Paul Rouke and PRWD on User Centered Design

I’ve spent almost half of my working today with Steven Quinlan, a final year student at MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University). Steven has been studying Business Information Technology, and I first met him a couple of months ago at MMU during an open day, where Manchester based digital businesses met with students from MMU with the aim of showcasing both the types of creative industries operating out of Manchester and the opportunities which exist for graduates.

On first speaking with Steven, his passion for User Centered Design and human computer interaction struck me as being a breath of fresh of air. Here is a guy that has spent the last 3 and half years studying a variety of subjects from Digital Marketing to Information Systems Strategy, and rather than developing a real passion for the more creative aspects of digital marketing, Steven has developed a genuine passion in the same areas as I did around 7 years ago - usability, user experience and user centered design.

Steven will be the 1st to admit that his experience to date has very much been in the theory behind UCD (User Centered Design) and HCI (Human Computer Interaction), and the 3 hours we have spent together today, where I took him through some real world projects of UCD that we have been working on at PRWD, certainly provided Steven with a much sharper sense of the commercial implementations of these processes which Steven knows in theory.

What really excites me about Steven is that not only does he have a genuine passion for user experience, he is very much starting early in seeking a potential career in this field. Whereas the majority if user experience professionals have spent years building their knowledge and understanding in this field, and perhaps have moved into Usability from quite different roles during their careers, Steven is at the very start of his career and already has the kind of passion and understanding which may well provide him with a fantastic foundation to excel in this field.

During the following months I have offered Steven the opportunity to shadow me whilst I deliver User Centered Design processes for new clients at PRWD, where Steven can be ‘in the trenches’ as I work with clients to work on the analysis, design, implementation and deployment stages of UCD. As you may expect Steven has taken me up on this offer!

Looking forward, irrespective of whether Steven’s aspirations and career changes direction during the next few years, I have fully enjoyed spending time with him and sharing some of my experiences. Perhaps one day he will be be one of my energetic, dynamic members of staff at PRWD, only time will tell!