So I'm going to divide this year or semester at least into the papers. This year the timetable seems to be a bit more like a normal course.

Our tutor for this paper owns a web development company and is therefore more concerned with giving real-world training as opposed to the academic pondering that the name of the paper suggests. While the name sounds fascinating, I quite appreciate the real-world learning.

The first class, we learned about usability. Mainly from a web point of view, but applicable to anything that a person has to pick up and start using. This is one of those subjects I've always been interested in, probably for the same reasons a lot of people get interested in it: they use crap products, identify that it's the awful UI and start critiquing it. Especially when they come across a UI that does things better. Ironic that anyone subjected to MS's way of doing.... anything... will likely wind up being interested in UI design then.

The second class - which was today was about SEO or search engine optimisation. Very useful info, some of it I was aware of, some of it new and some of it a surprise. All of this web stuff is useful to me as I'm about to embark on a couple of personal web projects. Big ones. I'll be learning some complex stuff along the way. But SEO is very important and often overlooked (or rather, done wrong). I also decided to be less vocal from now on. I started pushing the class along by answering questions but I don't want to be that person.