Fully Online and Asynchronous
12 graduate credits | 4 courses
3 Credit Hours
Every product assumes a full account of the human person. This course makes it explicit.
Drawing on the Catholic intellectual tradition of St. Thomas Aquinas, you will examine how contemporary interaction patterns, frictionless flows, predictive nudging, infinite scroll, cognitive offloading, can quietly diminish attention, agency, memory, skill, work, and relationships.
3 Credit Hours
You will examine capabilities, limitations, failure modes, and human implications so that you can participate confidently in product decisions. The course treats AI neither as magic nor as mere tooling. It treats it as a powerful class of artifacts whose outputs can look like understanding, judgment, or care without being any of those things. Knowing the difference is part of professional competence.
3 Credit Hours
You will learn to evaluate not only harms and compliance risks, but the moral structure of a product decision: who is treated as an end and who as a means; where human judgment must remain; how work and vocation are altered when a task is automated; and how benefits and burdens are distributed. The course forms the conscience of the product leader, not merely the policy of the organization.
3 Credit Hours
You will practice designing technology around real human needs, and you will explore how AI can augment human work and capabilities without deskilling the people it claims to serve. The course insists that “human-centered” is not a style of interface. It is a claim about whose good the product is for.
Artificial intelligence is changing how products are designed, built, and used. It is also changing the interior capacities of the people who use them: their attention, memory, judgment, work, and relationships. The pace of adoption is remarkable. But the interior effects are quieter, and too often left unexamined.
The Graduate Certificate in Prudential Design of AI Products prepares product executives, designers, founders, and technology leaders to make better decisions about how AI should be integrated into products and what the user experiences of these products should be like.
Through four graduate-level courses in artificial intelligence, human-centered design, Catholic anthropology, and applied ethics, you will learn to understand what AI can actually do, evaluate how it forms the persons who use it, and design products that are innovative, responsible, and ordered to genuine human flourishing.
✓ Understand core AI and machine learning concepts, including generative AI, and judge where AI creates real product value for humans versus mere convenience at a hidden cost
✓ Evaluate how technology affects human attention, judgment, work, relationships, and flourishing, and address questions of privacy, dignity, and responsibility
✓ Apply human-centered design methods – user research, personas, ideation, prototyping, and stakeholder analysis – to AI features
✓ Address questions of privacy, fairness, surveillance, power, responsibility, and human dignity
✓ Apply human-centered design methods such as user research, interviewing, personas, use cases, ideation, prototyping, and stakeholder analysis
✓ Make better product decisions when technical, business, ethical, and human considerations compete
✓ Practice prudence: the habit of right judgment in particular cases when no checklist settles the trade-offs
AI product design requires balancing technical feasibility with user and business value, innovation, privacy, autonomy, fairness, efficiency, human relationships, and long-term flourishing.
Use Prudential design to combine technical understanding, human-centered methods, ethical reasoning, and practical wisdom.
Guide product development with prudence: This certificate helps product leaders make wiser tradeoffs.
Apply Principles of Catholic Anthropology and Catholic Social Teaching to design technology that serve the human person.
Brief description of the partnership and its contribution to the program.
Brief description of the partnership and its contribution to the program.
Discover how CatholicIU students and graduates connect professional excellence, Catholic principles, and meaningful impact in their work.
“I truly loved it and miss it!”
“I truly loved it and miss it! The courses were online but I experienced support from my professors, peers and anyone I had contact with in CIU.”
—Student Testimonial
[Video Testimonial] Name, Role, Organization — short testimonial.
[Video Testimonial] Name, Role, Organization — short testimonial.
Catholic International University is committed to making high-quality Catholic graduate education accessible to professionals around the world.
For the 12-credit Graduate Certificate:
Financial assistance and scholarship opportunities may be available to eligible students.
Program at a Glance
Courses:
William Hutson holds a Ph.D. in Ergonomics/Human Factors Engineering from North Carolina
State University. His scholarly interests center on AI, human-computer interaction, human-centered design, and the application of human factors to technology in healthcare.
Catholic International University Provides:
