This course is for professionals seeking to advance in the dynamic field of interaction design, including those new to the field, those with related experience, and current practitioners aiming to deepen their expertise. Choose this course to stay abreast of the latest theories and practices in a field where demand outstrips formal training opportunities. An extension of the Master of Interaction Design (C04222), it includes additional advanced study including the choice of a sub-major, a project stream, or a studio experience.
You'll acquire industry-relevant skills, blending your original discipline with professional application to meet the growing demand for skilled designers. Specialise in games design, data analytics, or interaction programming through elective modules, or undertake a research project to contribute new insights to the field.
What sets this course apart is its focus on human-centred design, preparing you to create digital technologies that integrate seamlessly into users' lives. You'll learn through real-world projects, developing solutions that combine your original discipline with advanced interaction design techniques. You will acquire advanced design skills, technical knowledge, and the ability to adapt to the unpredictable nature of user-centred projects. The course emphasises professional practice, project management, teamwork, and applying research to design.
Teaching combines studio-based learning with fieldwork, user testing, and project management, alongside theoretical studies in research methods. You'll apply established theories to practice, using research tools for ideation, development, and validation. You'll engage in research, develop autonomy, and apply expert judgement to your work.
Graduates emerge ready for roles such as interaction designer, UX researcher, and digital experience architect, with the skills to manage extensive projects and drive innovation in the workplace.
While industry demand for skilled interaction designers and various other jobs, such as user experience (UX) designers, service designers etc., is increasing, there is a lack of formal education/training offered by universities in interaction design. This course is designed to provide students with the most current and requisite skills in this fast-evolving field. Graduates possess skills in industrially applicable and cost-effective information environments (i.e. multimedia, interactive systems design and associated information technology). The course provides industry with graduates who can combine these skills with those of their original discipline in professional applications-oriented settings.
The course is committed to producing graduates who have a deep understanding of human-centred approaches to designing digital technologies. This ensures that 'products' created are more likely to 'fit' meaningfully into users' lives, because the design process is informed by a deep understanding of people's practices, particular situations and values.
The Master of Interaction Design is attractive to different types of learners, namely:
- those who are currently working in a job that is not related to interaction design
- those working in jobs closely related to interaction design, and
- those already working in interaction design-related jobs.
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Course aims
In the core subjects students learn through the practice of an iterative human-centred design process to solve a real-world problem with actual users, developing skills to analyse, generate and transmit solutions to complex problems. They also gain advanced technical and theoretical knowledge in interaction design. Students also engage with interaction design for emerging computing contexts, gaining advanced knowledge and skills.
Students develop advanced design skills (including autonomy, expert judgement, adaptability and responsibility) by focusing on learning professional practices in user experience projects, and through the capstone subject where they co-implement a project commissioned with an industry client, focusing on graduate-level outcomes. Skills to demonstrate knowledge adaptability and responsibility as a practitioner/learner are acquired through all the studio subjects where students have to adapt to the unpredictable processes of working with users, conducting fieldwork in the wild, iterating designs and testing with users, and the open-ended nature of an iterative design process. The studio subjects also allow students to demonstrate their responsibility as practitioners through developing project management and teamwork skills.
Students develop skills to research and apply established theories to a body of knowledge or practice through the research methods-oriented subject, which involves developing a research plan, interview schedule, a set of probes and analysis of user research outcomes using interviews and probes. All three studio subjects include significant user research phases, focusing on the structured and systematic use of appropriate research tools in a professional context for ideation, development and validation of a design artifact, and requiring the application-established theories to design practice.
Specialised knowledge and skills are developed through a choice from three modules focusing on either games design, data analytics or interaction programming. These modules include a combination of structured subjects focused on skills and knowledge development for each domain, and assist students to develop their autonomy, expert judgement and adaptability. They also include practical project-based subjects where students develop their specific skills in a project-based mode. Alternatively, students may choose to undertake a research project to produce new knowledge in the field of interaction design.
Students also engage in subjects that enable the development of these skills at an extended level. Due to its intensive nature, this course is a transformative learning experience and prepares graduates for taking on extensive project management and development responsibility within a workplace. Additionally the extended study program achieves greater depth of learning in the specialisation and allows consolidation of the students' experience.
