A University of Melbourne PhD can support industry careers

Life after graduate research: Dr Kayla Heffernan

Dr Kayla Heffernan’s supervisors helped refine her thesis idea into a research topic that would be achievable during her PhD. Research skills she gained during her PhD have benefited her industry career in user experience design.

Dr Kayla Heffernan likes to understand how people think.

“I like the mess,” she says.

“You've got reams of people's opinions and thoughts – what they think and how they think the world works – and you distil that into a logical frame that makes sense.”

She proposed her own PhD project to her supervisors at the University of Melbourne. With their support, she wrote her thesis on non-medical insertable technologies. She charted what is technologically possible and how people are using these technologies.

Good time management and tenacity helped her build her industry career while completing her PhD in Engineering and IT. Her research skills continue to be useful in her user experience design career.

How a PhD can support an industry career

While she was working on her PhD part-time, Dr Heffernan also had a full-time job in user experience (UX) design. She needed good time management skills to balance her research with her work.

But her work has also benefited from her PhD. The improvement in her research skills has impressed her managers.

Since graduating, Dr Heffernan is working at WISE Employment as Head of UX.

“I manage a cross-functional team of UX designers, UX researchers, and visual designers. I also do a lot of strategic research to figure out what we should do,” she says.

WISE Employment is a leading Australian not-for-profit employment services provider. Dr Heffernan says the company isn’t trying to replicate services like SEEK or LinkedIn. Instead, they try to match the complex and changing needs of unemployed people and people with disabilities.

Dr Heffernan’s manager recently praised her for finding her way through a big project, even when she initially knew nothing about the topic.

Turning your idea into a PhD project at the University of Melbourne

“I brought my own really weird topic to my supervisors,” Dr Heffernan says.

Dr Heffernan’s plan was to study the wrist as a platform for technology. She planned to progress from wearables like smart watches to insertable technologies like microchips embedded under the skin.

But her supervisors Professor Shanton Chang and Professor Frank Vetere cautioned her that her topic would be too big for a PhD project. Their research experience ensured that Dr Heffernan could study a topic she was interested in, but that would also be achievable in a PhD.

Her supervisors remained her biggest supporters.

“They were very helpful in being that sounding board and being that second set of eyes for any qualitative codes, to make sure that they make sense. They helped me come up with or find analytical frames to use and gave me really detailed feedback – more than I would expect because it was just me researching this topic in the Human-Computer Interaction group,” Dr Heffernan says.

Scholarships support PhD research and travel at the University of Melbourne

Research training program scholarships became available for part-time researchers towards the end of Dr Heffernan’s PhD. The scholarship supported her to complete her thesis.

“It allowed me to keep having that protected time for my PhD work,” she says.

During her PhD, Dr Heffernan visited the US, Sweden, Spain, England and Germany to attend conferences and conduct research. She received scholarships from Google and University of Melbourne Faculty of Engineering and IT to help fund this travel.

"I would never have been to Sweden, let alone to do the research," Dr Heffernan says.

How to succeed in a PhD at the University of Melbourne

During her PhD, Dr Heffernan went from being a mid-level UX designer to head of UX. Climbing the career ladder is difficult to begin with, but it’s even more difficult when completing a part-time PhD.

“I didn't have a life. I sacrificed a lot. Know what you're getting into,” she says.

“But I did really enjoy it. I would do it over again.”

To manage the load of working with a part-time PhD, Dr Heffernan recommends planning the structure of a PhD thesis early on. Though she also says some flexibility is important for things that emerge during the research. How to Write a Better Thesis is a good place to start.

A PhD candidate needs tenacity and resilience, Dr Heffernan says. A PhD is a creative experience, with all the pitfalls of the creative process. Dr Heffernan described a rollercoaster of emotions she’d go through, from elation to depression.

“And it's okay to be negative sometimes. I don't like toxic optimism. But it's going to be okay,” Dr Heffernan says.

“Having that resilience to keep trying, and wait, let the feelings pass, and then be back up on the upward swing is important.“

Learn more about a PhD in Engineering and IT