Applicant Profile
We create a platform for a community of professionals capable of catalyzing the potential of the local environment and devising new possibilities where imagination, feasibility, community and citizenship are always on the horizon.
We have the conditions for this scenario to be as fertile as possible. Our group of teachers is diverse, passionate and familiar with cutting-edge methodologies. In addition, our campus has technology that supports learning, experimentation and production.
The Master's in Design is open to designers of all specialties and professionals from all disciplines , willing to put interdisciplinary practice to the test ; to integrate the resources of design thinking into their methodologies and enrich them with their knowledge.
We are looking for curious and creative candidates who are willing to learn in a context where education and design practice are intertwined. We are interested in them demonstrating that they can develop projects in a group and in a multi-disciplinary environment .
The program requires 100% dedication and is face-to-face.
Differentiators
- Our Master's degree is based on projects that are developed with and for communities, companies and/or organizations. This allows the student to establish relationships with the external environment at a local, national and international level and to connect academic reflection with contemporary local and global issues.
- We have a flexible program that adapts to the diversity of students' interests and abilities, thus allowing them to develop their own profile.
- We promote multidisciplinary work through the development of projects that build bridges between environmental problems, new technologies, social challenges, innovation and design practice.
- Through the structure of the courses we encourage the creation of professional networks with colleagues, teachers and guests of the Master's program. In the medium and long term, this community becomes one of the most valuable resources for the graduate.
- We encourage the creation and strengthening of links with other disciplines through the participation of professors from other areas, both in courses and in the direction of research work. We facilitate the registration of postgraduate courses from other programs of the University.
Objectives
To train innovative professionals capable of developing new ideas and concepts; skills and business models. We link design research and practice with an understanding of cultural and economic implications, through a continuous process in which theory and practical experimentation interact through design projects (research through design).
The program seeks to develop the skills that allow students to catalyze the potential of the local environment and devise new possibilities where imagination, feasibility, community and citizenship are always present.
Study Plan
The program lasts four (4) semesters and has a total of forty (40) credits. It is based on interdisciplinary work around projects and is structured around two cycles: foundation and deepening.
Master's Studies (
MS) are dynamic spaces for learning and experimentation where students of the Master's in Design can learn and internalize principles, positions and tools of Design Thinking through the development and execution of a design project with a real organization.
Students must explore and analyze existing realities in depth with the purpose of proposing new scenarios that generate value for people, organizations and the context in which they are going to design.
In parallel to the development of the project with the organization, each design team must identify and articulate the design approaches of each of its members in order to define a collective critical position that allows them to create unique proposals.
In the Master's Studies, students, professors of the program and national and international guests work together on projects articulated around the Department's lines of research:
Innovation for social change: Creating value by strengthening human capabilities.
Agile technologies: Building capacity and potential in communities through high and low technology hybridization.
Creative ecosystems: Generating spaces for encounter and discovery to think about the future of creative industries.
From product to service: Integrating the different disciplines of design and other disciplines into the logic of experience.
The topics, projects and guests of the Master's studies of the basic cycle vary each semester, thus increasing the panorama of available cases for design work and generating variety in the opportunities for the student to develop his or her talent.
The Master's studies are not sequential, but it is recommended to begin the master's degree with section 1 of the second semester, which usually has an introductory character more accessible to non-designers.
The
Degree Project (PG) is the participatory space in which specific advisors accompany the student in the formulation of the degree project. Likewise, the student refines the specification, produces and implements his or her project.
To learn about some of the projects please visit the Projects section of the Uniandes repository website .
The Fundamentals (F) courses aim to appropriate cutting-edge design technologies and media to generate a common language between designers and professionals from other disciplines.
F1: Design & Bits
F1: Design in Media
F2: Design & Technology
Elective courses (E) allow for further study in laboratories of the research lines and are spaces for work and articulation with other disciplines. Some of these courses can be taught jointly by international guests and professors from the Department of Design and other faculties of the University. Elective courses will be offered in accordance with the progress of the program, the scenarios of the research lines and international collaboration. Among these we find:
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Fast technologies for slow cities
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Human beings and prototypes
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Personal Technologies
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Spaces as interfaces
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Design for competitiveness
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Strategic design
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Publications of the future
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Uniandes Master's Electives
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Design practice in research project
In the second year, the student can access the Academic Exchange (I) program in Master's programs with which there is an agreement outside the country during the inter-semester period.
Seminars (S) are short, intensive courses (one to two weeks long), with a high theoretical content, taught by international guests who are experts in the subject.
Applied Innovation Labs (A) are immersive collaboration spaces with public and private organizations. They have several possibilities:
- Prospective: description of future scenarios that can guide the strategy of organizations.
- Exploratory: identification and specification of possible new products or services with a value proposition that is significant for the user and viable for the organization.
- Consulting: execution of closed assignments of the organization.
The Study Trip (V) is an immersive space of two to eight days that seeks to strengthen the direct link with the regions.
Areas of Research or Emphasis
The Design Department has several lines or “umbrellas” that group the research work; these, together, are dimensions of innovation, boundaries of the discipline and strategies for adapting to the changing nature of the environment. They are not knowledge compartments, so that projects can be under one or more umbrellas. The curriculum has been structured around these lines, thus incorporating research in the Department into the training process of Master's students.
L1. Innovation for Social Change
Creating value by strengthening human capabilities.
Value lies in the deep quality of life, from economic and political practice to aesthetic enjoyment and its integration into culture. In this sense, all innovation does not reside only in technology or in business environments. Relevant innovations are above all cultural changes. This invites us to rethink the dichotomy between business and social change, between profit and altruism. Long-term wealth comes from innovation supported by practical, culturally appropriate, scalable and sustainable solutions, where the different social actors can bring their capabilities into play and build change.
L2. Agile Technologies
Building capacity and potential in communities through high and low technology hybridization.
Agile high-tech approach to low-tech contexts, applications and infrastructures. The modularity and flexibility of high-tech allows for the creation of ad-hoc bricolages with existing artefacts and processes. By approaching design fields as laboratories, communities and designers, unprecedented capabilities are enabled and captive potentials are unlocked.
L3. Creation Ecosystems
Generation of meeting and discovery spaces to think about the future of the creative industries.
Culture as a space for encounter and discovery of vital options. Creation is an instance where culture is renewed and questioned. Where new knowledge and its capacity to provide meaning are demanded. Design contributes to making creation a regenerative capacity of society and culture, which allows it to recognize itself and connect for the future. The world, nature and knowledge are not given. They are projected, designed in an exercise of experimentation and discovery that feeds back into the capacity of these projects to generate systems, networks and communities, implying not only knowledge transfers but also constructive and shared spaces of empowerment.
L4. From Product to Service
Integration of the different disciplines of design and other disciplines into the logic of experience.
People share meaningful experiences through meeting spaces that concretize purpose and meaning. Culture provides us with a vibrant repertoire and a rich tradition, and industry has become a robust medium to create, produce and disseminate its manifestations.
Experiences take shape in a fluid ecosystem of artifacts, activities, communication and symbols, woven into territories whose tangible and intangible, institutional and environmental platforms cement them.
Design has discovered that its core discipline can address the creation of solutions that contemplate all these dimensions, achieving a result that is useful, usable and desirable as well as efficient, effective, economically viable and technically possible.
Program Model
Primer-Semestre
Primer-Semestre
Primer-Semestre
Primer-Semestre
Alumni Profile
The graduate of the Master's Degree in Design:
- It shows advanced level professional skills , a consolidated profile, suitable for leading projects and strategies in organizations or communities .
- He/she has personal and professional skills related to the management of different media, group work, participation in interdisciplinary teams, innovation, design thinking, new methodologies and technologies, prototyping, specification and materialization of ideas and research through design.
- You will be able to work in public and private consultancies whose application leads to the different areas of the profession.
- You will have a robust work portfolio
Contact Information
Contact us through:
https://arqdis.uniandes.edu.co/posgrado/mdis/
Write to us at mdis@uniandes.edu.co or through our WhatsApp chat
Tel: 3394949 ext 3235
Schedule an appointment with the coordinator here
Visit us on campus - Building C - 5th floor