This exciting new multidisciplinary Master's programme is fully designed to reflect the needs of contemporary interactive media industries, bringing together creative technologies, interactivity and design practices within digital cultures with the user in mind.

Interactive Media Practice combines a wide range of digital creative technologies primarily combining digital literacies design, technology and interaction, through user-centred design for commercial outputs to an industry standard.

Interactive Media Practice places the user at the centre of the experience and focuses on design and content creation in areas such as mobile app development, wearables, games, rich media websites, interactive guides and installations, immersive VR, next generation advertising and virtual and augmented reality systems, through to social media powerful eMarketing and entrepreneurship through innovation protocol.

According to the late CEO of Apple, Steve Jobs, the app industry "is worth several billion pounds annually and employs around 40,000 people, representing approximately 10% of the total audio-visual workforce. Sectors such as sound-driven games and apps show an even wider growth where providers such as Apple have paid a total of two billion dollars to apps within the US alone".

The course embraces a hackathon culture with specialist hack labs boasting newly designed flexible learning spaces for students to work more collaboratively on innovation protocols fostering cross-pollination of new ideas creatively. Many students will be working on live industry briefs as well as their own projects independently within and outside our course clusters. This collaborative approach to learning and research often leads to successful projects, which are commercially viable and quickly gain industry recognition through our end-of-year show.

“It’s a really multi-faceted MA, bringing together creativity, technology skills and digital media, with an entrepreneurial thread.” – 2015 graduate. 

Our students learn to examine the communication of ideas in a networked world through our entrepreneurship incubator programme and consider the many impacts of digital media in everyday life, for commercial trajectories through practice-based projects.

As one of the top 100 international universities in the world, the University of Westminster's School of Media, Arts and Design currently boasts a series of professional recording studios, a new teaching recording studio, professional technology labs and access to an array of post-production, and multimedia facilities built and equipped to the highest standards.

Using the leading industry software, you will be involved in designing and making interactive digital media content for delivery over the Internet, on tablets and mobile devices and for installations to designing compelling user interfaces creating a great user experience, this also extends to the development towards creating content for the ‘internet of things’.

The MA in Interactive Media Practice course will prepare you for this sector, by leveraging and integrating the fine blend between creativity and technical capacities. You will also benefit from having access to a range of highly regarded industry practitioners who will offer you exceptional insight and working knowledge within the field, both challenging and encouraging your technical and creative fair. On this master's degree you will develop commercial-level interactive media and digital content production skills.

This multidisciplinary course prepares you to work in a wide range of industry combining theory, practice, and bringing together technical, creative perspective on new media systems, interactive technologies and digital culture as well as exploring new emerging creative technologies, producing an industry professional who can produce as well as explore future creative technologies.

Students are encouraged to work with technology experimentally in a creative way, collaboratively, and to apply emerging and existing technology in new and innovative ways, research and the experimental application. You will also have hands-on experience creating content for mobile, tablet wearables, VR, AR and content-rich media websites, advanced web production, and UX design, all of this with the user in mind.

The course will provide skills in the relevant multimedia software, media-rich web production, Unity, UdK, website design and development to mobile app development. You will be taught creative coding, where the course encourages the use of a wide range of programming languages delivered by industry practitioners. We also have accreditation and training opportunities for those students wanting to develop their skills more prolifically within selected software via triple A initiative, outside of the Master's.

These include mobile apps, mainstream games, interactive installation, and eMarketing, with an emphasis on core creative skills. The course also prepares and enhances your ability in producing interactive media, methodologies and production workflows, supported by a robust understanding of the technologies and theories involved.

The Interactive Media Practice degree offers an ideal underpinning for those seeking employment in the digital media industries, which increasingly require people who work with technology from a creative perspective. This is the course that will create the next generation of interactive media talent who are both enterprising and creative.

Our approach on the course is implemented through hackathon culture as seen in technology start-up sectors, where cross collaboration through interdisciplinary approach is very welcomed. Students are encouraged to apply from design, non-programming or non-technical backgrounds as well as technical backgrounds.

There are many highly desirable careers that students from this course can go into, such as:

• interactive media
• app development
• new media production
• interactive development
• advanced web producer
• content manager
• UX designer
• project management
• digital marketing
• media design
• online branding
• interactive game design
• web production
• game designer
• media advertising
• information design
• digital production
• strategic development
• online advertising
• UX architect
• digital SAM
• mobile UX
• front end development

• web development
• email marketing executive
• ecommerce digital marketing manager
• .net developer
• UX designer academic publisher
• UX researcher
• social media executive
• digital designer
• digital advertising
• SEO consultant
• content marketing specialist
• interaction designer
• digital project manger
• optimisation manager
• digital content production
• digital marker
• creative technologist
• rich media website developer
• games producer
• social media manger
• museum installation
• VR gaming
• VR advertising