Delft University of Technology, MSc, Design for Interaction

Over the past decades, the subjective meaning of products and services has steadily gained in importance in design processes. Increasingly, a deeper understanding of users, their lives, and aspirations, has become key for developing successful propositions. As a result, there is a growing need for designers who are expert at ‘the user perspective’ of products and services, who understand the impact products have on people’s lives, their experiences, motivation, and their behaviour. The Design for Interaction (DfI) Master’s programme focuses on the ways in which people and products interact: how does a user understand, use, and experience a product? This raises the question of how designers can conceptualise products that are relevant to the user. The goal of the programme is to educate designers who understand what people do with and expect from the products they use in everyday life, and who are able to design products appropriate to their needs’ concerns and abilities. The programme offers students a multidisciplinary course of study, covering topics ranging from aesthetics and ergonomics to psychology and sociology. Students learn to formulate design visions, create and visualise concepts, and develop and test experiential prototypes. The programme delves deep into the processes and principles underlying people’s interactions with products: how to involve users in analysing needs, and how to apply technologies in the product development process. During the project phase, students apply and integrate what they have learnt. Not only is a DfI student able to design interaction visions, through technological knowledge (s)he is able to create realistic and working demonstrators. Through this combination DfI prepares you both theoretically and hands on, to become a user experience expert.