Programme 2023-2024

18 EC Master specific course including project

The course Advanced Concept Design (ACD) focuses on the conceptualization phase of the product design process in a real design project with a company. The course begins with a design challenge, co-created by the experts and the company, and finishes with a product concept, which is elaborated in a sense of usability, aesthetical quality/value, materialization and its cultural & societal impact.

The different areas of expertise involved in this course are:

• Ergonomics
  Students have to prove their ability to adequately select and apply these methods such as user observation, interviews and questionnaires, for the benefit of the CDP’s design challenge.
• Culture
  In this area of expertise, theory and methods will be offered concerning the role products (can) play in shaping society and vice versa. Design, Culture and Society focuses on cultural studies (material culture, design history and cultural anthropology) and philosophy of technology.
• Visualisation
  As presentation techniques and portfolio work become increasingly important to designers who want to standout and stay competitive, students will acquire this understanding of visual information.
• Concept Design Project
  A student design team explores the company and performs design related research within the scope of the design challenge concerning the different areas of expertise. Students gain new insights about user needs, cultural & societal experience, and potential emerging technologies, resulting in a personal design vision which will be individually translated into a feasible concept.

 Example of an Advanced Concept Design project

This student movie shows the outcome of an ACD project on a new system to store and sell reproductions at the van Gogh museum - 2015

10 EC Master specific project course

Advanced Embodiment Design Project (AED) is a project course that focuses on the embodiment design phase of the product development process, and combines technology, engineering and product experience. In this course, student teams tackle a real-world product design challenge and are asked to design and develop a working product prototype. Students will learn how to formulate requirements, identify suitable engineering principles, apply appropriate design tools and engineering methods, develop prototypes, and envision, craft and validate technical and experiential product aspects.

3 EC Master specific course

This MPI course provides you with a preliminary preparation on inter-functional communication and management of design. The content of the course addresses management and organization of design assignments in contexts, similar to your future working contexts, of in-company - or network projects.

3 EC Master specific course

This course provides an in-depth understanding of intelligent technologies and intelligent products and services. It examines research findings and recent thinking about advanced digital technologies (such as IoT, ML, AI, robotics, data analytics) and critically explores the nature and implications of machine intelligence. It examines contributions from design, Human-Computer Interaction and engineering, and gives students the opportunity to consider issues in designing effective and appropriate intelligent products and services.

4 EC Master specific course

This course focuses on the strategic reasoning of how and why organisations choose sustainable innovations, within the context of multinationals, SMEs, design agencies and entrepreneurial start-ups. Students will study fundamentals of sustainability, such as economic impact, company strategy, and operationalisation. This course will enable students to consider sustainable strategies and innovations that help businesses in creating long-term competitive advantage.

5 EC Master specific course

The Modelling course teaches students how and why physics determine the behaviour of products and how designers and engineers can use this knowledge to improve product behaviour. The course focuses on advanced modelling techniques and enables students to develop and test formal models to simulate product behaviour. The course teaches students about the general principles of theoretical and computational modelling, including benefits, limitations and appropriate usage of these approaches.

3 EC Master specific course

The Technical Ergonomics and Product Experience course focuses on the theory and practice of designing, evaluating and optimising human product experience. It provides an introduction into fundamental theories and models in cognitive and physical ergonomics (e.g. mental processing, comfort, etc.), and teaches students how to plan and conduct empirical research for measuring and evaluating product experiences.

5 EC Master specific course

The Material-Driven Design course focuses on emerging materials, new fabrication technologies, materials experience, and materials design. Students will learn how to use the Material Driven-Design (MDD) method to explore design potentials of materials. Understanding the material as un-finished, open to further development, students will create and shape materials through DIY material practices and consider their potential for creating unique forms, functions, experiences, and sustainable solutions. 

4 EC Master specific course

The IDE Academy is a series of one-day workshops on design-related skills, knowledge, and insights. The IDE Academy provides basic training for a relevant set of generic IDE skills. In addition, the course will serve as an entry-point for students to self-study these skills. A broad list of skills will be included, some of which will be compulsory and some optional, enabling the students to customize the course to fit with their needs. These are elementary skills for doing research (e.g. observational research, literature research), developing concepts (e.g., visualisation skills) and prototypes (e.g. screen-based prototypes; programming).

2 * 1 EC Shared master course

MYM introduces students to the structure and possibilities of the MSc program at IDE. It supports students in developing their own, personal vision on their Master education and in developing a plan for the final year of their Master program. MYM takes place on the first three days of the 1st and 2nd semester of their Master program. Two of these days provide a general program for all Master students. The other day is called the Master Identity Day and its program is specific for one of the three IDE Master programs (SPD, IPD or DfI).

3 EC Shared master course

The aim of this course is to help students gain a deeper understanding of the principles, practices and procedures of design in a broad and general sense. The course entails a reflective approach to the study of how designers think and behave when designing, what sort of problems they encounter, the use/misuse/non-use of design methods, and the diverse social contexts they might work in. This will help students to develop an ability to critically analyse design processes and empower them to change, modify, and adapt thinking and acting while designing.

In this curriculum, 30 EC is reserved for electives. This provides the students freedom and enables them to shape their personal programme. Students can persue their professional interests and ambitions with a personalised set of different courses.

This elective space enables students to specialise, or broaden their knowledge in specific subjects e.g.: entrepreneurship, marketing, medical design, automotive design, research, visualisation and others. Students who want to broaden their learning can take master’s courses at other faculties and universities, both in the Netherlands and abroad.

For those students who want to increase the depth of their development as an industrial design engineer, IDE offers more than 50 different courses. This includes courses from the other IDE master curricula.

• More about Electives

For more detailed contents of some of the IPD Master courses, you can view the Study guide.