Design for People

MA programme / Focus area

Choosing your focus area

In the Master's programme, you take the expertise from your bachelor's degree as your starting point. We work based on the following 5 subject areas:

  • Accessory Design
  • Communication Design
  • Fashion Design
  • Industrial Design
  • Textile Design

In your application you must choose the subject area in which you wish to advance and develop your design projects, as you will receive professional sparring, guidance and be challenged on your practical skills within that specific subject area.

Along with your choice of subject area, we ask you to choose between 3 thematic focus areas:

  • Social design (Design for People)
  • Sustainability and design (Design for Planet)
  • Play and design (Design for Play)

The focus areas are a unique opportunity to link and develop your subject area and your learning to topics and industries that you are passionate about and see yourself contributing to in the future.

Below you can read more about what to expect if you choose Design for People as your focus area.

Why should I choose Design for People?

Design for People is aimed at students who are professionally bold; who possess a social and societal awareness; who wish to adopt an exploratory, critical and open-minded approach and who want to focus their design practices on social agendas in an interdisciplinary forum.

Students from all four of the school's own bachelor's programmes will be accepted as well as students from other disciplines who meet the admission criteria by showing a design understanding equivalent to the level of a bachelor’s degree in design.

As a student at Design for People, you must be able to master a design process and activate design methods to develop design projects within the design disciplines of Industrial Design, Communication Design, Fashion Design, Textile Design or Accessory Design under the theme of MA People programme. 

Projects at Design for People, take point of departure in peoples' needs and behavior. A design student at Design for People must have the inclination, will and courage to conduct different types of real life user studies as means for qualifying their design project.

What will I learn?

Design for People teaches design; theory, process and methods to make the students develop design projects which can solve human, social and societal challenges.

You learn to

  • use stakeholder involvement as a foundation for better design solutions
  • master complexity when designing within the human, social and societal challenges
  • design relations for improved living conditions

We work within different domains where design can have a social impact through thematic approaches such as: empathic design, critical design, speculative design, participatory design, co-design and transformative design. You will explore new and concrete ways to address visions of a socially sustainable future by focusing on design, users, stakeholders, creativity, empathy, ethics, complex problem solving, and critical thinking.

In Design for People we see a huge potential for designers to take part in the technological development. A designer from People will be skilled to enter the complex space between people and technology, with the aim to make new technology desirable for future users.

As a student you will be equipped with knowledge, and skills to challenge the status quo and point towards a more socially sustainable future.

 

Courses

The courses support and expand on the knowledge, competences and skills that you bring from your BA training

Click the course titles below to read more and see examples of student projects. 
To view the formal course descriptions, use the link "Curriculum and course descriptions".

Situating social design
Understanding the contextual changes in design and the role of the designer.
Introducing different methods of user observation and involvement. 

Emphatic Equality
Understanding the core thoughts of emphatic design and participatory design methods. 
 
Critical Framing
Challenging current social issues, to be addressed by design practice.
- Understanding the theory of a critical design approach for moving towards how things ought to be

Collaborating Real Time
Mastering complexity, dynamics and collaboration through direct engagement with a company, institutions or NGO.
- Focusing on project management and co-design in a collaborative project with a social challenge.

Design for Behavioural Change
Focus on design for behaviour change as a useful approach to address the multiple societal (people), and environmental (planet) challenges that we face today that require action based on ethical considerations.

Deep Research
Focusing on the design experiment and advancing the designer as producer and communicator of new knowledge 

How will I learn?

You will be taught by Danish and international, highly qualified teachers from academia as well as practice.

The curriculum of Design for People includes design of products, services, methods, processes, systems and experiences that make new suggestions to improve or challenge existing solutions or conditions.

At Design for People, we encourage critical thinking about social agendas and integrate the core concept of design by focusing on how things ought to be. We collaborate with municipalities, NGOs, companies and institutions.

The instruction comprises a mixture of lectures, seminars, workshops and individual and group-based project work.

Why is Design for People important?

Design for People is aimed at a more socially sustainable future. We focus on developing more equitable and dignified societies for people to live in.

Globally, we find ourselves in a time when new ways of doing things are needed as never before. There is an urgent need for inventing new products and services that can solve specific challenges and for systems, processes or methods that can change impractical behaviour and deadlocked situations.

The design profession needs to be a partner in this development, and the world needs new ways of design thinking and design doing to come up with new suggested solutions to complex issues (wicked problems). Designers, must therefore, participate actively in the challenges we are facing both right now and in the future.

Career stories

Alumni stories

Ansøgning og optagelse

Graduation projects 2022

About this year's graduation exhibition

'You Are Here' shows how design and designers can lead the way and make a positive difference in a world that needs new ways of thinking. As you travel through the exhibition, you will encounter functional, aesthetic and even surprising designs as well as techniques and methods for creating interactions and the transformation of systems. You will come to question your habits. You will see a glimpse of the future. And you will get to explore the designer within you.

Afgangsprojekter

Se alle afgangsprojekter

Workshops at Design School Kolding

Design School Kolding's workshops allow you to work with materials and manufacturing of prototypes and provide a space for you to constantly develop your talent in relation to your speciality.

Workshops at Design Shool Kolding

Relaterede projekter

Studiehåndbogen

Contacts and teachers

For questions regarding admission, please contact Karina Sørensen and Ester Fuchs.
For questions regarding content and collaboration, please contact Canan Akoglu.

FAQ

Gå til Design for Planet

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