Last year, in the User Experience Design module, I was required to design an interactive exhibition for collections in the [University Name]shire Museum. To prepare it, I'd been to museums for numerous times to conduct user research about where visitors naturally interact with exhibitions (Norman, 2013). I found that the Star Carr excavation, one of the most preeminent Mesolithic archaeological site within Europe, had a lacklustre layout which looked primitive and crude because of its dull exhibits (The Starr Carr Frontlet). The collected qualitative data showed visitors think of the exhibition as ‘primitive and rough’, ‘lifeless’ and ‘boring’. Quantitative data demonstrated that 83.3% of the visitors did not appreciate the history and importance of Star Carr excavation. Based on this context, I designed a 3D RPG game, which required visitors to pick up 7 broken pieces of the Starr Carr Frontlet abandoned by the Mesolithic people in a 3D reconstructed Mesolithic North [University Name]shire and assemble them into the Frontlet. Through this way, visitors were able to better perceive the environment of Mesolithic [University Name]shire and the structure of the Star Carr Frontlet in real-time. It was also fun. Moreover, since the user experience after the interaction should also be taken into account (Bell-Mayeda and Kodama, 2019), my design allows visitors to purchase a Star Carr DIY pack with cut hard carton, elastics, brush, instruction manual and glue to build their own creative Star Carr Frontlet. In addition, because simple and frequent iterative testing can bring great value to an interactive design (Krug, 2000, p.134), I conducted a small usability test and a small expert review, recruiting five participants per round. It was observed that players always mistook other scattered models as the pieces of the Starr Carr Frontlet, so the new version added a golden halo around the object that belongs to Starr Carr Frontlet.

The design was eventually recognised by the museum's digital and curation team. The whole human-centred iterative design process (Norman, 2013) made me realise that my long-standing enthusiasm for applying cutting-edge technology have made me an interdisciplinary person who is very suitable for human-computer interaction (HCI).

To continue my research in this field, I worked on a project on Digital Creativity Labs last summer to research how to help the public understand local open data through personalised films that interact with them. And now, I am working on my graduation project hoping to design an interactive Terms of Service so that users can efficiently and joyfully understand the risks, benefits and results it delivers. When I participated in these projects, I was moved by the human-centred care of HCI. However technological a product, if it ignores human needs without the ease of use and understandability, it has little chance of success (Cooper, Robert and David, 2014). Meanwhile, there are still many problematic interactions in daily life that waste people's time and frustrate them.

Therefore, when I wanted to further my education, I chose HCI without hesitation. The Human-Computer Interaction MSc of University College London allows me to specialise in my particular interest by consolidating HCI’s fundamental theory and methodology including human-centred design processes, qualitative and quantitative analysis, human physiological and cognitive behaviour. I am particularly interested in Future Interfaces and Physical Computing and Prototyping modules.

My team members and I built a 3D interactive cooking game installation last year, which consist of a game controller (a physical frying pan created by circuits, 3D printing and laser-cut), leap motion and Unity 3D. In the game, Leap Motion captures players' hand movements, allowing players to directly grasp virtual 3D models of ingredients and put them into the 3D frying pan. Then the cooking begins, in which the player is asked to follow the music and arrow icons prompted on the game's interface to simulate the real stir-fry process by holding the physical ‘frying pan’ controller to the left, right or up. In this project, I challenged on how to create physical prototypes and design novel technologies’ interfaces to provide an compelling human-computer interactive gaming experience. Physical prototypes support user’s physical actions blend well with the virtual world, providing a more advanced and interactive user experience than traditional prototyping. Therefore, I particularly aspire to further explore advanced physical prototyping and near future user interface designing methodologies under the guidance of your world-renowned experts, especially in the era of the Internet of things when numerous sensors and interfaces are going to interact with humans (Wachter, 2018, p.438). Therefore, I expect to become a rigorous and creative HCI designer, allowing the efficient, comfortable and pleasant user experience to reach every group and individual equally.

Reference List

Cooper, A., Reimann, R., Cronin, D. and Noessel, C., 2014. About face: the essentials of interaction design. John Wiley & Sons.

Krug, S., 2000. Don't make me think!: a common sense approach to Web usability. Pearson Education India.

Melanie, B and May, K., 2018, ‘3 Tips to Help You Prototype a Service’, Available at: https://www.ideo.com/blog/3-tips-to-help-you-prototype-a-service [accessed 4 February 2019]

Norman, D., 2013. The design of everyday things: Revised and expanded edition. Basic books.

Wachter, S. (2018). Normative challenges of identification in the Internet of Things: Privacy, profiling, discrimination, and the GDPR. Computer law &

security review, 34(3), pp.436-449.