The human-computer interface (HCI) market will reach $7.24 billion USD in 2026; LinkedIn ranks UX design as one of the 5 most in-demand skills of 2020 and that is why it is crucial to strengthen the quantity and quality of the curriculum in Latin America.
In 2018, Professor Royer David Estrada Esponda, cresearch coordinator of the Tuluá branch of Univalle and a researcher of the Science, Action and Development research group (CAD), published the study "Human-computer interaction in the curriculum of higher education institutions in Colombia" which showed that only 4.36% of students in the basic common core associated with IT careers in Colombia have knowledge of the discipline of human-computer interaction.
"In Colombia, every day we interact with our televisions, smartphones and cars," Professor Estrada said, adding that the ubiquity of these systems makes sense for Colombian IT professionals to be trained in HCI.
Professor Estrada worked with researchers including undergraduates from Universidad de la Salle Bajío in the Mexican state of Guanajuato to publish "The Human Computer Interaction in the Curricula of Mexican Higher Education Institutions" in the scientific journal Scientia Et Technica in 2021 and found that 95.40% of graduates were from academic programs that include HCI-related subjects were required to pass these subjects.
The researchers hope that in the future they can investigate other Latin American benchmark countries such as Chile or Argentina to look for methods to improve Colombia's results.
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| Photo: Professor Royer David Estrada Esponda and the Mexican students in conversation with Andrew James, a communicator from the communications office of Univalle's engineering faculty. Credit: Andrew James/NCC-FI/Univalle |
The Gap
"Mexico and Colombia have many similarities culturally and in their educational system," said Professor Estrada, adding that Mexico's higher population and economic development did not fully explain the drastic difference in the two countries' results.
"A key factor is that in Mexico, HCI subjects are compulsory, while in Colombia they are elective subjects," Professor Estrada said.
The research published in 2021 showed that 5,543 tertiary instituions were registiered in 2019 throughout Mexico and that 1,266 of these offer Professional and Technological Bachelor's degree academic programs in the field of Information and Communication Technologies.
Of those institutions, 42.58% include in their curricula 1,548 subjects related to HCI/IPO that are part of 1,813 curricula, in a mandatory way they had to pass those subjects.
Professor Estrada added that access to this knowledge is also key for women in the two countries.
"In further studies we would like to know what access women have to HCI knowledge," Professor Estrada explained.
Within this research, young Mexican students had the opportunity to participate as researchers, for example by helping to recompile the data.
Gerardo Javier Cabrera Reynaga, who was a sixth semester student of Software Engineering and Computer Systems at Universidad de la Salle Bajío at the time he worked on the study, said that being part of the Colombian team helped the Mexican students a lot.
"To get to know the research process in progress and to see how the research works helps us to know what we like or dislike it about the research process," Cabrera said, adding that the experience also contextualized the issues in HCI.
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| Photo: Tuluá campus of Universidad del Valle. Credit: Univalle |
The Importance of Regional Education
Professor Estrada is based at Univalle's regional headquarters in Tuluá, a key intermediate city in the agricultural and service-intensive industry in the center of the department of Valle del Cauca.
Founded in 1987 during Univalle's regionalization system, the headquarters offers Technology in Electronics, Software Development, Food; and degrees in Food Engineering and Systems Engineering, among others.
Professor Estrada said that one of the drivers of the studies into HCI was to improve IT talent training and employability conditions given the current trend of computerization.
He noted that this is particularly important at a time where it is now easier to work remotely outside Colombia's biggest urban centers.
"We have already seen that many of our graduates have landed jobs in industry and with companies abroad," Professor Estrada explained, adding that the training gives them more opportunities to work remotely from their region while earning good salaries.
Jonathan Eduardo Muñoz Rodríguez, who was also a sixth-semester software and computer systems engineering student at La Salle University Bajío during the study, said that also in Mexico, access to a strong information technology education can open doors outside the larger cities.
"This is something that I get to live in a town called Jalisco, I had to go to Guanajuato to study," Muñoz said.
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