Elsewhere on Ulster
We chat to UX society Treasurer Joel to get the lowdown on the society created for Digital Design students!
The UX Society is based at the Belfast Campus. As a team, we try to meetup every week online to discuss our plans with the society. This ranges from feedback from society members about previous events to planning new events for the future.
We are a relatively new Society as our 1-year anniversary has just passed. As this is the case, we don’t have a set schedule for when we meet up as an entire society, however, it is something we have considered if we get the demand for it! We are currently trying to have at least 2 events per semester. We feel like this is the best way to try and get more people with our Society.
I am currently Treasurer. This role pretty much entails me to keep track and up to date with all the finances and budgeting for the Society. I attended a UX society event last year and I already had a friend who was on the committee at the time - he then approached me and asked if I wanted to join as Treasurer this year, which I agreed to! What I enjoy most about this role is that I’ve been able to learn new skills about handling finances as well as communicating with people. I will then be able to transfer these skills in the future.
We have only had a handful of events at the minute mainly since we are a very new society. These events included an introduction night, a drink and design night, a pub quiz night and a general catch-up night. Last year we even had a panel talk with some previous students of Interaction Design/Digital Design who came in and gave their inputs about how students can get placement and just general advice for working within the industry.
As a society, all the committee and society members have said that our main goal is to have essentially a 50/50 split to where some of the events would be more academic and insightful to the industry where other events would be more chilled out, such as going out for drinks, etc. This way we would have a healthy balance so everyone would be able to get something out of the society.
Currently our society is mainly for people who do the Digital Design course (formerly Interaction Design) here at Belfast as a couple of our bigger events are usually more tailored for people who want to go into the UI/UX industry. However, there have been some discussions for allowing anyone who is interested in Digital Design, such as Graphic Design or Web Design, to join in the future!
The biggest highlight for me currently is seeing the amount of people that have supported us by coming to our events and interacting with everybody! The two events that come to mind are the Introduction Night and then the Drink and Design Night that we hosted.
Knowing how both of these events went brings a great deal of pride to not only myself but the rest of the UX society as it is something we have all worked on together on as well and it’s something that we all care about!
My advice is that they should absolutely do it! I can easily say that it is a very awarding experience as you’ll be able to meet so many new people, create new connections, make the most of the University experience, and most importantly, you’ll have fun!
