Media Design Program

To support a high level of invention within an increasingly complex domain, we call upon a mix of strategies, methods, experts and theories. We develop conceptual models such as Productive Interaction that are built into our core courses. We create innovative tools for understanding people and their values and daily practices that we use in the Media Design Matters track and our People-Knowing studios. We use our own custom applications and electronics expertise to allow our students to create working prototypes without becoming engineers in courses such as the MDP's New Ecology of Things and the MDM's Technology for Social Change. We build faculty research into the curriculum through Collaborative Research Projects and the MDM Projects context.

You can download the curriculum pdf to see the course distribution and degree requirements.

MEDIA DESIGN PROJECTS TRACK

MDP Concept Year: core courses
In the core studio courses, students learn to:

design productive interactions that enable meaningful exchanges between people and people or people and things
design communications that are media-specific: i.e. they combine the medium and the message to the greatest effect
use creative visualization and narrative strategies to imagine people as more than simply users in futures that are anything but dystopic
intelligently articulate their expertise and critical position within interdisciplinary contexts
ground the insights of theory in the constraints of practice
use design as a method for discovery

MDP Concept Year: topic studios
The topic studios represent an array of issues, practices, and subject areas that intersect with Media Design. The range of options allows students to go deep within their interest areas while also bumping into surprising new perspectives. Each student works with an MDP advisor to craft their own mix of courses. Sample course titles include: Materials and Spaces as Media; Visualizing Dynamic Systems; The New Ecology of Things; The Ubiquitous Moving Image.

MDP Summer X-Term
In the summer between the Concept Year and the Thesis Year, students are required to take a 6-unit “lite” term. Students can choose between three options designed to provide exposure to ways of working within Media Design.

Specialized Study – Art Center Lite Term
Students take a minimum of 2 courses within another department at Art Center. This option allows students to go deep within a particular field, such as Environmental Design, Product Design, or Film.

Field Exposure – Off-campus Internship
Students can apply for internships with partners of the Media Design Program or other companies or non-profits with approval. MDP partners include companies such as Nokia, or Inkling; research facilities such as Intel Research, Kaiser Permanente, the Mayo Clinic; and fellowships within the United Nations and its affiliates such as UNICEF and UNESCO.

Collaborative Research Project
Students work as research associates on a Grad Media Design summer research project.Students work side-by-side with Grad Media Design faculty and visiting researchers. The mix of projects varies from year-to-year.

MDP Thesis Year
The thesis year is spent creating an individual thesis project. To support students in developing a unique personal vision, students will be introduced to strategies for imagining the future and articulating their ideas in inventive ways.

The thesis should be a design-driven investigation that leads to a project or set of projects that provide a unique contribution to the field. Examples of past thesis projects can be found in the Gallery. Each student works with a lead thesis advisor and an interdisciplinary team of adjunct thesis advisors.

The Thesis Advisors come from diverse fields such as Information Science, Architecture, Media Art, or Film. Advisors are chosen for their unique positions within their respective fields and are themselves frequently hybrid practitioners who bring multiple perspectives to bear on student work. The advisors change from time to time in response to shifts in student interests.

Thesis Requirements
For all graduating students, the final deliverables include:

Thesis project: a designed artifact or set of artifacts
Thesis publication: web-based documentation designed for knowledge-sharing with specific communities of practice on the internet
Thesis exhibition + presentation: a physical installation demonstrating the project and providing context, designed for public presentation and critique

MEDIA DESIGN MATTERS TRACK

Term 1 / Summer: MDM Critical Methods
MDM students take a series of seminar and studio courses that challenge them to consider: "what is the role and responsibility of the designer working toward social change?" Students learn issues, theories, histories, and methods drawn from anthropology, information and communication technology studies and design research. These ideas are mixed and applied in a 6-unit studio called Design as Research in which students work on design proejcts within the local community.

Terms 2-3 / Fall–Spring: MDM Context-based studios and seminars
The MDM curriculum uses a project-based model in which students learn by working hands-on in a specific context. Each year, the MDM context includes a community, a project partner and an opportunity for design students to learn by engaging directly with real-world conditions. For instance, our first project partner will be UNICEF and our first project will be with children in Kampala, Uganda.

Coursework is not broken apart into discrete classes rather students learn in a synthetic way by working together with their classmates and faculty to navigate the complexities of field work, negotiate cross-cultural relationships with people and organizations, and deal with the specificity of local communication technology resources. The faculty provide support by connecting the students' experiences with higher level learning objectives and contextualizing the field work to allow students to understand how methods and approaches can be applied across a range of situations and practices. The project allows students to have a long-term direct experience with partners and people that they may not have access to independently. MDM Projects is divided into community engagement in the Fall and interventions and field testing in the Spring.

Terms 3-4 / Spring–Summer: MDM Thesis
In the Spring term students identify a direction for their thesis work and develop their role in the MDM context with an eye toward their own individual development. Students begin to identify a thesis topic and interdisciplinary advisory team.

In the Summer term, students work individually or on a team to create their thesis project. Students may use the MDM context as a point of departure and continue their field work, test ideas in a new context, develop their designs further, create in-depth documentation, develop assessment mechanisms, or create reflective projects. Students may also choose to build on what they learned from their field experience to produce an entirely new project.

The thesis project should be a "publishable" outcome whose form is specific to the project and the student's career goals. It should provide a unique contribution to the field. Examples include media interventions, social entrepreneurship, design anthropology, open source tech development, and interface design for social agency.

Thesis Requirements
For all graduating students, the final deliverables include:

Thesis project: a contribution to design and social change
Thesis publication: documentation designed for knowledge-sharing with specific communities of practice
Thesis presentation: a public presentation, form tbd

MEDIA DESIGN LIFE

Colloquium 1A – 3B
Each Friday afternoon, the enire Grad Media Design community gathers to share a steady flow of people, ideas, methods, and provocations. Program business is discussed, announcements are made, and faculty and students give reports from the field. Design Dialogues with distinguished guests and off-site visits is interspersed with Grad Media student pecha kuchas (a 6:40 performance lecture format limited to 20 slides, at 20 seconds each) and alumni updates.

Making Lab
The Making Lab, run by Casey Anderson, is open during scheduled hours on a weekly basis to help students figure out how to make the things they wish to make. The Lab includes scheduled workshops on a range of construction tools, materials, and techniques for activities such as bookbinding, electronics, sewing, rapid prototyping, and programming. T.A.’s, experts, and vendors will be brought in from time to time to work with students individually on their projects. The Lab is not a class but a resource.

DEVELOPMENT YEAR (3-YEAR PATH STUDENTS ONLY)

Development Year students take a combination of courses from Art Center's renowned undergraduate departments that are customized to each student's level of experience and exposure to media design.

In addition, every Development Year student takes the following Grad Media Design classes, regardless of prior exposure, as these are core to the Grad Media Design experience: Introduction to Interaction Design, Visual Narrative, and Transmedia Design. Students are given exposure to a range of media design issues and ways of working in Dev Core, which consists of a series of 3-week assignments, each with a different core faculty member.