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Upcoming program changes
Starting Fall 2025, SIAT will be offering new concentrations and courses to its students. This section details upcoming changes to the SIAT program, classes, and concentrations. These include:
If you have questions about these changes and how they may affect your degree progress please reach out to SIAT advising.
IAT 320 is being revised to become part of the new Critical Making concentration.
The course will move to a 4-unit course.
IAT 320's description will become: Explores ideas of embodiment through physical computing supporting human relationships with technology. Students construct and analyze contemporary and historical models of bodily interaction through tangible, gestural and/or e-textile computational prototyping, understand physical practices of embodiment, and apply these concepts to representation, design and production of embodied interfaces through various critical lenses.
Reason for the change: To better reflect the typical workload of the course.
IAT 336 is being revised to become part of the new Critical Making concentration.
IAT 336’s description will become: Introduces material properties and performance in the context of physical and digital interactive artifacts. Develops practices of material selection and use, including environmental effects, tactile properties, life-cycle, fabrication processes, compatibility and effects of particular forms of use. Students gain knowledge in physical properties and affordances of materials, 3d printing, digital fabrication methods, including sustainability and ethical implications. Students will work in the SIAT Solidspace Lab and Surrey Library fabricommons Makerspace.
Prerequisites for IAT 336 will become: Completion of 48 units, including IAT 102 and IAT 106 with a minimum grade of C-. (IAT 233 will be removed as a prerequisite).
Reason for the change: To open up access to the Critical Making courses and simplify the pre-requisite chain for IAT 336.
IAT 351 is being revised to become part of the new Evidence-Based Interactive Systems concentration.
IAT 351's description will become: Students will learn about and gain experience with a variety of research methods, models, and frameworks useful for the design of interactive systems for work, learning and leisure purposes. Topics include, but are not limited to, distributed and heterogenous interaction; and immersive, ubiquitouse, and responsive environments. Application topics include knowledge work, community and organizational collaboration, security, trust and privacy. Emphasis is on practical outcomes through a project that includes system analysis, design, and development plan.
Prerequisites for IAT 351 will become: Completion of 48 units, including IAT 201 with a minimum grade of C-. (IAT 265 will be removed as a prerequisite).
Reason for the change: The material covered in Multimedia Programming for Art and Design (IAT 265) is no longer required to complete IAT 351.
IAT 355's pre-requisites are being revised.
Prerequisites for IAT 355 will become: IAT 201 and either IAT 265 or CMPT 225, all with a minimum grade of C-. (IAT 267 will be removed as a prerequisite).
Reason for the change: Introduction to Technological Systems (IAT 267) is no longer required to be successful in IAT 355.
IAT 360's pre-requisites are being revised.
Prerequisites for IAT 360 will become: IAT 265 or CMPT 225 with a minimum grade of C-. (CMPT 120 and IAT 267 will be removed as a prerequisite).
Reason for the change: Introduction to Technological Systems (IAT 267) is no longer required to be successful in IAT 360 and CMPT 120 is already required by IAT 265.
IAT 452 is being revised to become part of the new Evidenced-Based Interactive Systems concentration.
IAT 452’s description will become: Introduces methodological approaches to theory-informed and evidence-driven design of multimodal interactive interfaces for software systems to be employed in dynamic environments comprising people, other agents, and their interactions in the tasks to be performed. Synthesizes effective strategies to interaction and interface development to explore solutions for a given application domain problem by modern methods borrowed from HCI, software design, prototyping, and evaluation.
Reason for the change: Revising the description to reflect IAT 452's purpose in the new concentration.
Concentration changes
As of Fall 2024, the Design, Media Arts, and Interactive Systems concentrations will not be available to new students. Students enrolled in SIAT prior to Fall 2024 can still complete their degrees with the Design, Media Arts, or Interactive Systems concentrations, or choose to change their graduation requirements (please see further description in next section) and take the new concentrations instead.
SIAT has changed the definition of concentrations (for majors):
- It is a group of related courses that approved IAT majors can pursue within their degree
- Students may complete more than one concentration
- Students may complete no concentrations (if they choose)
- Concentrations will be recognized on your transcript
- There is no GPA requirement to access a concentration
- There are no ‘reserves’ or ‘reserved seating’ in courses for those declared in a concentration
- Joint majors are required to complete one concentration
The concentrations added in Fall 2024 - now listed in the SFU calendar - were:
- Creative Media
- Designing Interactions
- Extended Reality and Game Design
- AI and Data Science for Human-Centered Systems
- Design and Development for Web and Mobile
The new Fall 2025 concentrations are as follows:
Focuses on practices of digital fabrication emphasizing hands-on exploration of thinking with materials, artefacts, contexts of use and situated meanings. Applying critical practices ranging from diverse traditional craft knowledge to integrating computational and physical materials, students create artefacts in the context of social and cultural themes, including sustainability, health, social justice, and learning.
This concentration includes the following courses:
- Materials in Practice (IAT 336)
- Body as Interface (IAT 320)
- Critical Making Senior Project (IAT 420)
Takes an evidence-based approach to designing interfaces that better support human performance and societal well-being. Its design methods are grounded in sensory-motor, behavioural, and social science theory, critical analysis, and scientific testing of interactive software systems using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods.
This concentration includes the following courses:
- Interface Design (IAT 334)
- Advanced HCI (IAT 351)
- Design Evaluation (IAT 432)
- Developing Evidence-Based Interfaces (IAT 452)
Changes to graduation requirements
As a student, your requirements for graduation are set the day you start your program.
If SIAT changes requirements while you are in the program, you can decide to move your graduation requirements forward to the new changes but you will no longer be able to move back to your original requirements. If you would like to access the new concentrations you will have to move to the Fall 2024 graduation requirements. It is highly recommended that you reach out to SIAT advising before changing graduation requirements.
Applying to change your graduation requirements will be integrated into the and processed on February, June, and October 1st every year.
The following changes are being made to lower division (100- and 200-level) requirements in Fall 2025:
- For IAT majors, complete five of the following courses: IAT 201, IAT 202, IAT 222, IAT 233, IAT 235, IAT 238, IAT 265, IAT 267 (previously IAT 206W was included in this list)
- IAT 206W has been added to the list of required courses