So after completing a Portfolio and CV, UX Trend report and pitching my own idea. I am now done with Professional Practice, I’m proud of the work I’ve done and the amount of effort I’ve put into those projects, while at the time and towards the end. But I can’t help but feeling I haven’t done enough or given it my all. And that’s its not because I ran out of time, or I don’t care. It’s because of the secret 4th project that will last two semesters. And that is getting a placement.

I feel that I have been held back with the time and energy put into looking, applying, interviewing etc. It has distracted me from professional practice, Which is a shame, I think if we we had more time in between projects, It would provide more time to work on projects while focusing on getting a placement, Now I can rant on and on about placements any day but for the sake of this reflection I’ll spare it.

But what did I like about this module? I enjoyed the opportunity to code and build my own website, Something we should definitely do more often, especially with the rise of Ai making development easier and easier. I enjoyed writing the UX Trend, but then again I am a sucker for essays and unique topics. I enjoyed pitching, even though I maybe didn’t do as well as I wanted to, I loved the actual pitch and presentation side, being confident, studying other pitches and talks, It was fun.

But I didn’t like some parts of the module. I didn’t enjoy the strict time crunch to make a CV and Portfolio that limited ideation, I feel to reconcile this, people should get an email in august that recommends them to start planning a design and write case studies etc. leaving more time in the module, Albeit very tricky to do, not everyone can do Uni work in the summer, but a good head start is a nice idea. I didn’t like how the pitch presentation was to solve a problem, I think that limited my ideas and made it harder, especially when we had around 3-4 weeks to do it. Maybe it should be changed to pitch an app or pitch a product. But granted that is a nit-pick.

But overall, I did learn a lot from the course. The lectures were good, I enjoyed learning a bit more about the industry and how to work in it, treat others and get your foot in. I enjoyed being creative with my portfolio and I hope that it reflects who I am. I just wish I could put more into this module without the burden of finding a placement. I’ve actually done a similar module in the met, but we had to do different stuff. But one thing I really enjoyed from it was creating a sort of journal of things we’ve done design wise to improve our skills, I feel like something like this would be helpful for this module, to help people in our course build up their skills. But that’s just an Idea.

I am looking forward to the next semester, I am away on holidays and I’m going to do myself a favour and take a break, not look at the projects for next year so I can come in with a fresh mindset and fresh ideas!