The Master of Design Programme is efficient
| 5 January 2012 |
The Master of Design programme is efficient, has the right content and meets contemporary needs, a new study concludes. The graduates of the programme acquire useful tools and improved confidence in their profession.
By Morten Seifert
Ulla Østergaard has used her master’s degree as a stepping stone in her career at Grundfos. Previously, her job mainly involved drawing and design work. After earning her master’s degree in design, she has been promoted to head of department and now works almost exclusively with strategic design and design management. The master’s programme at the Danish Centre of Design Research gave her the tools she needed to communicate design to the management level more effectively.
Hans Christian Asmussen worked as an independent graphic designer. After earning his master’s degree in design, he now also offers his services as an industrial designer and is able to charge more for his work.
Ulla Østergaard and Hans Christian Asmussen are two of the graduates who have reaped career benefits as a direct result of taking a master’s degree in design at the Danish Centre for Design Research.
The first group of students embarked on the two-year programme in 2005. The programme is offered every two years, and the fourth class, which has 31 students, began their studies in the autumn of 2011. The Danish Centre for Design Research recently carried out a survey among the graduates to discover exactly how they apply the tools from the master’s programme in their work, and the findings are very positive indeed.
The Designer’s Tacit Language
The survey is based on open, in-depth interviews with five graduates. In the interviews, they were not asked to confirm or deny assumptions; instead, the direction that the conversation took was taken as an indication of the topics that were most pressing for the respondents. And the topics that the graduates brought up were almost exclusively positive.
First of all, they emphasised that the programme had improved their grasp of the expanded concept of design, thus enhancing their ability to work on many different levels in a company. In the survey, one of the graduates explains why it can be difficult for designers to get through:
“A designer thinks in terms of shapes and curves and weights, sensations, tactility – these are all very soft concepts, but they’re real. They are part of the designer’s methodological makeup. It’s very instinctive, tacit.”
Another respondent describes how the programme has taught him to convey the vague concepts to others:
“I earned the title and was able to bring all my knowledge into play, but it took about a year before I fully grasped it: that all the stuff I already knew was fine – I just had to put it into an academic framework.”
Acquiring a Helicopter Perspective
The graduates were also very pleased that they had acquired a helicopter perspective of the design discipline. They explained how they were now able to rise above their discipline and discuss it in clear terms while also having a clear overview of the content and history of the discipline. In the survey, one of the graduates said,
“The programme has given me a theoretical framework that provides overview and meaning. A structure and an overview that can be articulated, argued and documented.”
There was also praise for the content of the programme, for example,
“…they have made a choice to … keep it purely academic. In my opinion, that’s the right choice, because the design schools already offer the tool-based things.”
Other positive statements were,
“… any trained designer should do this programme; that would raise the level of knowledge throughout the design world, which would be amazing!” or,
“… [the Danish Centre for Design Research] has created a programme for designers that is completely unparalleled.”
Still Room for Improvement
Despite the many positive assessments, there were also suggestions for improvements. Some graduates felt that the programme could improve the exchange of knowledge with other institutions of education, for example the universities. Others missed a publication, a blog or a community that would allow outsiders to benefit from the knowledge that is generated in the programme.
Associate Research Professor Ida Engholm, who is in charge of the master’s programme, welcomes the suggestions and will continue the efforts to improve the programme. Most of all, she is happy to see that the graduates all agree so clearly that the master’s programme is a boost for them and their profession, especially at a time when Danish businesses is facing major global challenges.
You can read the full report (in Danish) from the effect study for the Master of Design at the website for the Danish Centre for Design Research:
