The UArts MID program differentiates itself from other Industrial Design programs not only through its human experience approach to design, but also through its long-term collaborations with partnering businesses and organizations.
We promote creative practice and design thinking as key factors for creating an innovative infrastructure that systematically supports learning and change, fosters a creative and entrepreneurial dynamic within a project team, and encourages experimentation with new ideas.
We seek partnerships with organizations and businesses that are shifting from a multi-divisional and hierarchical management structure that hinders the flow of knowledge, to a dynamic organization that leverages intellectual capital and institutional learning. The understanding of interdependencies and links between and among units and/or stakeholders, more specifically the understanding of human behavior and experience, is at the core of such knowledge creation.
Human networks play a central role in connecting different knowledge pools within the business network: provider/supplier of goods and services, its customers and suppliers, as well as the many other people/collaborators/stakeholders involved and dependent on the success of the business or project.
Our project partnerships are reciprocal; they allow our students to apply design in a real-world context. Simultaneously, our partners reap the benefits of experiencing design process first hand and seeing how value is created as learning happens and new knowledge is created.