Master's Programme in Experience Design

About the education

Experience Design is concerned with how people use, should use, or do not use products and services in the larger context of their lives, and the Master’s programme in Experience Design prepares you to design meaningful, ethical and sustainable experiences with interactive technologies. Experience designers take the broader context into account and design experiences that make sense and make what's complex clearer, without side-stepping any ethical, environmental, and sustainability questions.

The Master’s programme in Experience Design is uniquely focused on developing the critical thinking skills and the design skills so that you can successfully address the ambiguity and uncertainty of current industry and social challenges by means of a thoughtful and reflective design practice.

Courses and competencies in focus 

The Master‘s programme in Experience Design adopts three guiding principles to develop competence in design practice and in academic design research:

• Show rather than tell: you are encouraged to sketch, make, and prototype as a way to ideate and communicate and are assessed based on your design work and not only on your written or verbal communication skills. 
• Balance theory and practice: theory becomes valuable when properly applied, and application is better if it has solid foundations. That’s why all courses connect theory to design practice in both classroom activities and research-based projects. 
• Make, learn, reflect, document: all courses take you through a full design process, from idea to prototype, so that they all contribute to a portfolio that demonstrates design skills to prospective employers. 

The Master’s programme in Experience Design is structured with teaching content and assignments that reinforce the foundational design skills of understanding people, ideation, prototyping, and evaluating. The education then expands on these design fundamentals by introducing advanced topics such as Research Through Design, Speculative Design, Design Ethics, Game Making as Prototyping, and Human-centered AI.

The education is taught in English.

Innovative environments and methods 

The Master’s programme in Experience Design equips you with the theoretical and practical knowledge, and the methods and tools, to create meaningful and impactful people-centered experiences. It leverages design ethnography as a way to know who are the people to design for, build empathy, and understand the relationships between context, people, and technology. Approaches like design thinking, design ethics, research through design, embodied design, and game-making are core to the curriculum. You apply these approaches, methods, and tools in collaborative settings with industry partners, addressing real-world challenges such as those posed by human-centered AI and designing sustainable, inclusive communities and livable places and cities in which digital and physical space blend thoughtfully.

Collaboration opportunities 

The Master's programme in Experience Design is closely integrated with Halmstad University’s design hub, REBEL, and many of the REBEL researchers teach in the Master’s education. REBEL brings together companies and university researchers and students will have many opportunities to actively participate in these activities. For example, during the design studio course and thesis work, students will be able to apply design skills in industrial and academic projects.