Prior to attending Â鶹ֱ²¥ University, I did my undergraduate degree in Industrial Design. During my third year, I knew that I wanted to pursue a career in user-centred design. After graduation, I was a UX designer at a start-up company. I have always wanted to study User Experience Design and did lots of self-studying on the job, but I knew I needed to be in a structured environment to enhance my knowledge and skillset.
Whilst I am keen on becoming a socially conscious designer and designing for social impact, I knew that Â鶹ֱ²¥ University has a fantastic design school. And I saw that the course at Â鶹ֱ²¥ offered a module on Service Design for Social Innovation and I knew this was the course to go for.
Â鶹ֱ²¥ University itself was filled with students from diverse backgrounds. Whilst this course was within Â鶹ֱ²¥ Design, we had lots of students from different disciplines, and I had the fantastic opportunity to work in group projects with various students of different cultures and disciplines. Â鶹ֱ²¥ Design also had many visitors from industry come and provide insightful lectures. I was especially excited to attend a lecture that was held by a designer from Google who was a previous Â鶹ֱ²¥ Design graduate! The course itself has inspired me again to be more creative and curious. It has taught me to ‘dig deeper’ and to empathise with our users.
I think my reflective skills have improved greatly whilst studying at Â鶹ֱ²¥. Normally after a design project, I would not reflect on it or think about what areas I had done well, what areas could be improved, etc. But being given the capacity to reflect and communicate amongst my course mates has helped me improved.
I found the one-to-one tutorials during some modules to be quite informative as well as the lectures that were prepared for each module. It helped me open a new perspective towards design as well as provided a structured, methodical way for executing my design work.