User Experience Design MSc

Facts about User Experience Design

Qualification	MSc
Duration	Full time: 1 year Part time: 2–3 years
Attendance	Mixed, including block and day/evening sessions.
Assessment	Essays, presentations, research dissertations, user interfaces.
Course structure
This course is part of Digital Media Kingston. For more information please visit www.digitalmediakingston.com.

Choose Kingston's User Experience Design MSc

This programme runs as part of a suite of six courses available from Digital Media Kingston: User Experience Design MA/MSc, Games Development MA/MSc and 3D Computer Generated Imagery MA/MSc.

This new suite of courses are twinned across the arts and sciences to prepare you for employment in the digital media industry where teams of specialists work together to develop and author innovative digital media projects.

The courses have been specifically designed to utilise the best digital media expertise and resources from across the three faculties of Art, Design and Architecture (FADA); Art and Social Sciences (FASS); and Science, Engineering and Computing (SEC). They have been developed in consultation with our industry panel, which includes representatives from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, DreamWorks and Samsung Design Europe.

The emphasis on project and team work provides an industry-focused learning experience where you can hone your own specialist skills in a professional context. Work placements, real projects, internships and an industry mentoring scheme mean these courses will arm you for entry into the fast-growing and highly competitive digital media arena.

What will you study?

In the introductory part of the course, common across all DMI courses, you will work with other students from diverse academic, creative and technical backgrounds to experience the commonalities in professional digital media practice.

The second part of the course looks at the core skills behind user-centred development, focusing on the analysis and design of multimodal, multimedia user interfaces that are easy to use and support compelling user experiences, and discover a range of relevant user theories (psychological, social etc) and their relevance to experience design.

The specialist modules focus on developing and contributing to projects in collaboration with other students from across the full DMI suite. The option modules include a design project, usability engineering, and/or mark-up languages, scripting and other 'high level' programming languages.

For your final project, you will take a professional role (eg user interface designer, user experience designer, information architect etc) in a team with other students to produce a professional piece of work.

Course structure

Please note that this is an indicative list of modules and is not intended as a definitive list. Those listed here may also be a mixture of core and optional modules.

The full MSc consists of six core modules (two common to Digital Media Institute courses, and four common to Interaction Design), two option modules and a research project.

Core modules

Digital Interdisciplinary Practice
Digital Interdisciplinary Practice

Responding to the changes and new demands of the digital media Industries, the focus of Digital Interdisciplinary Practice is establishing students' team-working skills through innovative project development practices devised in consultation with external advisors from industry. These may be innovative and complex and involve high-levels of creative problem solving and user testing, developing students' ability to interpret, interact and participate in iterative design processes and agile development practices. Students' will be expected to present work in the context of their own practice, making their understanding of development processes for digital media clear and contextualising their own contribution. They will also be expected to develop an understanding of how iterative design processes and agile development practices relate to career opportunities in the digital media industries, cultivate their professional practice and initiate professional standard working relationships towards group projects.
Digital Content Production Processes
Digital Content Production Processes

This module forms one of the cornerstones of the Digital Media suite of courses and is one of two modules that all students will take. Its focus is on the various modes of production such as but not limited to: games production, mobile computing, online social spaces and interactive media. Indicative content may include idea development formalisations, responding to a brief, researching the brief, developing a pitch, pre-production paperwork, production pipelines, post production and testing etc. These practices will be contextualised by emerging and constantly changing legal frameworks of intellectual property, digital rights in the 21^st Century and the increasing concerns over accessibility are also explored.
Experience Design I
Experience Design I

The focus of this module is 'active design research'. The context is emerging principles of experience design media in advertising and cultural (as well as) spatial consumption. You will:
- interrogate the meaning of experience design;
- evaluate the cultural contexts of 'good' and 'bad' experience design (in, for example, mobile and interactive);
- produce prototypes for the purpose of design research; and
- have the opportunity to design and apply primary research and user experience analyses to your own prototypes.
Throughout the module, we will encourage you to develop and investigate the possibility of experience design proposals for all sensory modes (see, hear, touch, smell and taste).
Experience Design II
Experience Design II

In this module you will produce an integrated interaction/experience design project with digital media tools of your own choosing.

Drawing on concepts and theories explored in Experience Design I, you will continue to work in groups. You will extend your principle investigations to produce a prototype to cover all the human senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste. The prototype design should work both within and beyond the screen.

You have the opportunity in this module to explore and/or experiment with the possibility of one or more experience design methodologies, which will include structural design elements for the five senses.
User Factors
User Factors

This module introduces:
- relevant behavioural theory from psychology and sociology; and
- the associated techniques for analysing user tasks, knowledge, communications and situations of use.
Usability Engineering
Usability Engineering

This module emphasises the importance of usability to the success of information systems. It explores:
- the characteristics of information systems users that determine user-based usability requirements;
- usability deficiencies; and
- how to relate designs to requirements.

Option modules

E-Technologies
E-Business
Introduction to Programming with Java
Agile Development
Agile Development

This module provides a systematic understanding of the fundamental principles and techniques associated with agile project management, by linking the DSDM Atern framework with the object oriented paradigm through tools like SCRUM.
Craft Project
Craft Project

In this module you will individually research a digital media craft. Research will be undertaken into the individual techniques, skills and working methodologies of that craft. You will need to adopt contemporary practices currently used within industry. At the end of the module you will need to display your ability in the craft with an appropriate individual project. This will be an individual project and the skills learnt should compliment the skills learnt in the taught part of the programme.

Examples of such craft skills are learning a specific aspect of 3D modelling, learning a scripting language, building user interfaces, learning a software application, developing skills in dynamic simulation, developing skills in high dynamic range imaging, learning a rendering application. This could be a craft skill that will be required for your final major project.
Live Project
Live Project

This optional module for both MA and MSc students uses your previous experience to this point. A live brief will be customised and developed with a professional industry organisation or partner. This will set a demanding challenge for you to address future facing problems in digital media production.
Projects and Risk Management
Projects and Risk Management

This module provides an in-depth understanding of:
- the project management process;
- current issues;
- developing techniques within the phases of project management;
- the processes involved in risk management;
- the dynamics of individual and group working; and
- the specific areas relevant to project team handling.
Requirements Engineering and Management
Requirements Engineering and Management

Requirements engineering is key to the success of developing IT systems. This module:
- looks at the issues of the early stages of systems development;
- explores different approaches that can be used to identify, record and manage requirements within the systems lifecycle; and
- gives you an understanding and chance to model the business context into which information systems must fit.