Getting started in My Master

Dublin - Ireland is not exactly a new city for me. I've been living here for 3 years and after another amazing holiday back home, it was time to get back to reality. I chose the Msc in Digital Innovation because I have an increasingly interest in Technology. Mainly about doing business through the latest technology available. For any student, a start of a new period in your life sounds very exciting. However the fear of how things will work out is present. For a Master programme, where the challenges tend to be higher, the results supposedly and hopefully are proportionally the same.

To begin with, first day, first class in UCD Michael Smurfit College. First subject taught: Design, Development and Creativity. After introductions and greeting within your group, which was composed by 7 to 9 students each, it was time to get our brain to work. What is system? We all might have thought that was an easy question to be answered, because obviously, everyone knows what is a system, right?! Not quite sure for me. It is a type of question that your brain knows, but to put it into words and create a plausible definition could be a bit tricky. Time to share your answers within the group, and not surprisingly, students from the tech background gave a more technical answer and the business background a broader definition.

I managed to get a definition which I got satisfied with: "System is an structure, network or framework created and/or developed for a certain purpose. Systems could ran individually in their own task, but in the end, all systems are connected or may overlap." System could be a tangible or intangible structure. It can be from institutional, mechanical, technical, social, financial, legislative, natural, animal, judiciary, family... all kind of system and still have more to mention. If you think a bit philosophic, you realise that system are part of our day-to-day life and you can find it anywhere. For example, waking up at 7am, having a shower, eating your breakfast, take the bus and go to work is a part of the majority population system. Education is another type of system, where it consist from Primary School through post doctoral programme. To get in the car, on bus, plane, motorcycle to work is another system, the engineer system.

So, to start with, we might have thought of Tech and Business definitions of "What is a system?", but giving it a variety of thoughts, you realise that the society is a system, our life is a system and we live within a entire system.

Well, it was an interesting food for thought for the first day and good interaction within the groups. Afterwards, we were asked to draw our group consensus of a system definitions on a graph and present it to the class. Our group decided to go for an example of property acquisition system in order to illustrate better our thoughts.

All in all, it was a good start.

Additionally, we were asked to familiarize ourselves with video editors combined with usability evaluation. To begin with, a creation of a time lapse video was required. My choice was the East bridge Toll in Ringsend. The reason behind my decision, was to check the efficiency and usability of their system. Unfortunately, I was unable to record it over the rush time, however you can get the feeling of how it would work over the peak hours. It was recorded at around 5 pm, and overall, it works fast, without any issue. Although, when a driver decide to pay in cash, it could take a little while and it might generate queues. We can see a car which stays quite long time to conclude its process through the toll bridge. Perhaps it is not the fastest system?! Or even considered slower, might still faster than drive throughout city center.

So, here is the link in case you are interested on having a look:

Our academic year, has just started!!!