Study Plan Reflection

My study plan follows a logical build-up. Year 1 starts with the psychological and methodological foundations: Advanced Cognitive & Social Psychology for HCI and Adaptive Interactive Systems in the first period, then qualitative and quantitative HCI research methods across the next two (each paired with a domain course: Cognition & Emotion, HCI in Application Domains), closing with Interaction Technology Innovation and NLP. Year 2 moves into application and specialization (Machine Learning for Human Vision and Language, Responsible ICT) before the thesis.

The one deviation from my original plan was swapping Deep Learning for NLP (Natural Language Processing) in Year 1 Period 4, because the Deep Learning course was full. NLP turned out to be a fitting substitute, close enough to my technical interests that it never felt like a detour.

Looking back, I'm genuinely happy with these choices. The psychology courses were the biggest surprise: as someone coming from a Computer Science background, I had little formal exposure to psychology before this MSc, and courses like Advanced Cognitive and Social Psychology gave me a real, structured understanding of how people actually behave, not just intuition. That's a direct asset for my vision: I can now reason about why a design choice helps or hurts a user, not just observe that it does. The quantitative methods course also paid off immediately: I used Linear Mixed-Effects Models directly in the mouse acceleration study, and that rigor is something I want to keep applying going forward.

The progression toward the thesis (project proposal in Year 2 P2, then the thesis itself in P3/P4) gives me room to choose a topic that combines the technical and human-centered sides of my work. I've already started that conversation: I've talked to a supervisor about a thesis in interaction technology, on a project similar in spirit to PlantBand, something that again lets me both build and rigorously evaluate a system.