Design Innovation and Citizenship

The Master of Design (M.Des) in Design Innovation programme provides an academic framework for postgraduate students to engage with the craft of people and planet-led and co-created innovation in design practice across a variety of fields and in widely differentiated social, economic, environmental, and technological contexts. The programme responds to the changed context within which design practice occurs in the 21st century; a context within which the discipline-based skills of the product designer, visual communicator or textile designer, for example, must sit alongside the working practices and expertise of a professionally diverse and often globally-dispersed workforce.

Students on the Design Innovation programmes (suite of named awards) will become trans- disciplinary practitioners who can respond in a reflective and meaningful manner to the demands, constraints and opportunities of a variety of contexts within which design innovation practice occurs (from local communities to multi-national corporations).

The programme encourages students to identify contexts in which the complexity of contemporary life threatens to overwhelm any existing systems, services or design responses, and deploy design innovation strategies and creative thinking to pioneer collaborative and people and planet-led proposals of artefacts, services, strategies, and/or experiences that respond to the aspirations of diverse stakeholders. This requires that contemporary design innovation practitioners become adept in conceiving, conceptualising and communicating complex problems, and in identifying the social and contextual dimensions of the interactions between people, planet, materials and technology, and the opportunities afforded by such engagements.

The M.Des in Design Innovation places a strong emphasis on the interplay between theory and practice, and aims to provide the resources and expertise to equip students with the requisite research skills and methods for stimulating design-led innovation through a combination of taught workshops, tutorials, lecture and seminar-based sessions, and autonomous design innovation and research projects. Students are expected to engage in high level self-directed learning, research and independent critical reflection which are central to the development of a final research project/thesis.

Students are asked to locate their developing professional and personal practice within a specialist pathway (ex: Service Design, Interaction Design, etc.) that responds to the circumstances and challenges offered by contemporary society, and contribute to transforming the experience of those who utilise, interact with or depend upon designed artefacts, services, strategies, and/or experiences.

The programme enables students to work in ‘real world’ complex contexts through collaborative partnerships with academic, civic and industry partners, preparing our students for employability. Graduates from this programme are equipped to develop strategic, interdisciplinary and evidenceled work across a variety of fields. The practice of Innovation is in constant change responding to the complexity of 21st century life, making it difficult to limit our graduates destinations to a list of industry sectors. However, there are possible future directions our students can pursue: entry into work as an ‘in house’ designer within organisations across public, private and third sectors, entry into a professional design consultancy environment in the private and public sectors; work as an independent designer/consultant; or further academic study by research. Opportunities for further research (MRes, PhD) can be accessed within the Glasgow School of Art or in the greater academic community and will be driven by the ethos of research underpinning the programme.