Lee Felton - Full Interview

Name: Lee
From: Flintshire, Wales
Degree: MComp Computer Science

Maths was my strongest A level and I considered doing a maths degree, but I´ve always been interested in messing around with computers and a Computer Science degree was on a more definite career path. I didn´t do computing at A level, but I´d done a bit of programming and web design and enjoyed it.

I chose the four year degree over the BSc because I thought a masters degree would be a better qualification to have when it came to looking for jobs. I´m just about to finish my final year now. The fourth year gives you much more independence than the previous years. A third of my time is spent on Genesys, and there are hardly any lectures – it´s much more about small group work because it´s more specialised.

If you choose to do Genesys, it´s a big part of your fourth year. It starts with a skills audit which charts your strengths and highlights any areas you need to work on. You´re then put into groups of four to six people and assigned a project according to your skills. Ours is a very creative group so we were assigned a graphics based job. You also do three weeks preliminary training where you´re taught about Extreme Programming, skills for planning, project management etc. You use mock projects to practice skills like requirement gathering and client meetings.

Our Genesys project involves working for the Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds. The museum has a forthcoming exhibition about the 100 year´s war. The exhibition includes some 14th century illuminated manuscripts about the war and our job is to produce an interactive DVD game based around these to make them more interesting to children. The first step of any project is to meet with the client and find out what they want. You then produce an outline and take it back to them at a very early stage for feedback. You find that clients don´t really know what they want at the beginning, so this first feedback session is when you first get a real idea of what they want you to produce.

The game is going to be a role play game with DVD style chapters. We produced 3D graphic backgrounds then animated pictures of people from the manuscripts. We also had to research 14th century France to make sure the details were historically correct. The game is aimed at 5-12 year olds for whom the manuscripts themselves wouldn´t hold much interest, but this way makes them more fun. The client has certain requirements which we have to work with, for example, it can´t be a violent game and it has to last between 3-4 minutes. We based the game around one particular story in the manuscript where two knights dressed as women to gain entry to an enemy castle and then overtook the castle from the inside. The game is called Castle Siege and players take the part of the knight and have to role play their way through various steps to capture the castle successfully. We keep going back to the client to check different stages and he´s happy with the game so far.

In addition to Genesys I´m also doing ARTs – Advanced Research Topics, which are extremely interesting. The project I chose looked at ways of modelling the rate of DNA production, which is part of the research carried out by the department´s Computational Biology Research Group. A number of different proteins work in the DNA production pathway and influence each other by negative and positive feedback loops, so it´s quite complicated and only a rough model currently exists. I started this project in the third year and I´ve expanded and refined it this year. It still needs work but that´s the case with most ART modules because they´re based around ongoing research. I also chose to do another ART which was a simulation of how ants navigate using pheromone pathways. I really enjoyed Biology at A level so it´s been enjoyable keeping up this interest through computational biology.

I´ve already got a job offer for when I graduate. I´ll be working for Transport for London on their Oyster Card IT project, as part of their information systems graduate management scheme. I had to go through several recruitment stages to get the job – an interview, assessment centre, and a presentation. Their project uses XP - the same system we used in our Genesys project, which I think helped get me the job. Genesys is a big selling point to companies – you have a master´s qualification but Genesys also counts as a year´s work experience which is looked upon very highly by employers, and is unique to Sheffield.