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Hyper Island, Manchester
Hyper Island is a Business and Design School focused on design thinking, managing projects and teams, digital technology and business transformation. Its real-world-ready approach, adoption of latest trends and techniques and a strong worldwide network has led Hyper Island to being touted as the "digital Harvard".
MA Digital Experience Design (DXD)
I joined the MA Digital Experience Design program at Hyper Island in early 2018. The DXD program helps students to develop the skills and knowledge to design products, services and systems that meet the ever-changing expectations of the modern consumer. Students work with industry leaders on real-life business challenges to create meaningful experiences, both online and offline. 44 crew members from 20 countries and a multitude of backgrounds and experiences made up the amazing class of Crew UK 18, better known as the Hyperbees.
Industry leaders, TED Talkers, designers and change leaders come in to talk with students about the digital transformation we are currently gripped in and guide students through the experience design methodology. DXD students are also taught how to tackle live projects with clients using the Design Council's Double Diamond model. This process ensures students build the right things, while building the things right.
My Approach
I use design thinking and human-centered design tools and methodologies to build empathy for the people I'm designing for. I love diving deep into the hows and whys of a project to discover the issues behind a problem, before using qualitative and quantitative research to ways on how we might solve that problem. Having a background in visual design for 4 years has given me an edge on developing beautiful ideas and I combine that with my ability to connect the dots from a mass of research data and synthesis. I use design tools such as the Adobe Creative Suite, Sketch, Figma and InVision to bring ideas from pen and paper sketches to high-quality designs.
Using these tools and methods, I apply them to complex design challenges, with human ethics driving my design decisions. I believe we should all be in control of our own data and the increasing popularity of decentralised data is something that really excites me.
Tackling Real-World Projects
Over the course of the year, I have been involved in tackling real-world problems for live clients. The year was divided into eight areas of study:
Foundation Days
Building a team and creating a group culture, learning the Hyper Island methodology and developing skills to enhance creativity.
Creativity Week
Exploring idea generation techniques and essential research methods under the guidance of program leaders through a short client brief.
Design Thinking
Investigating design thinking tools and processes, including looking at other related areas such as service design and human-centered design.
Understanding People
Gaining techniques for building empathy with people through research, then drawing clear and powerful insights out of that research to guide a design process.
Business Transformation
An in-depth look at business model development, working with cutting edge business-modeling techniques, case studies, and user journeys.
Managing Projects and Teams
Exploring the project lifecycle and considering projects from a holistic perspective. This project took place during the entire on-site part of the program and was built on my project and professional work.
Experience Design
Getting to the core of what it means to design experiences with a digital focus. I moved quickly from theory to practice, trying out a diverse range of methods and approaches, learning how to test concepts, refine them and work with professionals to get them built.
Industry Research Project
I had to find a problem in the industry and work to solve it. In place of the traditional master’s thesis, I identified a problem, prototyped solutions, and shared insights based on your research.
Each module finished by writing a paper based on research, our learnings and experiences. You can read each of these papers here.
