University of Surrey

This page gives more detail than the summary on the “My Options” page.

• Location: Guildford, Surrey
• Possible topics: TBD
• Department/Centre: Digital World Research Centre
• Advantages: Charming town, close to SW London without being right in it (which means it should be somewhat less expensive, I hope)
• Disadvantages: A friend tells me that, being mainly a university town, Guildford tends to be loud in the area of the university and tends to shut down when the uni is not in session.
• Fees: For 2010-2011 they appear to be on the order of £12,500 per year. It’s kind of hard to decipher the information, and it’s also not available in HTML. Also, fees are going up, all across the UK, and I don’t know how that will affect Surrey.

Some thoughts

The DWRC “strive[s] to apply … technology for social benefit through various forms of inclusive research and design.” I like that. DWRC is a multidisciplinary program, and two of their current PhD projects involve storytelling (including one on mythical storytelling). This could be a place I could pursue “UX and the human spirit”.

They also have a collaborative arrangement with the Industrial Design school at Eindhoven University of Technology. I saw a couple of presentations about that department at CHI2009, and it sounded like a wonderful place to be! So that’s another plus.

Later thoughts

I liked Surrey at first, but it didn’t score all that well in my analysis after I had been to City and Northumbria. The main issues I had were the very small size of the group and the fact that they were interested only in one of my topics, the one that least interests me. So I didn’t apply there.

Some links

Postgraduate study at Surrey