General Course Listing

The courses that follow reflect the offerings for the 2024-2025 academic year. For additional course details please visit the Registrar page and click on the Graduate Course Listing.

PDG-5050

UX Beyond Screens

Fall semester: 1.5 credits

UX Beyond Screens is designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of user experience design methodologies. The course will delve into UX research and synthesis, design sprints, service design, IoT, voice design, AI, diversity in design, cognitive design and storytelling in design. In addition to readings and case studies, students will be given the tools to explore complex opportunities found in existing communities and will complete the course with a solid understanding of how to translate user research into design solutions that incorporate advanced technologies.

PDG-5080

Making Studio

Fall semester: 3 credits

Making is at the heart of product design. Serving as an introduction to the re-emerging fields of making, hacking, modding and do-it-yourself (DIY), this course will delve into techniques, tools and resources for expanding what we can make ourselves. We will combine traditional and novel techniques and materials in electronics, computation, crafts, fabrication, entrepreneurship and more, moving beyond ideation and concepting to create fully functional products of design. Students will have opportunities for online exposure and access to a network of innovators, hackers, hobbyists and crafters producing DIY projects. Hands-on skill workshops in electronics and crafts are complemented with field trips, discussions and critiques.

PDG-5110

Design Research and Integration

Fall semester: 3 credits

In this course we will explore how to create meaningful and innovative design solutions by introducing research methodologies, design thinking and human-centered design. Through a combination of lectures and workshops, students will get firsthand experience in conducting research, interviewing participants, creating user journey maps, generating insights, prototyping solutions and testing their ideas with users. This course will stress thinking critically about how designers are solving problems, what problems they should be designing/solving for, and the importance of designing with an empathetic lens.

PDG-5120

Entrepreneurship for Sustainability and Resilience

Fall semester: 3 credits

Many product designers feel trapped in siloed roles, supporting the production of wasteful, disposable and toxic materials. Through the theme of food, this course will examine relationships, systems and infrastructures connecting us to local and global sustainability: growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, distributing, selling, preserving, cooking, eating and disposing of the waste related to food—the elements that shape many aspects of our lives and relate directly to our planet’s future. Working with sustainability experts and change makers (including scientists, engineers, farmers and other specialists), students create designs that address one of the most fundamental aspects of life. Sessions take place at various locations throughout New York City and its surrounding region, as living laboratories for design projects.

PDG-5190

Studio Intensive: Affirming Artifacts

Fall semester: 2 credits

Affirming Artifacts is a course that quickly immerses the designer into navigating the design criteria of purpose, appropriateness and fit. Too often, design solutions are conceived in isolation or abstraction, with little bearing on the context in which they will ultimately live and thrive. In this course, students will take a rigorous approach to conceiving and executing various products of design—material, experiential, discursive or activist—with an eye toward pushing beyond obvious wants and needs and moving toward preferred behaviors through context-specific persuasive objects.

PDG-5192

Studio Intensive: Interaction Intervention

Spring semester: 1.5 credit

Interaction design is not limited to the domain of digital media; it is at the heart of every artifact. Similarly, all artifacts can be construed as “interventions,” soliciting reactions whenever they are encountered. One aspect of designing an artifact is to encourage an intended activity and mediate the relationships between its multiple audiences, making the interaction a key factor of the design. In this course, students will design an intervention into a public space, providing an object/environment/service—either entirely physical or enhanced with electronics; stand-alone, or connected—intended to encourage curiosity, investigation, thought, interaction, socialization and positive change.

PDG-5193

Three-Dimensional Product Design

Fall semester: 1.5 credits

Three-Dimensional Product Design introduces students to product development and the design of basic hand tools. It uses the past as a frame and asks students to research and redesign tools that have been rendered obsolete or forgotten by some technological innovation or cultural shift. The philosophical argument of the course is that humanity’s development is inextricably intertwined with the development of its hand tools, and that our survival through an unforeseeable future depends on the sustainability of our handwork.

PDG-5420

Business Structures

Spring semester: 3 credits

This course examines the critical aspects of successful organizations, including the development of strategy and business models, business plans and pitches, intellectual property and entrepreneurship. Through an exploration of fundamental business issues at the beginning of the 21st century, students develop either a business plan for a new organization or a new business model and strategic plan for an existing organization. The result is a formal “pitch” presentation given to guest professionals and classmates.

PDG-5530

Smart Objects

Spring semester: 1.5 credits

The ubiquity of embedded computing has redefined the role of form in material culture, leading to the creation of artifacts that communicate well beyond their static physical presence to create ongoing dialogues with both people and each other. This course will explore the rich relationship among people, objects and information through a combination of physical and digital design methods. Beginning with an examination of case studies, students will gain a sense of the breadth of product design practice as it applies to smart objects. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on studio exercises, students will investigate all aspects of smart object design, including expressive behaviors (light, sound and movement), interaction systems, ergonomics, data networks and contexts of use. The course will culminate in a final project that considers all aspects of smart object design within the context of a larger theme.

PDG-5540

Drawing Design

Fall semester: 1 credit

The effective two-dimensional representation of ideas, products, experiences and systems is a foundational skill in design practice. In this course multiple modalities of drawing will be workshopped—from ideation and sketchnoting to perspective drawing and storyboarding. Students will be encouraged to experiment with multiple mark-making tools, both analog and digital, and explore telling stories through a personalized visual language and style.

PDG-5260 / PGD-5265

Special Topics I and II

Fall and spring semesters: no credit

Special Topics gives students an essential set of tools for communicating and analyzing design. During the first semester, students are guided through presentation skills, portfolio production, writing articulately about their work and critiquing the work of their peers.The second semester focuses on a breadth of contemporary issues in design.

PDG-5632

Imagining Climate Futures

Spring semester: 1.5 credits

Design practice will be dominated by issues of climate change. In preparation for a design career spent negotiating these new realities, this course will provide a detailed analysis of the current state—exploring how scientists, activists and social theorists imagine climate change will affect human life. We will explore the kinds of destabilizations and reorderings that these changes will generate, and the different prescriptions people have developed in response. Finally, we will explore the ways in which writers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and others are offering us ideas and methods we can use to act on our own positive future paths. This course will enable students to directly confront the difficult realities we face, while also gathering a set of tools that will help them to intervene in those realities to create positive outcomes.

PDG-5672

Studio Intensive: Design Performance

Spring semester: 3 credits

Design Performance will take an improvisational approach to organizing student work and presenting it to the community in an end-of-year exhibition. Products and ideas perform specific roles in our lives, and we perform specific roles in relation to them. A designer manipulates the roles and relationships between products and users. In this light, the designer can be seen as director in the highly malleable and controllable theater of the designed world. Drawing from a long history of storytelling and performance techniques, this course will explore new possibilities for communicating innovative design work. Students will be guided through an evaluation of their product and design ideas and develop the ideal forum for presenting those ideas.

PDG-5730

Design Narratives: Video Storytelling

Spring semester: 1.5 credits

Visual storytelling has become a critical tool in helping designers sketch, prototype, visualize and communicate their ideas. Increasingly, this storytelling takes place within the medium of video, which provides a powerful, immersive and easily disseminated means of articulating the products of design. From context to scenarios, from use to benefits, as product designers expand their purview into the realm of experience design, video has become a lingua franca of both design practice and design commerce. This course will cover the basic principles of visual communication using techniques in contemporary filmmaking. Working in teams on a tangible project, students will get hands-on experience in different stages of the storytelling process, including observation, ideation, script writing, storyboarding, shooting and editing.

PDG-5731

Design Narratives: Design Histories

Spring semester: 1 credit

Design Histories provides a non-Western approach to learning about the history of designed objects, buildings and systems. Eschewing the chronological approach, each class centers on a topic and draws on several fields of study—journalism, marketing, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, literature and geopolitics—in order to understand how various lores and perspectives shape historical narratives. The goal of the course is to provide students with the tools required to question monolithic, short-sighted takes on history, and to critically assess the creation and development of the designed world.

PDG-5732

Design Narratives: Point of View

Spring semester: 1 credit

Point of view is a core building block of any successful design, and any successful design career. It’s about what you believe and why you believe it. While it’s easy to rationalize almost any design project as “good” from various sets of design criteria, the strongest designers take a proactive role in defining and articulating a clear point of view and carrying it through their work. If designers are going to be more than executors of others’ ideas or agents in the service of industry, they must enter the professional world with their own ideas, firmly grounded, passionate and with a personal stake.

PDG-5823

Behavioral Psychology

Spring semester: 1 credit

Behavior change is difficult to achieve; behavioral science offers concepts and methodologies to help close this action-intention gap. In this course, students will explore the theory and practice of behavioral science and learn to apply these concepts to their own design work. The universal drivers of human behavior—including principles such as default bias, anchoring, social norms and emotion regulation—will help students learn to think like behavioral scientists themselves, and methods such as behavior mapping, behavior diagnosis, solution strategy and experimentation will be discussed and practiced throughout the course. Together, we will apply these frameworks to a range of human challenges, including health, financial and environmental behaviors.

PDG-6040

Practicing Professional

Fall semester: 1.5 credits

This course builds a deliberate bridge between pedagogy and professional practice, providing students with the tools needed to navigate the contemporary design industry. We will explore relevant working methods and models for design practitioners, starting with a core set of values that will create the foundation of each student’s own practice and career. Topics covered will include communication best practices, role identification and definition, marketing and self-promotion, design ethics, financial (and non-financial) compensation, negotiation and networking. By the completion of this course, students will gain an understanding of the current landscape, their practice, and the practical skills necessary to work in solo and collaborative work environments.

PDG-6070

Seminar: Leadership and Strategic Management

Fall semester: 1.5 credits

Contrary to popular belief, business and design do not have to be at odds. In fact, being a creative professional with a strong foundation in business will give you a competitive advantage to think strategically and lead effectively. During this course, students will learn about the current landscape of creative services and explore ways to navigate this ever-evolving industry. We will focus on the models and methodologies that will enable entrepreneurs and innovation-ready designers to thrive in a business environment. Topics covered will include the fundamentals of business, ethical leadership, strategic management, team building and management, leadership in organizations, business strategy, decision models and negotiations.

PDG-6160

Product, Brand and Experience

Fall semester: 2 credits

Products are increasingly seen as the embodiments of brands and consumer experiences, with product design playing a critical role in reflecting a brand’s personality. In this course, students discover how product design, consumer experience and branding interrelate, and how addressing the needs of both users and markets from different perspectives can provide a more holistic approach to the creation of designed objects. We will work through a complete design process, defining an opportunity within a specified consumer space, performing research, developing insights and strategy, concepting and refining. Throughout the process, students concentrate on creating a cohesive and viable brand campaign, including final design, identity and packaging.

PDG-6230

Thesis I: Directed Research

Fall semester: 3 credits

Thesis I: Directed Research explores key approaches to researching for design ideation. It involves source-based discussion, group and individual projects, and presentations. Critical thinking, ethics and methodology will be emphasized, as well as documentation and creative expression of research material.

PDG-6240

Thesis I Studio

Fall semester: 3 credits

Thesis I Studio is an opportunity to explore design-thinking, design-making and design-doing that is ambitious in scope, innovative in approach and worthwhile in enterprise. Students will create prototypes and experiments across multiple lenses of design—from design gestures to physical product design, and from speculative design to digital product design. Additionally, co-creation sessions with experts and users will inform and expand the thesis territory.

PDG-6321

Advanced Seminar

Fall semester: 1 credit

Advanced Seminar focuses on some of the urgent design topics of the moment. Areas of study range from artificial intelligence, ethics and data fluency to global health and decolonization.

PDG-6327

Seminar: Design for Public Policy

Fall semester: 1.5 credits

Culture, values, law, politics, policy and the state—these are the materials of a society, but what do each of these words mean, how do they interact as a system and how do we leverage them to create change? In this course we will seek to answer this question and examine the practicalities of government, including common processes of developing policy and delivering services. Students will be exposed to classic philosophical readings on the nature of the state, as well as current design practitioners working to innovate in government. Together, we will interrogate how we practically—and ethically—negotiate power, values, politics and physicality as we work in the public sector, for the public good. By the end of the course, students will have practiced connecting social theory to professional practice, visualized public systems, identified levers of change and explored policy innovation initiatives around the world.

PDG-6337

Design for Social Value: Community Design

Fall semester: 1.5 credits

This course helps students advance the application of community design in their practice. Community Design refers to the values, methods, and frameworks that foster equitable collaboration. As traditional design has shifted to human-centered design, Community Design asks, “What’s next?” How do we move from designing for, through designing with, to designing by? Students will explore contemporary readings and examples of social justice values in practice through community design. The course will be anchored in each student’s development of a community design product.

PDG-6630

Service Entrepreneurship

Spring semester: 1.5 credits

Designers are increasingly called upon to create complex services that address interconnected problems within and across organizations that impact the everyday lives of people and the environment. We need methods and frameworks to humanize the world, understand constraints, visualize relationships and assess the impact of services. In this course students will learn to identify and frame problems—working to translate them into innovative service concepts. Great services provide opportunities for experiences to occur among people, objects, processes and environments. Service design methods will be used to better understand relationships, behaviors and ecosystems for a holistic approach to innovation. Students will develop models, service moments and language to communicate their strategic decisions and service solutions.

PDG-6635

Futuring and Three-Dimensional Product Design

Spring semester: 3 credits

Futuring and Three-Dimensional Product Design helps students develop traditional 3D product designs that instantiate the central argument(s) of their thesis. Using the future as a frame of reference, students will be asked to imagine how their research will unfold in the future and to imagine how they can meet those behavioral criteria and demands with three-dimensional product propositions. We will examine how, in an increasingly digital world, three-dimensional artifacts will continue to create value for humanity. The course’s approach moves through three phases: deep futuring, near futuring, presenting. As students reel their wild explorations back into the present, they hone a product concept that is ready for an unforeseeable future, but meets the functional, aesthetic and philosophical demands of today.

PDG-6640

Business Modeling

Spring semester: 1.5 credits

Creating iterative business models aimed at uncovering the assumptions that impact the potential success of any venture is the focus of this course. We will explore how to prioritize risks and apply rapid, low-cost methods to generate earnings and increase confidence. The course is structured to help students strengthen their ability to create more robust business concepts by iterating on the fundamental business cases underlying them. By the end of the course, students will be able to access the primary drivers of success for their concepts, map out the path forward and pitch their business plans to a panel of invited experts.

PDG-6650

Design Delight

Spring semester: 2 credits

This course celebrates the joy of design. While design is traditionally seen as a problem-solving discipline, there are incredible opportunities to introduce products and experiences into the world that find their genesis in other rationales. Through design making, interviews and research, students will play with stimulation, celebration, amplification, choreography, symbolism and emotion as tools that inform a new design ethos. We will challenge traditional needs-based design processes, and delve into celebration, heightened articulation and drama as new expressions of design. Through the lens of the emotional and the experiential, students will explore both the place of design within the world of the senses, and the role of the senses within the world of design.

PDG-6670

Advanced Interaction Design Practices

Spring semester: 3 credits

In this course students will frame, ideate and create compelling digital experiences, and learn how to design for technologies such as AI, big data and AR/VR to support their thesis explorations. Students will employ user testing, journey mapping and prototyping to evaluate and communicate their work. They will also learn competencies such as design systems and agile development processes to understand the roles and expectations of product development teams required to launch digital projects. This course includes visiting lecturers and panels with data scientists, product managers and design managers to bring real-world views of the current state of digital product design.

PDG-6960

Presentation

Spring semester: 1 credit

Whether telling a tale through text, video, audio or other medium, knowing how to engage an audience and make a clear argument is crucially important to making an impact and producing a lasting effect. In this course, each student will be assisted in defining a presentation that effectively communicates the message at the heart of the thesis.

PDG-6970

Thesis II

Spring semester: 3 credits

There are many ways to tell a story, many strategies for finding focus and drawing meaning from one’s work. The goal of this course will be to guide students in determining how to tell the story of their thesis work: what texts, artifacts, images, and other materials can best convey their growth and discoveries. Students will find a cohesive union of what to say and how to say it. The course represents the culmination of the program and will communicate the knowledge, strategies and practices that students have engaged with during the program. The ultimate product of this course is a published book that defines each student’s thesis area and presents their research, thinking and project work.

MFA Products of Design Curriculum