What is IT Product Design?

The purpose of this master programme is to educate designers, who can work in multidisciplinary teams that develop interactive IT- products like home appliances, industrial sensors and controls, mobile phones, and palmtop computers. The programme targets those manufacturing industries that are not normally associated with IT. Depending on the field of their Bachelor’s degree, graduates will be able to take on different responsibilities in a development team: Product and business concept development, interaction design, user guide design, user experience modelling, usability work, or design process management.

The programme also qualifies candidates to enter a 3-year PhD programme to pursue a research and education career.

In particular the programme aims to qualify students to:

• Understand and apply theories and methodologies relating to the development of innovative IT-products - and the user work practices they instigate,
• Design user interaction for product interfaces based on user empathy and aesthetics of interaction,
• Establish and facilitate collaboration between design team and stakeholders in the development process - users in particular,
• Organise successful development processes and pilot them in an industrial organisation, and
• Contribute to the continuous development of theories, methods, and technologies in the research field of IT product development.

Programme structure

The programme is divided into four semesters, each with its own rhythm to train a diversity of work practices:

1st semester: Design research horizon
2nd semester: User centred design practice
3rd semester: Interactionresearch
4th semester: Graduation thesis

After the first year of study, students are encouraged to complete a summer intern with a company or research institution, or to pursue a research task of their own

The thesis work takes 4 months. It requires the full workload of the fourth semester.