Create impactful products and experiences that combine eye-catching design, performance, safety, and efficiency.
Industrial Design at MassArt is dedicated to nurturing holistic, human-centered designers. Our BFA program equips students to create impactful solutions for products, services, and environments across diverse industries and non-profit sectors. You will develop essential skills such as concept sketching, rendering, and prototyping and gain experience with computer-aided design (CAD) and the importance of Manufacturing and material processes, ergonomics, and human factors in design.
Through collaborations with industry professionals and alumni, you’ll receive invaluable critique and guidance, preparing you for the transition into the field. Our partnerships with leading organizations in and around Boston allow you to apply your skills in real-world settings, expand your professional network, and deepen your understanding of the industrial design profession.
A cornerstone of our program is the Senior Thesis project, a two-semester capstone that empowers you to delve deeply into your design interests and produce innovative, self-directed work that reflects your individual creative vision and professional aspirations.
Alumni Success
MassArt’s industrial design program graduates are making significant impacts across a wide spectrum of industries, working with internationally recognized brands such as Nike, Google, Bose, Shark Ninja, Reebok, and Apple. Our curriculum emphasizes visual and verbal communication, ensuring you can effectively explain the value of your designs to business partners, communities, and individuals.
Graduate with skills and expertise that prepare you to succeed as an accomplished industrial designer.
An Industrial Design education from MassArt prepares you to design products, services, and experiences that people around the world use every day. Here are just some of the concepts, skills, and career opportunities that our students gain during their time here.
Industrial Design is a multifaceted discipline that combines art, science, and technology to improve the human experience through well-designed products. At MassArt, we prepare the next generation of designers to face the challenges of our rapidly changing world, remaining at the forefront of innovation through thoughtful, human-centered design solutions.
BFA Learning Outcomes
Students who complete the Industrial Design BFA Program are expected to be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes, which are necessary and part of successful entry into professional design practice.
- The history of industrial design, including the influence of various works and ideas on the evolution of design study and practice over time and across cultures.
- User experience, human factors, applied ergonomics, contextual inquiry, user preference studies, and usability assessments.
- How the products and systems you design are developed, realized, and distributed; what makes them valuable; and how they’re related to environmental and societal issues and responsible design.
- Professional design practices and processes, including ethical behaviors and intellectual property issues such as patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
- Basic business practices and their relationship to industrial design as well as the ability to investigate and reconcile needs related to entrepreneurship, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, servicing, and ecological and social responsibility in the process associated with specific design projects.
- Designing products and experiences that perform specific tasks and solve predetermined problems.
- Using technologies and tools associated with multi-dimensional design representation, development, dissemination, and application.
- Researching, defining, and communicating about problems, variables, and requirements in the design process; conceptualizing and evaluating alternatives; and testing and refining solutions, including the ability to synthesize user needs in terms of value, aesthetics, and safety.
- Communicating concepts and specifications in verbal, written, and multiple media at levels ranging from abstraction and sketches to detailed multi-dimensional, functional, and visual representations.Collaborating and working effectively in interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary teams.
- Field research and experience
- Internships
- Collaborative programs with professional and industry groups
- International experiences
