Applied Psychology & Design Workday Field Trip
Sinéad Davis Cochrane, Research Manager at Workday, was joined by Senior Researchers Aine Hart and Rachelle Ryan who provided hands-on demos of their work. Sinéad started her career at IADT completing the BSc in Applied Psychology and MSc in Cyberpsychology. Rachelle is a graduate of the Masters in User Experience Design. Aine graduated from Maynooth and began her UX career in Australia.
Sinéad began by describing her initial motivation towards UX as an opportunity to improve people’s lives. Sinead, Aine and Rachelle then shared their experience on how small projects can turn into bigger paid roles and how to build a portfolio to showcase capabilities. The team covered using different research methods to turn data into insights, alongside how story-telling and persuasion are important skills in communicating ideas.
The students left with an awareness of the varied paths to UX research roles. Sinéad and her team helped embed how the links between design thinking and applied psychology can help to develop an understanding of people to create better products.
Sinéad Davis Cochrane spoke afterwards, “When I was a 2nd year Psychology student at IADT, my lecturers inspired me with the idea that technology could make all our lives better, but especially for those who were most vulnerable in our society.”
“20 years later, it was a pleasure and privilege to be able to host 2nd year students from IADT, all studying UX Research. I hope we inspired at least one of those students to pursue this as a career, as I did.”