Checklist for the start of your studies
Before the first day of your education, you need to take some important steps.
1.Your offer
You have been admitted. If you want to keep your place (seat), you do not have to reply to your offer.
If you do not want to keep your place you should decline your offer by logging in to 'My pages' on universityadmissions.se, and follow the instructions. You should click "I wish to decline this offer" next to the course or programme you want to decline.
If you see "Reserve" next to your course or programme in the Notification of selection results, this means that you've been placed on a waiting list for that course/programme.
2.Activate your user account and MFA
As a new student, you need to activate your user account (your UMU-id) approximately two weeks prior to the start of the semester.
With your user account you can:
- register for courses
- access the internet in computer labs and the university's wireless network
- submit assignments and verify your study results
- access your student e-mail
If you are a new student, you will automatically receive a user account when you are admitted, but you will need to activate it for it to function properly. You will not be able to activate it until approximately two weeks prior to the start of the semester.
Exchange student or tuition fee paying student
If you are an exchange student or tuition fee paying student, you will receive an email with instructions on how to activate your account.
Install MFA for a more secure login
To increase security and reduce the risk of unauthorised access to your information or account, students must enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) to log in to various systems, such as Canvas and the Student Web.
I want to activate my user account and install MFA
Help! It´s not working
If you are having problems activating your account or logging in, please contact our Servicedesk. You will find answers to common questions, and can submit enquiries.
3.Course registration
Introduction meeting
You must be registered for the course you have been admitted to, in order to be allowed to follow the course and to get your results recorded during the course.
For this course, registration takes place during an introduction meeting on 31 August 2026. If you do not attend the introduction and have not notified Student Support Informatics in advance, you will not be registered and risk losing your place (seat).
Learning platform
The communication between students and teachers will mainly take place via Canvas, one of Umeå University's learning and collaboration platforms. Therefore, it is essential that you have access to a computer and internet connection with good transfer speed. In the learning platform, you will have access to the course's activities such as information about course literature, assignments, submissions, lectures and discussion forums.
To be able to login to Canvas you need to have activated your Umu-id account and registered for the course. You can find more information about Canvas and Umu-id on the Student website. Once you registered for the course and logged in to Canvas with your Umu-id, you will see the course as an optional tab in your work environment. The learning platform in Canvas opens at the start of the course.
Learn more about Canvas and log in to Canvas
4.Course start
2026-08-31
Please see schedule
Please see schedule
The schedule is preliminary until four weeks before the course starts
Course information
Welcome to the course Theoretical Approaches in Human-Computer Interaction.
In this course, we will cover different theoretical approaches in the field of HCI. As you know Human-computer Interaction is an interdisciplinary field. The development of knowledge in this field has been shaped by three main waves or paradigms.
In this course we will go through each of these waves and pay special attention to some particular approaches, activity theory, materiality, phenomenology. We will also pay some special attention to ethical and critical aspects of the HCI research.
This course will provide a solid theoretical base for you as you will continue studying in the second year of the programme.
The course starts on 31 August 2026 and will end on 1 November 2026.
Warm Welcome & Best Regards
Fatemeh Moradi
Contact information
If you have questions about the course's content, you are welcome to contact the course teacher:
Fatemeh Moradi fatemeh.moradi@umu.se
Questions of an administrative nature such as queries about registration and certificates can be asked to our Student Support:
studentsupport.informatik@umu.se
We wish you a warm welcome and hope that you will enjoy your time here at the Department of Informatics!
Support and help
We support our students to create an equal learning environment.