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Game Technology student, Isabelle, tells us about her experience working on the design-a-thon challenge, set up and run by the MSc User Experience Design course team and the HCI Research Group as part of the annual User Experience Day. The event was delivered in partnership with West Midlands Police and Amazon Web Services, to bring students from across the University together to overcome an industry design challenge proposed by West Midlands Police. Within a few hours, students developed innovative design solutions that showcased their professionalism, skills and expertise in solving real-life problems.
What is the design-a-thon?
The design-a-thon is a competition run by the West Midlands Police. We had to design an application to replace a current noticeboard application they have that's really outdated and quite boring to look at. Me and a team of three other students from across Computing and Games courses worked on designing something that's more visually engaging, works really well and is accessible.
How did you approach the task?
We started by weighing up people's strengths and weaknesses. My background is not in design; I’m more of a programmer. My team were great at breaking down my sketches and saying what needed to be improved and what should be changed. I’m quite public speaking orientated, so I did the presentation and made all the slides for that too. The rest of my team worked very hard in Figma, making the designs for the slides; it was very impressive! We split the tasks based on our weaknesses and strengths.
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How have you found the experience?
It's been really fun. I've learned a lot from the others on my team, as they’re all doing different courses, so I’ve learnt about subjects I had no idea about. It’s information I can take for to my course as well, as I create games, so learning about the UI principles and stuff seem really cool from them.
What would you have done differently?
In hindsight there were definitely some things we could have done better. We could have definitely assigned our time a lot better, as we had to rush a little bit at the end as we were so engrossed in what we were doing. Overall I think it went really well, and I'm really happy with what we produced and we've learned a lot and I've made some good new friends as well, which is always a bonus.
Has the experience benefitted your future career?
I can put everything I learned on my CV and cover letter as it's great experience, especially if I was applying to a UI or UX programming role, which is something a lot of people on my course go on to do. I've learnt quite a lot of UI and UX design from both the people that I've worked with on my team.