Interaction Design, two-year Master's programme
Interaction Design at Malmö University
Interaction design is about understanding and designing for interactions in specific use situations. It is about the shaping of digital things and digitally enhanced spaces with a particulat focus on users and use situations.
Practical Design Skills and Academic Research
We combine practical design skills with academic research capabilities. You learn to create interaction design that makes a difference in society and everyday life, and to contribute with new and relevant knowledge to the academic community. There is a focus on digital materials, but we explore “the digital” as a part of complex networks of people, places, products and services
Internationally Recognised
We focus on areas where our design and research excellence is internationally recognised: physical computing, collaborative media, place-specific computing, game design and studies, social innovation and interaction design methodology and theory.
Content
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Exchangestudent Mel, Martina and Camilla are in the studio discussing and sketching possible use scenarios for solutions of navigating the building we are in. This happened during an intense ’Prototyping Interactions’-workshop during the first theme-project.
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The programme comprises full-time study for two academic years, divided into eight courses as follows.
Year 1
The first year is divided into four courses starting with a studio-based introduction to multidisciplinary collaboration and mainstream interaction design. The next two courses address embodied interaction and collaborative media, two of our signature topics. The final course is a Master’s level graduation project.
- Introduction to multidisciplinary interaction design, 15 credits
- Embodied interaction, 15 credits
- Collaborative media, 15 credits
- Graduation project, 15 credits
Year 2
- Design and social innovation, 15 credits.
- Play and ludic interaction, 15 credits.
- Design-based research, 15 credits.
- Thesis project 2, 15 credits.
In year 2, the studio courses on Design and social innovation and Play and ludic interaction can be substituted with studio courses on equivalent contemporary topics in interaction design research. Read more about this in the Syllbus under year 2.
Teaching Methods
The programme is generally based on a studio learning-by-doing approach, which to us means an iterative, intertwining practice of experimentation and reflection. As teachers we view ourselves as coaches guiding you in this process. Read more about the teaching methods
Working environments
Each year has their own studio, available around the clock. The class makes the studio their own. Here we have group-work, seminars, workshops, presentations, discussions, etc.The studios have projectors, cabinets of diverse working materials, lots of white boards, flexible furniture, etc. Close by there are various well-equipped workshops and the physical-computing Arduino-lab. Additionally, we often use the facilities at MEDEA research centre for final presentations, exhibitions, seminars, programme-meetings, etc. Images from studios and labs (link)
Collaboration with the "real world"
Design is a collaborative process, where users and other stakeholders contribute their expertise and values to the joint task of shaping future things, services, media and spaces. We routinely use participatory design methods to master the complexities of conflicting agendas and goals in real-world design situations.
A privilege of the designer is the license to question the given task and go beyond the taken-for-granted. We place great emphasis on exploring and assessing innovative design concepts, as opposed to incrementally improving existing artifacts to solve existing problems.
Who are you?
Interaction design requires the fusion of multiple skill sets. We recruit students with different backgrounds—design, media, engineering, the arts, and social sciences—and focus our teaching on creating disciplinary synergy in the concrete design work.