BSc Informatics for Business

Meet Kuda

Kuda has been studying Informatics for Business at Edinburgh Napier. Read more about how this course has allowed him to explore the possibilities of starting his own business.

I'm particularly interested in making stuff and applying it to the real world.

In my opinion, when you just learn code by itself, there's no real world, no sense of deploying it or understanding how that works. In the Informatics for Business course however, it's all about merging the two and understanding the business and computing side together. We learn a lot of practical real-world skills, like how to deploy an application or a software system in the real -world and how to address challenges you may face with clients being resistant to adopting or trying to use a new system. So that's what ended up drawing me to the course.

It's not enough to just have a good product. You also need to know how to present it to a potential client.

This year we're working on Information Management and on that course, we're learning about how to utilise Knowledge Management. It teaches us about how to pass on knowledge efficiently within an organisation, but I found that particularly useful because it's sort of like trying to find ways to make information consumable and relevant at a specific time so you don’t overwhelm people. So that course was particularly helpful because it highlighted different ways of passing on knowledge that might be crucial to someone later on.

The lecturers were really good and helped me through it.

All of us navigate the course and manage time differently, and they were more than happy to help us meet deadlines and adjusting those for us sometimes which I thought was pretty nice. I talked to my personal development tutor, and he gave me one of these time management sheets to work on with some exercises and I found that really helpful. My friend and I ended up modifying that same exercise and turned into an application so it could be given to other people.

After meeting some classmates in person for the first time, we decided to start something together.

I’ve made some friends during the course, and we’ve been putting together what we've learned so far and implementing that into creating a real-world product that could be really useful. Earlier in the course, we learned about how to communicate ideas within an organisation. We took that framework forward and created a questionnaire that we're going to try and pass on to lecturers to give to their students so we can get feedback on whether the product we're creating would be relevant.

We also had placement opportunities.

I was offered a placement with Creative Informatics and we got to join a project that was already ongoing. We began setting up a website that has to do with collecting data from companies within Edinburgh and highlighting the different industries and where they're located. I had to make sure that everything on the website looked presentable and professional. It helped that we learned about systems that are used by big corporations during the course. We learned about SAP, for example, and that's used by big companies like Azure and Walmart. So I feel like that gives us an advantage when entering a workplace like Creative Informatics because we're already familiar with the system.

Once I've finished this course, I have some potential ideas.

Best case scenario, I would start my own business with some peers and make something useful that's also profitable. That would be the best-case scenario. A close second would be working within the industry, with BlackRock or a company like that and just get some industry experience. A final idea would be a graduate scheme or something around that. I'm also exploring the possibility of doing a Masters.

If you're thinking about starting Informatics for Business at Edinburgh Napier:

I would definitely advise you to utilise the resources that are available to the University. There's Bright Red Triangle and the tutors who are really good at their job. The library is also super helpful, so don’t be afraid to ask questions.