ISE 410- Human-Centered Design and Engineering

Section 001, MW, 3:30 PM-4:45 PM, In-Person

Congdon Hall 1006

Course Syllabus - Fall 2025

"This syllabus is subject to change, but only with sufficient notification."

 

 

Welcome to Dr. Saeidi’s Human-Centered Design and Engineering class! This course aims to expose students to AI techniques and intelligent systems focused on seamless usability and intuitive user interaction. The course covers behavioral models of human users when interacting with autonomy as well as frameworks and research to better understand and implement human-centered designs. Students will form teams and work on final projects that delve into industry needs related to improving the performance, productivity, and workload of the human-AI teams.

 

The students who successfully complete this course will:

• Explain the process of ideation, development, deployment, and monitoring of human-centered AI products.
• Describe theoretical and practical HCD frameworks.
• Apply the fundamentals of human-centered design to hardware/software engineering projects.
• Describe how to design and evaluate intelligent systems to enhance the usability and effectiveness of such systems for human users. 

 

What else do I need to know about this course? Prerequisites: ISE 360 (Intro to Robotics) and fluency in all its prerequisites (ISE 211-Programming for Engineers, ISE 333- Signals, Systems, and Controls, etc.) are required for this course. This is a difficult and time-consuming course. Plan carefully to complete assignments and projects in a timely manner. I will cover the required tools as needed, but eventually, you will be responsible for filling any gaps in knowledge you may have while taking this course.  Make sure you have pens/pencils/notebooks during the class. You will need to take notes regularly, and we will have paper-based submissions for some in-class activities and quizzes.

 

What do I do when I need help? If you need help, talk to me or shoot me an email. I will do all I can to help you understand the materials. How to contact Dr. Saeidi? E-mail: saeidih@uncw.edu Office hours: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 3 pm-4 pm, Fridays, 2 p.m.-3 p.m., and also by appointment. Office: 2038 Congdon Hall Phone: (910) 962-2094 You can email me at any time but I only respond to emails from 8 am to 5 pm. All the emails regarding ISE410 must be in the following format; otherwise, I might not open them in time:   ISE410 – proper title   For example "ISE410 – Project/Lab 2"

 

Textbooks (Optional)

• Fundamentals of User-Centered Design: A Practical Approach, Brian Still and Kate Crane, CRC Press, 2017. (Fundamentals of User-Centered Design_25_07_21_12_52_00.pdf)

• Control theory for humans: Quantitative approaches to modeling performance, Jagacinski RJ, Flach JM. . CRC press; 2018 Oct 8. (Flach, John_ Jagacinski, Richard J - Control theory for humans_ quantitative approaches to modeling performance-Taylor & Francis (2011).pdf)

• Designing Human-Centric AI Experiences: Applied UX Design for Artificial Intelligence (Design Thinking), Akshay Kore, 1st ed. Edition, Apress, August 2022.

 

Other Resources (More resources will be posted in different modules as well)

• iso-9241-210-human-centered-design-for-interactive-systems.pdf
• Transparency-ML-Enabled-Devices-Guiding-Principles_FDA.pdf
• GMLP_Guiding_Principles_FDA.pdf
• guidance-ai-enabled-device-software-functions_FDA.pdf
• Keesman-SystemIdentification-2011.pdf
• The search engine of your choice
• ...

 

Grading

A modified 10-point scale will be used to compute your course grade. Pluses and minuses will be assigned based on the following chart.

Exam: 

Midterm Exam (20%):       11/5/2025

 

These exams will be in-person and paper-based and focused on fundamental theories. There will be NO make-up exams.  All exams are closed-book. 

 

Assignments:

There will be 4-5 paper-based and computer-based assignments. These assignments must be completed and submitted individually (no collaborations allowed).

 

Projects:

One project is embedded in the course, which requires group work. To facilitate the development and test steps, this project is done in three phases:

- Phase 1: Autonomous control and design requirements.

- Phase 2: Manual control interface.

- Phase 3: System integration, experiments, and analysis.

Equipment: Each team will be give a robotic kit to develop the required controllers and human-AI collaborative interfaces. The kit must be returned in a functional state, as when it was distributed. Lost parts and items must be replaced by the team members. 

Space: For this semester, you will have access to some space in Dr. Saeidi's research lab or Congdon 2035 to work on your projects. Please strictly follow the policies mandated by each lab space to ensure safety, efficient usage of resources, and a productive academic environment. 

Reports and presentations/demos:

• A report and a presentation are expected for each phase of the project (a technical report + an in-class presentation).
• You will form teams to complete the projects, write the reports, and present your work to the class.
• Each team will consist of 3 students.
• For the presentations, each team will have 15 minutes to present the results, followed by a 5-minute Q&A session.  Please refer to the deadlines posted in each module for each phase.
• The team member list is due on 8/24/25. Once the teams form, they will remain unchanged throughout the semester. Be careful when selecting teammates so that effective collaboration is achieved.

Late submission policy for the assignments, reports, and presentations:

• Prompt notification  (for good reason, documented illness, etc.) is required. Late submissions will not be accepted if not communicated with the instructor before the deadline (results in a 0 grade).
• Otherwise, a 10% penalty per day.
• After 3 days,  it will result in a 0 grade for the specific assignment/lab/report/presentation. 

 

Attendance: 

Regular attendance is expected. This course proceeds at such a pace that class absence can have an impact on student performance and final grades. Each student is responsible for all the work, including tests and written work, in all class sessions.

 There will be extensive in-class activities and some questions and problems in the exams will be from the lecture notes. Unavoidable schedule changes may be announced in class and class participation and in-class activities may impact final grade determination in some cases. 

Students must wait 15 minutes if the professor is late for class.

Anticipated Absences. Anticipated absences should be reported to the instructor at least seven days before the absence is scheduled to occur. Situations in which an instructor is encouraged to approve a documented anticipated absence include:

• Attendance at university-sponsored activities in which the student is representing UNCW, e.g., a professional meeting in which the student presents his or her research, required varsity athletic events for team members, or required events for SGA officers. Instructors may require certification of the student’s participation from the administrator in charge of the activity. Absences for university-affiliated, but not directly sponsored, activities (such as a club or Greek life events) do not qualify under this policy.
• Required court attendance as certified by the Clerk of Court.
• Required military duty as certified by the student’s commanding officer.

Unanticipated Absences. Students are encouraged to communicate with instructors in a timely fashion after unanticipated absences from class. Each faculty member determines how to treat such absences but typically will excuse absences due to health emergencies, death in the family, or a comparable emergency when supported by verifying documentation from the student. 

Two missed submissions or three unexcused absences will result in an F grade in the class.

 

 

Academic Integrity

Use of any AI code generators is not allowed. Violators will be reported. See here for more details

https://uncw.edu/about/university-administration/student-affairs/departments/dean-students/honor-code/Links to an external site.

University Policy on academic integrity will be followed for this course. Cheating will be taken very seriously, resulting in harsh penalties. Since the skills required in this class are also required in the next class, cheating in this class will seriously hamper your ability to pass the next class. Please refer to this page for more information about the University policies. 

Any dissemination of class notes, lecture slides, recordings, handouts, copies of exams, or any other course materials without permission of the instructor is prohibited by UNCW policy.  UNCW Copyright Use and Ownership Policy (http://www.uncw.edu/policies/documents/01210.copyrightpolicy.pdf) specifies that class notes and related materials are considered derivative of the original intellectual property of the course instructor. Therefore, the instructor (not the student) owns the copyright and must provide specific permission to distribute and/or reuse those materials for anything other than personal use and scholarship by the student. Commercial use, display, or dissemination of such notes, copies, or recordings—as well as posting to websites--will generally constitute an infringement of copyright and the Honor Code.  Materials that qualify as student-owned are listed in the policy.

Health and Safety Protocols:

Please do not come to class when you are not feeling well or are experiencing any COVID-19 symptoms. Inform the instructor so that proper measures can be taken for you to keep up with the class pace. If you have been exposed to COVID-19 or are concerned about exposure, please contact the Student Health Center at (910) 962-3280 for specific information about testing, contact tracing and quarantine/isolation requirements, which differ for vaccinated and non-vaccinated individuals, according to CDC guidance. Remember, keeping healthy is essential to keeping campus open! Thank you for your help and compliance.