11 weeks at UCLIC

This autumn was full of big changes!

I moved from wonderful Yorkshire down to London – and you can probably imagine that I started to experience totally different and exciting world – but that would be a story for another article.

I started also new and exciting job as User Experience Consultant at Fortune Cookie. It is now 3 months since I joined the company – and I’m learning more and more every day.

And finally – and this is something I was looking forward to for so long – I started the MSc course in Human-Computer Interaction with Ergonomics at UCLIC! Now, I’m 11 weeks into the course and I have to confess that what I experienced so far hugely surpassed my expectations.

The induction week was well organised, full of quite informative talks and first assignment – creating a digital story explaining what is Human-Computer Interaction to 12 – 16 years old. The exercise was great mainly for getting to know other students quickly and giving us chance to collaborate on something funny and not so formal.

Have a look on our winning (2 categories out of 3!) “What is HCI?” video.

I’m a part-time student so I attend only one module at the moment – and that is Ergonomics. I always considered ergonomics to be bit dry and not very exciting discipline. But I was really wrong! Ergonomics is indeed very enjoyable, and mainly it is extremely relevant to the job of interaction / UX designer. I’ll focus on Ergonomics in one of my next articles, discussing why is it great idea for an UX guy to get his teeth more into ergonomics.

It is three months since I moved down here and so far it was absolutely great experience! London might feel to be horribly busy and unfriendly city at a first glance, but when you find your ways and places, it quickly becomes much more friendlier place for living. And I’m learning so much at work, doing research, usability testing and heuristic evaluations, eye-tracking, sketching and prototyping… It’s brilliant!

I can’t wait to see what I’m going to next, either at work and at the course!