The MET programme at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is the Master of Science (MSC) offered by the School of Design. It has four directions: psychology, social and mobile Internet,40 under 40 award game media and digital media technology, focusing on media entertainment technology, and cultivating interdisciplinary design talents with backgrounds in design, psychology, digital media and technology. Today we invite senior Harris (not his real name) to introduce the information and lessons of MET-psychology. In order to protect privacy, the audio of the interview is not uploaded. The following is the arrangement of the interview content.

1. the background of students

Students from different backgrounds, Gen. T Listeach has their own highlights

I majored in design and my undergraduate background is not obvious. But because I worked hard in school and had a lot of projects on hand, I still got the offer as a fresh student, even though I had no work experience.

As far as I know, the proportion of double non is larger than that of other professional technologies including the master of System design management. In fact, double non or not is not the core enterprise factor for admission, Design talent awardbut the key depends on the significant development characteristics and distinguishable degree of the applicants. The results are very good, and the internship or work life experience can be rich. The overseas education experience of students from two first-class universities or companies may become a highlight in the application process.

I don't have access to all the students in the class, but I am currently exposed to media, journalism, design and computer directions. Even in psychology, the Hong Kong scientific community still focuses on student diversity when selecting students.

2. Professional characteristics in line with the direction of psychology

I think psychology is the most focused and focused on "research" and if you want to study "pure design" or want to fully shape and experience the whole process of design thinking, this is not the first choice. The most important aspect of the Met's psychological orientation is to provide you with a solid foundation of research and theoretical ideas prior to the design process, including a strong research and academic component that you can learn in your profession, and the research tools we use, such as the psychological principles of user interviews and the measurement principles of quantitative questionnaire research, will be covered. This major is the most academic of the design majors.

Yes, the teachers would leave us a lot of documents and write small papers with references, much like academic research. Of course the requirements are less prescriptive. Unlike academic masters, who publish papers in the format of certain journals and do academic writing.

Dabble in experimental research, data analysis and other professional research work methods

In addition to reading literature and writing short papers, we also did a project last semester: designing and participating in experiments, collecting and analyzing quantitative research data, and will conduct a two-semester research project this semester. In these experimental studies, we will define and design independent variables and dependent variables, and control additional variables to find the causal relationship between variables. After collecting data, we will use some scientific statistical tools to analyze the data, such as hypothesis testing, which will also consider the significance of the level of data difference.

The goal of this program is to train academically minded design researchers.

It depends on your situation. For example, some members of the group are good at data processing, some are good at research and data collection, and each member has its own division of labor. If you are interested in this kind of academic research, then 50% of your energy may be used here, for example, the study of data last semester is not enough, this semester I put a lot of effort in data analysis.

Other design majors will teach in the form of projects, including working with some companies to do relatively better projects. However, in the MET-psychology major, there are few projects with very specific design output, mainly design research.

The statistics course is the difficult point, and the core technology course is design development psychology

This major will also teach statistics courses, there is a certain degree of difficulty, to rely on self-study to improve. Due to the lack of statistical knowledge design background, but the overall difficulty of the course is moderate. After learning some concepts in class, we will supplement some information after class, and gradually master the important statistical methods and tools of basic principles and application scenarios. While there is an emphasis on research throughout the major, the first semester is about feeling and understanding the core processes of research, rather than completing a very rigorous scientific study like a PhD.

The rest is not difficult for me. For most students from non-science backgrounds, the data analysis course is the most difficult. Fortunately, this course is not the main course, but an additional course involving doing projects under the core course of design psychology. There are only one or two lessons, and the proportion of class hours is not large. The core courses of this major are Design Psychology 1 in the last semester and Design Psychology 2 in the next semester.

3. about the harvest

Improve reading and writing skills, and train inductive and deductive logic

For me, the biggest gain of this major is the systematic reading ability, such as how to extract the core content of an article quickly and efficiently when reading a document, and do deep reading instead of fragmented reading. The second is output, how to build a framework efficiently, quickly and accurately when writing an article, and then gradually fill in the content and details. In general, both inductive logic and romantic logic have greatly improved in the learning process.

Improve the ability to apply theory

The above analytical skills are one of the core technical skills that this study program aims to develop. In addition, it will also develop how you can apply this development ability and your knowledge of research and psychology to the field of instructional design work practice, which is, after all, enterprise applied psychology. There will be a lot involved in the design process and related methods and tools, just because with limited time, there are not many opportunities for you to land a real project in a country, but it will certainly teach you how to apply.

4. Application

The interview is a difficult part of the application process

The program is very inclusive of applicants from different backgrounds, but if we had to say which majors would be most suitable, we would probably design science, anthropology, sociology, journalism, etc., so that students from humanities backgrounds would be more suitable.

First of all, there are very few interviews for this major. During the interview, the interviewer will ask questions based on your background and experience. They often ask questions about psychology, and sometimes they focus on portfolios and ask about portfolio details and ideas from a psychological perspective. The interviewer will also have a lot of follow-up work, follow-up work is difficult to deal with, and it is difficult to prepare for you in advance. Especially for those applicants who are only interested in psychology, have no in-depth knowledge of psychology, and have not studied psychology systematically. If they are asked deep psychological questions, they will have a hard time answering them. This major puts a lot of emphasis on interview performance.