A candidate student for UCL’s HCI programme emailed me to ask some questions about the course, so I’ve decided with his permission to put the Q&A here for the benefit of everyone else. If anyone wants to add anything, feel free to put it in the comments section.
1. What do you think about the experience and knowledge (etc.) that you gained through that course, now almost year after finishing it? Did it help in getting a great and desired job?
I think different students get different things out of the course. What I wanted out of it was some real experience doing ethnographic fieldwork and good exposure to the user experience industry. I got both of that. The course is good, but if you don’t know what to look for, you will most probably not get as much of your worth of fees out of the course.
I would recommend “keeping an eye” on your classmates – especially those who work hard, are active in HCI-related activities outside of class, and have a strong purpose of what they want to get out of the course. For someone who hasn’t had any experience in the real world, it would really benefit to learn from others who have.
I think the course is really good for that because it attracts both new and experienced students alike.
2. I am also concern if I’m doing right choosing that course and rejecting ergonomics at Loughborough. My background is in psychology, I am PC literate but have no idea how to programme (willing to learn though) etc. I also do not have any professional experience whatsoever. Now, obviously HCI is mainly about (as far as I understand) the USER, his experience and performance within various technological settings, so I guess it is more about psychology than Computer Science, but I’m not sure about that. So my concern is: do I actually have any chance of getting a job (HCI-related or ergonomics-related) after this course?
The course is skewed towards psychology and human factors. No programming needed.
However, if you are going to seek employment after the course, some jobs may require a bit of knowledge of HTML/CSS/etc., which are mostly front-end languages. It’s no harm picking it up and getting that extra advantage over someone who doesn’t.
I am currently working in a company where, incidentally, 3 of my friends from the course are working as my colleagues. One of them has strong programming knowledge while the other two don’t. We frequently get into arguments about the way interfaces should be built within the given time constraints, and it’s usually due to misunderstandings about the underlying technology.
However, it’s not a life-and-death thing. I work in a company where we build our own software. Your mileage may vary. I know other students who don’t even touch programming.
3. How many students are there each year? Is it about 30? In the UCLIC 2008 Newsletter you can find this info: “UCLIC’s teaching programme accepts about 30 students per annum, with backgrounds in psychology, computing and design disciplines.”
My year had about 40+ students. This year’s batch had 60+. Two years ago, the numbers were more like 30+. I actually prefer a smaller group. 60 is too much. 40 was just “large enough”.
I don’t know how the numbers are going to be like for this year. I don’t think they can handle more than 60, to be honest. But I’d encourage you to ask this year’s batch to find out more about their experience.
4. How strong is the ergonomic part of the course? Is it more like HCI with “elements of Ergonomics” rather than “Ergonomics”?
Ergonomics is fairly strong. Strong industry links through Rachel Benedyk’s contacts. Good opportunities for projects and hands on experience. The industry is fairly lucrative – you can get to work with Transport for London, air traffic control systems, nuclear power plants, etc etc.
5. Do all students there have a vast professional experience?
In my experience, it has been a mix. The faculty encourage that mix as well – in groupwork and otherwise. Good to learn from other students.
Hi, I did the UCLIC Msc with Boon and I would add a few things:
1) the MSc definitely helps to get a job in UX, by teaching the psychology fundamentals and the basics for many design techniques, but also by the networking it provides: you will find UCLIC graduates in pretty much every UX consultancy in London.
2) This isn’t a technological course at all, most student never wrote a line of code (not even html) and never will as most UX job does not involve that. Obviously it can’t hurt to know the basics in html/css, and that can help in order to understand the constraints facing the dev team.
4) The Ergonomics part is quite important (like 1/4 of the MSc), but they also use it to introduce the notion of the variability in users, and user centred design.
5) No, it’s a mix from every level, for the student fresh out of a BSc to the senior guy with 20 year experience changing career or improving his skills. Plus everything in between. This mix, and the inter-students learning opportunities it provides is a key element in the MSc
Boon, could you forward this to your contact? Thx
Re: non-programming psychology students, I would like that the MSc project is a great opportunity to learn programming, as running experiments can often involve programming a task & environment. I don’t consider myself a programmer (aside from some casual HTML and programming skinner-box experiments in BASIC way back when). However, for my project I picked up enough Java to tweak an old experiment, and another classmate of ours who was also a non-programmer did some programming in Visual Basic I believe. Note that we both did projects that were on the quantitative cog psych end of the spectrum, and you have to be motivated to put the time in to learn, but it’s valuable opportunity to show that you’re able to stretch yourself and become more well-rounded. If you’re not interested in programming at all, than it’s easy enough to avoid it altogether by doing a qualitative project. And again, if you’re a quantitative psych person there’s a benefit to learning the qualitative side because most commercial research you’re likely to encounter after the course will be qualitative.
Re: lack of professional experience
It’s hard to get started with limited professional experience, but a couple things you can do are
1) do a sponsored project working for a company, which will be like a research-driven internship. there are benefits and downsides to this approach, though.
2) if you’re having difficulty finding a job right off the bat (e.g can’t find junior jobs), consider doing an unpaid internship for 2 months. it’s not really ideal, but it can help get your foot in the door.
3) build a portfolio consisting of your student work and any internship work. talk about how you approach design problems and techniques/tools you used. a ux portfolio doesn’t have to be glossy/fancy like a visual design portfolio (e.g. it might consist of rough sketches and ugly cardboard prototypes), as it’s more about your ability to identify the pros and cons of different approaches.
Hi,
I have recently been accepted for the Msc in HCI-E starting in September. So this Q&A has been of great benefit to me, thank you so much for posting.
I was just wondering if you sould tell me how the Msc in HCI-E is regarded by employers? I have also been accepted to study for an Msc in Interactive Systems Design in University of Nottingham and was wondering how these 2 courses may compare to each other?
If you can offer any insight into these questions it would be greatly appreciated,
Shanco.