In the last few months, I had the pleasure of knowing one of the leading professors at FH Joanneum, who happens to be my master’s thesis supervisor by choice, as he possesses real-world knowledge about the UX realm, its intricacies, and fundamentals.
The meetings consisted of a mix of lunches and dinners that gave me the space to talk freely without the boundaries of meeting someone in an office, speaking my mind about the challenges and hurdles that come with doing my master’s studies while working as a product designer and the hustle to juggle between every aspect, including what life throws at you from other directions.
In addition, I introduced my master’s thesis topic and talked about it in terms of the possibilities of how to achieve it, its potential approaches and the importance of striking a balance between theory and practice. I received some great insights from Dr. Konrad, and he introduced me to some fine books. One of these, a master’s thesis from 2018 by a student of FH Joanneum, is particularly noteworthy. The thesis named Data Driven UX Process for MOOC Design by Jacqueline Kircher, which is basically a user experience improvement of the massive open online course platform iMooX, shares the same DNA with my topic since it addresses the UX issues in a platform dedicated to knowledge management.
Scrolling through the thesis, I found a great deal of valuable information, as well as exploring the structure that was used to form and layout a master’s thesis which made me choose this work to be in my bibliography to use it as a reference. Several other books I checked out of curiosity and found what seemed to me the first spark that made me choose digital design as a future path back in 2014, one of them is The Universal Principles of Design.
In conclusion, more and more I’m realizing how valuable to know people who have good experience under their belt and especially those who are pragmatic in their approach to what is going on around them, both professionally and socially and the epiphany of reminding yourself that the more you know, the more you realize that you don’t know.
