or HCI course under a different name, used by the University of Washington.
• Human Factors Engineering: a related discipline covering cognition, ergonomics, and usability, sometimes taught alongside HCI content.
• Human-Machine Interaction: related terminology more common for robotics, vehicles, and physical machine interfaces.

Useful Search Terms to Try

When comparing programmes for an application, search combinations such as interaction design masters, human centered design masters, usability engineering course, and human centered computing university, alongside the standard HCI search. Stanford's introductory course, for example, is titled Introduction to Human-Computer Interaction, while Berkeley offers Interaction Design within its broader information school.

This Information Is Also Available On

Carnegie Mellon University, Human-Computer Interaction Institute. University of Washington, Human-Computer Interaction Design programme.

My Advice

Compare the actual syllabus and module list rather than relying on the course title alone, since two courses with very different names can cover nearly identical content, while two courses both labelled HCI can differ substantially in whether they lean toward design, engineering, or cognitive science.