Programme, 120 credits

Interaction Design

Admission requirements

1. Degree of Bachelor or equivalent in subjects relevant for interaction design. Examples of relevant subjects include, but are not limited to: computer science,
informatics, information systems, human-computer interaction, new media arts,
fine arts, design (industrial, product, graphic, interaction), communication studies,
media studies and cognitive science.

2. Approval of the following submitted material: 2 x work samples of previous
relevant work and an individual response to the application assignment, available
on the Malmö University web site: http://www.mah.se/english/Education/Masters-studies/TAIND/Apply-to-a-Master-in-Interaction-Design/

3. General eligibility + the equivalent of English course B in Swedish higher
secondary school.

Application instructions available

here.

– "We were given the freedom to decide how to solve challenges based on the creative ideas we developed. This freedom of design is the most important thing to me!"
Former student Rob Nero is an Interaction Designer at Ziba Design I Portland, Oregon. 

Description

This programme prepares you to work as an interaction designer by giving you the necessary (co)design skills to design for interactions.

The purpose of the programme is to explore new ideas concerning digital artefacts and media. It is practical and experimental. Interaction design is the process of designing with digital materials. In this process an interaction designer focuses on the user and the many aspects of specific use situations. Central aspects of this training include: Hands-on prototyping, design-oriented ethnographic fieldwork, staging cross-disciplinary collaboration and reflection of use qualities.

This programme is international and multidisciplinary with students and staff from many different countries and design-related backgrounds. During the first year, you receive studio-, team- and project-based training in designing settings, services, systems and detailed digital and interactive solutions for interactions. Examples include mobile and physical computing, place-centric computing, gamingservice design, social media and interactive, critical arts. During the second year, you specialize in, explore and reflect upon a topic of your interest and complete your work portfolio.

Potential working fields include IT, design and media industries. You will also have the skills to start your own design-related company, work as a teacher in the field or pursue PhD-studies.

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

Inteaction Design Students
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.

The programme comprises full-time study for two academic years.


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.

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.

 


Courses

List of courses for program event TAIND12h, starting 03 September 2012 :

Here follows four interviews with former students.

The freedom of design is the most important thing!

After finishing his final thesis for the Interaction Design Master's Programme at Malmö University, Rob Nero moved back to the USA and became employed as an Interaction Designer at Ziba Design in Portland, Oregon.

Interaction design, alumn

Rob Nero is as a former  interaction designer student.

- Sadly, I returned to the US because I couldn´t find work in Sweden. But I loved studying at Malmö University! Working with people from different countries taught me that we are all the same, and all different, at the same time. All in all, the two years I spent studying in Sweden were scary, challenging, confusing, exciting, adventurous, amazing and unfathomable…

Rob Nero had worked in various software design companies before attending Interaction Design studies at Malmö University.

- But only designing software was frustrating to me, and difficult to break away from professionally. But the two years I spent at K3* have completely changed my life, given me perspectives on life that I now use in my job. These are all things that I could not have learned by reading a book, or by attending any other Master's program. These experiences were unique to Malmö University, and unique to Malmö.

His previous experience of working towards his Bachelor's degree at university was very rigid with many lectures and very little hands-on experiences.

- What I liked about Malmö University was that it was nothing like that. We were given the freedom to decide how to solve challenges based on the creative ideas we developed. This freedom of design is the most important thing to me! Maintaining this freedom, throughout the program, allowed me to explore tangible design and physical prototyping, which helped me get the job I have today.

*K3 is the School of Arts and Communiaction in Swedish: Konst, kultur och kommunikation, K3

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Anette works at Sony Ericsson


Anette Sandegård lives alternately in Beijing, alternately in Bjärred, has a major in arts and a master’s degree in Interaction Design at Malmö University. She is 45 years old and works at Sony Ericsson which she has done for the past ten years, currently as Global Manager for a team in Lund och two teams in Beijing.

I found out about this education in a telephone conversation with a new friend, late one evening in 1998. It sounded so exciting that I checked out Malmö University’s web site straight after the phone call and when I noticed that the application deadline was in quarter of an hour I registered immediately.

Anette Sandegård have studied interaction design

Anette Sandegård works at Sony Ericsson.

She also sent an email to the programme manager, which was followed by an interview and the showing of her portfolio. This went well and she was accepted to the very first class of this educational program.

At that time K3 was rather small scale, the premises were brand new, the educational staff energetic, attentive and curious, as were the students. Everything felt possible and the path from concept to design was short. Gradually the school grew and consequently it became a little more accommodated to usual university standards.

She believes it gave her proof of her existing knowledge och ideas, but also provided new tools and above all new methods to test and use as support. Before she started at Sony Ericsson she worked with art, education and media production in her own business. In the future she can see herself working within the field of artistic expressions again.

This fall she returned to Sweden after four years in Beijing where she had developed and operated a design department with interaction and graphic designers for the same company.

My new job entails the development of user support materials– to create content – texts, illustrations and animations –in order to describe to the end users how our products – telephones and accessories – function and how these functions can be used.
__________________________________________________________________________

We designed prototypes and tested them in real contexts.


Mads Høyby is studying for his PhD in Interaction Design at Malmö University at the centre for new media, Medea. He lives in Copenhagen and there he is member of the interactive artist collective Illutron.

- I am interested in the interaction between body and technology. I often make art installations. For instance have I made a singing plant for the Botanical Garden.

Mads Højby, Interaction Design
Mads Høyby is a former Interaction Design student at Malmö University.

After a degree in Information Design and Programming at Copenhagen Business School Mats chose to continue his studies in Malmö, because he wanted a more design oriented access to technology.

- The education in Interaction Design in Malmö was one of the first with a strong focus on the relationship between people, technology and the social space that occurs in between. That is done by designing your own prototypes and testing them in real contexts.

Mads chose to continue studying for another four years, primarily because of the good dialogue with his adviser. He believes that he has received training in better being able to work in a reflective manner in the design process.

- The process is important. It is exploration and design combined - an expansive and practical explorative process that we work with.

As most of the education is in English he rarely speaks Swedish. The major part of the teaching takes place in the form of projects which are implemented and evaluated in groups.


- This requires that one is able to work independently and take large responsibility for one’s own learning. The teachers are more like sparring partners than classical communicators of knowledge. This gives us great freedom to find our own form of work.
________________________________________________________________________

We learnt from each other and learnt to work with each other!

Soo Basu is today working as a User Experience Designer at Adobe Systems in Delhi, India, after Interaction Design studies at the School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden.  

 Soo-Basu

Soo Basu sensed that the faculty felt right from the first day and that they helped her to figure out what she really wanted and supported her throughout the whole process.

- I don´t think that I would have found such supportive people elsewhere! The faculty did not try to force us to follow their own philosophy or their perspective on the design issue at hand – instead they provided an extremely nurturing environment in which to develop our own ideas and allowed us to find our own thoughts.

Soo describes this as very different to the design faculty she had encountered attending her Bachelor´s program in India where she were expected to align her thoughts with the faculty. Soo also says she liked studying at the old K3, near Orkanen where the atmosphere was friendlier and allowed the K3 students to interact more with each other and with the faculty.
- It was really great to have such a mixed bag of fellow students in the IDM program, we learnt from each other, and learnt to work with each other!

Today Soo Basu is working as a User Experience Designer at Adobe Systems in Delhi, India. The benefits of her studies at Malmö University she mainly uses as a participatory approach towards design, with engineers and managers.

- I also use elements of codesign, as the software that I work on has a pretty loyal user base that writes plugins and extensions for it. Apart from this, I think I learnt the skills of critical thinking and service design which I apply daily in most areas of life and work.

Students enter the programme with different kinds of expertise, from art and design to engineering and social sciences. Upon graduation, you will have built a strong understanding of how your particular skills play a role in interaction design and how they combine with other specialities of fellow designers.

Potential positions

Most alumni move on to positions as interaction designers, user experience specialists or usability architects in the ICT, telecom and media industries. For some, this involves finetuning the interfaces and interactions of current products to users' needs; other interaction designers work on concept development for future products and services. Yet other alumni find their calling in strategic positions where the role of interaction design is considered in relation to market and business development.

 

Interaction Design Students
Interaction Design

 

Some interaction designers are also found in the role of change agents in public organizations and NGOs. 

Read the interviews with former students, see Interviews.

Connections to world-class research

Finally, thanks to the close connections to world-class research, the programme prepares its graduates to enter academic research institutes. A fair number of alumni have moved on to PhD studies and positions as university teachers and researchers, in Sweden as well as abroad. 

Approval

The programme was established 10 December 2006 .
This programme syllabus (version: 6.000) was approved 02 December 2011 by the Board of Studies at School of Arts and Communication.
The syllabus is valid from 03 September 2012 . Replacement for programme syllabus ratified 24 February 2011 .

Entry requirements

1. Degree of Bachelor or equivalent in subjects relevant for interaction design. Examples of relevant subjects include, but are not limited to: computer science,
informatics, information systems, human-computer interaction, new media arts,
fine arts, design (industrial, product, graphic, interaction), communication studies,
media studies and cognitive science.

2. Approval of the following submitted material: 2 x work samples of previous
relevant work and an individual response to the application assignment, available
on the Malmö University web site: http://www.mah.se/english/Education/Masters-studies/TAIND/Apply-to-a-Master-in-Interaction-Design/

3. General eligibility + the equivalent of English course B in Swedish higher
secondary school.

Learning outcomes

KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING

After completing the program, the student should be able to:
  • demonstrate a broad understanding of the field of Interaction Design: its transformative character, history and development

  • demonstrate substantial knowledge of current research themes and different genres within interaction design, including knowledge of a broad repertoire of design examples from these genres, their use situations and use qualities

  • demonstrate substantial deep knowledge in the individual research area chosen for the second year thesis project

  • demonstrate broad knowledge of the various materials used in interaction design: their properties, limitations and possibilities.

  • demonstrate substantial knowledge of design methods, approaches and practices for designing for interactions, in individual, multi-disciplinary and collaborative settings.

  • demonstrate sound understanding of the relationship between details and overall strategies when designing (networks of) products, services, tools and / or event for experiences and interactions

    • SKILLS AND ABILITIES

    After completing the program, the student should be able to:
  • demonstrate ability to apply a design practice of learning-by-doing

  • demonstrate abilities to contribute to multi-disciplinary interaction design work

  • demonstrate abilities to engage with users and other stakeholders in iterative co-designing processes

  • formulate and re-frame fruitful design problems, challenges, openings and questions in complex design situations

  • demonstrate ability to reach beyond design assignments as originally stated and to explore a range of possibilities as a means to ground design decisions

  • demonstrate ability to select and use relevant methods, techniques, tools and approaches in the design work, including a broad repertoire of techniques for representing interaction designs

  • demonstrate ability to evaluate and critique design concepts, prototypes and finished systems with regard to functional, spatial, aesthetic, sustainable and ethical aspects of quality, with a particular emphasis on methods and theories focusing on use situations

  • demonstrate ability to reflect upon the design process and its results, and to promote a conceptual development of the interaction design field by articulating knowledge contributions on research levels

  • demonstrate ability to account for and discuss knowledge contributions developed through design work including the arguments for these contributions, spatially, verbally as well as in writing to various target groups

    • JUDGEMENT AND VALUES

    After completing the program, the student should be able to:
  • demonstrate ability to, within interaction design as an area of knowledge development, exercise judgement accounting for relevant societal and ethical aspects

  • demonstrate insight regarding the roles of interaction design in society, and regarding the responsibility of the interaction designer to develop meaningful technologies, services, tools and experiences from a humanistic standpoint

  • demonstrate ability to reflect upon and learn from groupwork and individual design processes and practical experiences, for identifying new knowledge needs, and thereby taking responsibility for one’s own continuous learning

    • Courses

    List of courses for program event TAIND12h, starting 03 September 2012 :

    Organisation

    The programme comprises full-time study for two academic years, divided into eight courses as follows.

    Year 1

    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 after individual approval by Utbildningsnämnden, in order to facilitate exchange with comparable education programmes in Sweden and internationally.

    Concerning design methodology, there is a progression from participatory approaches with heterogeneous groups in public settings to participatory approaches where the border between design and use is dissolved and further to design practice as part of academic knowledge production.

    Academic maturity is developed throughout the first year towards an independent project on advanced level, and further in the second year towards state-of-the-art approaches to practice-based research within interaction design.

    Degree

    Master of Arts / Science (120 credits).

    Further information:

    Simon Niedenthal, programme responsible
    Phone: 040-66 57164
    Email: simon.niedenthal@mah.se

    Kristina Regnell, student services assistant
    Phone: 040-66 57102
    Email: kristina.regnell@mah.se


    Programme Offer

    • Start: 03 September 2012
    • International | Malmö | day-time 100%
    • This offer is open for late application.
    • Selection:
      Applicants are selected in order according to precedence from work samples/design assignment in combination with interview if needed.
    • ApplicationCode: mah-42011
    • Last date of application: 16 January 2012

    • Tuition fees are for non-EU students only
    • First installment: 160000 SEK
    • Full tuition Fee: 320000 SEK
    • Apply
    • Start: 03 September 2012
    • National | Malmö | day-time 100%
    • Application period for this offer starts 16 March 2012 .
    • Selection:
      Applicants are selected in order according to precedence from work samples/design assignment in combination with interview if needed.
    • ApplicationCode: mah-42007
    • Last date of application: 15 April 2012

    • Tuition fees are for non-EU students only
    • First installment: 160000 SEK
    • Full tuition Fee: 320000 SEK

    Tuition Fees For Non-European Students

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