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Design Innovation

Master of Design

The MDes program prepares graduates to lead organizational and social transformation at corporations, nonprofits, educational institutions, and entrepreneurial ventures.

As a student in the Design Innovation program, you will immerse yourself in coursework that blends design and business thinking as you prepare to join the next generation of innovators.

Classes consist of approximately 60% design and 40% business content, bringing quantitative business metrics to the designer’s qualitative problem-solving process. This holistic, human-centric program emphasizes four key skill areas: empathy, analysis, contextual understanding, and communication.

Through interdisciplinary work, you will learn how to:

identify and define a problem
develop actionable solutions
make strategic business decisions
implement effective leadership skills for mobilizing and motivating teams

Yijia Sun, Aastha Singh, ’19 MDes, McKayla Blanch, Design Innovation Agnee: Design for Developing Countries: Cooking up a Recipe for Clean Energy Adoption in Rural India, Solution, 2018

Divya Mangadu, Radhika Dhepe, Stephanie Quinones-Millet, Design Innovation Nalo: Together We Support Recovery, Solution, 2018

David Meyers, Raquel Meneses, Chuyang Chen, Design Innovation The Gotel Project, Solution, 2017

In addition to learning from core MassArt faculty, Design Innovation students take courses with talented and visionary professionals serving as visiting lecturers. Classes are co-taught by design and business professors in a fully integrated, collaborative teaching model.

Graduates of the Design Innovation program enter the workforce as service designers, experience designers, design strategists, and innovation leaders. These hybrid design and business professionals are positioned to influence growing industry areas both nationally and internationally, offering a distinctly different kind of leadership to the marketplace.

MDes Learning Outcomes

Students who complete the Design Innovation MDes program are expected to be able to demonstrate the following learning outcomes.

Design and develop experience design, service design and cross-disciplinary design projects
Develop empathy and understanding relating to client/constituency needs and to the creation of solutions that resonate with them
Ability to systematically deconstruct and analyze problems, synthesize findings, and come to creative solutions applicable to business and design
Understand the role of design in culture and commerce
Develop the contextual language of business and design, and gain business skills relative to the creative economy
Gain communication skills relative to leadership, business, and multiple audiences
Develop awareness and understanding of the diverse cultural, historical, and experiential issues expressed and inherent in one’s design practice and in the discipline of design
Develop the aesthetic sensitivity, technical competence, awareness and analytical thought necessary to design solutions for social, economic, environmental and global challenges
Team leadership and understanding of how to motivate interdisciplinary teams, and collaboration skills
Ability to verbally and visually present work in a professional manner
Hands-on graphic visualization, technical drawing, model making and prototype development