In school of interactive arts and technology, there offered a course called Advanced Human Computer Interaction which focused on how better a user interface could be written.
The course’s assignments was based on Java (mostly swing library for the interfaces) and I was a TA for the course in Spring 2008 Semester in SIAT school of SFU and Dr. Lyn Bartram was the instructor of the course.
The fun thing about the course was use of phidgets (physical widgets) which helped students to simplify interacing with ports and getting information from outside world and not get into problems of connecting devices, being recognized by computer and data transmission.

The main course webpage
The course wiki (you can find projects done)
Phidgets main page