Master in Advanced Design

The 2nd cycle degree programme aims to train expert designers in design innovation for the creation of new products and services (product-service systems). Consistently with this general objective, the main characteristic of the degree programme is its multidisciplinary nature, allowing 2nd cycle graduates to acquire competences and knowledge relating to:

• product and service innovation processes; - the planning and management of strategic design projects in production contexts;
• production processes and major industrial technologies (from materials to interactive processes, and needs relating to distribution, use and divestment);
• ICT technologies (from the design of usable interfaces to the design of interactive digital services);
• digital manufacturing processes and technologies; - current cultural phenomena and related social changes.
  

Given the broad range of objectives, the programme is organised into various sub-curricula, focusing on product innovation, with particular reference to contemporary industrial contexts, or the design of intangible products and services in tertiary organisations and urban public services. Given the broad range of topics and the multidisciplinary nature of the knowledge and competences, the Degree Programme includes a consistent part of workshop activities. Each workshop focuses on a qualifying dimension of design: the process, the technologies, the structures, systems, perception and representation. With a choice of design and research topics, workshops become the setting for developing the exploratory and experimental nature of these graduates, improving methods and instruments towork in design even marked by high complexity and highly innovative solutions. This core area of the curriculum, covering Design and Multimedia Communication, is integrated from year one (with different weights according to the chosen curriculum), with learning activities in technological and engineering subjects as well as human and social sciences, helping to acquire the knowledge needed to understand key design constraints. In this sense, the Degree Programme offers the possibility to develop the competences required to work as product and process designer or services designer. In the case of product design,the core part of the Degree Programme is supported by monographic course units mainly in technological and engineering subjects; while for services design, the programme includes mainly monographic course units in human and social sciences, psychology and economics. The monographic theory course units aim to enhance the students' specialist engineering and production knowledge, as well as cultural guidance skills. In year two, the programme focuses on the consolidation of design practices, again specifically applied to innovative and sustainable products and systems or innovative, participatory services. The Degree Programme pays great importance to design research, and this competence is developed by students particularly in the final laboratory in year two, aiming to study a design issue aiming to become the basis for the final research work, assessed during the final examination. The key learning areas of the Degree Programme are:

1. Advanced design understood as the integration between the formal and cultural qualities of products and the expression, symbols and meanings of the produced goods and services.
2. The relationship between design and feasibility, i.e. the dimension linked to advanced production processes, digital production technologies, new materials and the so-called"4.0" evolution of the production chain.
3. The centrality of the “product-system”, understood as design seeking to connect the material and physical dimension with the intangible and communicative dimension of the service of every product, user involvement and the collaboration between all the different types of knowledge that help to produce it.
4. The continuous integration between product and user behaviour: man at the centre of design, not only in its ergonomic dimension but also in the mental dimension and in its interpersonal relationship.
5. The proper use of design technologies, representation and production.

This programme is available in Italian.