Projects

Projects form the backbone of the Industrial Design program. Within projects you integrate (select, use and acquire) the attitude, skills and knowledge from different areas of expertise, learn about design and research processes, and apply your professional skills in an open context.

Projects are open challenges, and support developing the overall competence of designing in an authentic professional context, as they involve a variety of stakeholders. Furthermore, projects offer a ground to explore interests, and to develop a vision and professional identity. We offer design and design research projects, which are first conducted in a team and finally individually.

For your design project (Project 1), you can choose from a diverse offer of projects, in so-called squads. Squads are teams of scientific staff members, experts from practice, PhD candidates, USI trainees, fellow Master and Bachelor students working within a specific application domain and approach to design.

After choosing your intended expertise development, you will choose a staff member who will guide you in this process as a graduation mentor. Consequently, your work becomes more individual. You will continue to be associated to a squad, but your projects will have a strong connection to the research interests of the mentor, a possible external client for which you work or your (intended) start-up.

The current curriculum of the master program of Industrial Design offers four different projects.

• Project 1: Design (team)
• Project 2: Design Research (individual)
• Preparation FMP or FMP Proposal (individual)
• Final Master Project (individual)