Design, Master's Programme, 120 credits

Design as a discipline increasingly finds itself at the centre of innovation and change towards better and more sustainable futures. Design is now becoming integral in organisations, NGOs, businesses, public sector as well as policy development and governance to take on challenges that will define and make alternative futures possible.

The purpose of this programme is to train qualified and confident designers who can enter these complex contexts, take on leading roles and co-create well-designed solutions and facilitate conditions that make change possible.

Choose your own focus

This interdisciplinary programme addresses multiple system levels and gives you the opportunity to critically examine current systems, institutions and norms. Societal challenges such as Food Waste, Repair, Civility and Nomadic Welfare form the backbone of the programme. These issues are explored together with stakeholders in the wider systemic context of the surrounding society.

At LiU we are leading in educating designers within three tracks – Service Design, Sustainable Design, and Visual Media Design, with a world-class research team at the intersection between design and services, a state-of-the-art facility for visual media research, and a strong team devoted to design and sustainability.

Service Design

Design for service systems, with stakeholders in the public, private, or third sector. Exploring methods and tools to drive co-design of service interactions and service systems on multiple levels. Finding out about new models for value creation and change, such as sharing, commons, etc. We engage in projects where design doing and humans are at the centre of the design practice, supported by knowledge from cognitive science and value co-creation. Services are design objects that are systemic and demand taking multiple perspectives, such as social innovation, policy development, and transformative service.

Sustainable Design

Design of sustainable systems, with accompanying business models, products and services. Project-based exploration of solutions that may promote a transition to a sustainable society and empower people interacting with those systems. We explore different philosophical perspectives on the relation between sustainability and design, such as circular economy and nature-inspired design. We work with a slight focus on product design, exploring through physical and digital prototyping what preferable futures might look like.

Visual Media Design

Design and conceptualisation of interactive visual environments, going beyond screens and handheld units. We explore approaches to design interactive augmented and immersive information spaces. We work with studio-based exploration of advanced concepts at the intersection of graphic design, interaction design and information visualisation.

Diverse competences combined

We are reaching out to students with different backgrounds, not necessarily with previous academic design qualifications, but with strong design abilities and a desire to develop design beyond specific materials and disciplines. Our current cohorts have students from diverse backgrounds spanning not only varied design fields but also include political science, electrical engineering, and linguistics amongst others.