How about studying in the UK for art and design? How about studying in the University of Edinburgh for interactive design? Recently, a student asked this question, and here I will answer the question of the interaction design major of Edinburgh University. Since the merger of ECA and Aida in 2011, there have been many great moves. In order to let students applying for art study in the UK understand the situation, let's introduce here. Studying abroad in Interaction Design is a relatively new major in Edinburgh University, Design Information.

        The strongest interaction design discipline in Scotland and Britain

Design Informatics is an interdisciplinary major jointly run by the Art College and the Information College. A total of four types of students, MA, MFA, MSc and AMSc, attend classes and cooperate together. MA and MFA are students with design background, while MSc and AMSc are students with computer background. The main difference between MA and MFA, MSc and AMSc is that MA and MSc are 12 month projects, while MFA and AMSc are 21 month projects. In fact, the curriculum of the four types of students is the same in the first nine months. Everyone takes classes together to do projects. Nine months later, in May of the next year, MA and MSc will enter the graduation design stage And AMSc will use this period of time for internship. In September, they will start the new semester with the students of the next year until graduation in May of the third year.

Aida has always integrated the advantages of each college and joined forces with each other. After the merger of the two schools, there have been a lot of cooperation between Informatics and ECA in the School of Information, almost all of which are in the direction of interaction design.

The Information Institute of Aida ranks first in the UK (beyond Oxford, Cambridge and Imperial College). It is the only 5A computer department in the UK, and is also recognized as one of the best computer departments in the world. Taking China as an example, the alumni of the Institute of Information Technology include Xia Peisu, the pioneer of computer science in China, the president of Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the director of the Institute of Software of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and several academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Therefore, the interaction design of Ida is likely to be the next strong hot spot of Ida and even the UK.

(PS: The Information Institute of Ida is really rich... not only is the college building one of the latest and best buildings in Edinburgh, but it is even being expanded, using the area opposite the Scottish National Museum. In addition, on Google map, Edinburgh has Chinese annotations on other homes and the landmark Castle of Edinburgh, which shows its influence.)

After the merger of the two schools in 2011, Aida established the Design Information Center, which aims to create the strongest interaction design discipline in Scotland and the UK.

In 2012, Informatics has cooperated with ECA very much. Not only are there large-scale cross school projects such as Designspeck, which is a cooperation between four Scottish universities, but also the two colleges have launched many lectures on interaction design.

In 2013, Design Informatics will be newly opened under the School of Information, which is jointly opened by the School of Information and ECA to share educational resources.

In 2012, five of our seven mainland students took the direction of interaction design.

　　 Information about interaction design of Edinburgh College of Art under the University of Edinburgh

　　 Edinburgh College of Art , located in Edinburgh, England, is one of the largest and oldest art colleges in Europe. The Edinburgh Academy of the Arts is famous for its originality and research, and has links with many industrial enterprises and state-owned departments. The College can provide students with opportunities to study in Europe, the United States, Japan and Australia.

Edinburgh College of the Arts has no specific interaction specialty, and its specialty in interaction is summarized as "multimedia art", which is the digital media interaction design classified in our interaction design specialty.

　　 Study abroad in interactive design

Interaction Design (IXD) is a design field that defines and designs the behavior of artificial systems. It defines the content and structure of communication between two or more interactive individuals, so that they can cooperate with each other to achieve a certain goal. Interaction design strives to create and establish a meaningful relationship between people and products and services, focusing on "embedding information technology in the material world full of social complexity". The goal of interaction system design can be analyzed from two levels of "usability" and "user experience", focusing on the people-oriented user needs. The thinking method of interaction design is built on the user centered approach of industrial design, and it is developed at the same time. It focuses more on behavior and process, regards the product as an event, emphasizes the ability of process thinking, and flow charts, state transition diagrams, storyboards, etc. become important design expression means, It is more important to master the skills, methods and evaluation techniques of prototype implementation of software and hardware.

　　 University of Edinburgh Application Experience

1. At the earliest, there will be a batch (large-scale) of offers in December, the second batch in January and February, and the third batch in April. Waiting for an offer is very hard. Some students waited for half a year to get an offer, others were rejected after half a year, and some students were rejected in the first year and continued to apply in the second year. Such things happen every day.

2. For the application of art graduate students from Edinburgh University to study abroad, the richer the internship experience, the better. The teachers of LSE, who are tall and tall, also know that students who practice in the Chinese branch of overseas media or directly practice abroad, should be said to be the first-line contact and experience of western media. The domestic CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, People's Daily and Nanfang Newspaper are also well-known in the West. In addition to having a good unit during the internship, I hope you can produce more works, do more projects, and write your own experience in PS, otherwise it is not meaningful to play soy sauce every day.

To sum up, if you want to study interactive design in the UK, Aida is definitely one of the top universities in the UK for art study. Not only is it supported by the world's leading technical resources of Aida Information College, ECA was also one of the top art colleges in Europe before its merger. For more information, please consult Natural Light!

Lunyi LCC Service Design Master's Experience of Studying Abroad

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