Design and Technology Futures (D&TF) is built on an understanding that disciplinary, cultural and intellectual diversity, combined with a creative and open mindset, drives successful innovation.
The programme combines education and innovation into an enabling platform so students may search for new ways to address complex contemporary challenges by utilising the synergy that comes from creative practices and exploring emerging technologies.
D&TF is a transdisciplinary programme merging the competences and skills of technology and design. The programme develops students into T-shaped professionals with the ability to collaborate creatively across different fields and disciplines. The design-led creative process developed by D&TF furthers students’ personal, professional and educational background, enhancing their existing skills and knowledge and enriching them with supplementary competences in order to grow them into virtuous team players able to cope with contemporary complexity.
During their studies, students get a unique creative educational experience by participating in the innovation process in collaboration with industry, community and government partners.
The curriculum draws from three fields: design, technology and entrepreneurship. During their first year of study, students learn how to work as members of multidisciplinary creative teams, how to mix and match their skills with people who have a very different understanding of the task at hand, how to bind together the findings, how to run user-focused research and pin-point opportunities, create clear concepts and communicate these to industry or government partners.
By the second year, students practice leading small creative teams, learn to deal with complex systems, develop innovative concepts and communicate results in a tight timeframe with limited resources and often with tasks set outside their natural comfort zones.
Students learn how to use and mix methods from different fields of study and to make coherent projects in a team with widely scattered skillsets.
Design & Technology Futures is open to all enthusiastic students from a wide range of competencies, including graduates of various design, engineering, technology and innovation disciplines. We look for individuals who are motivated to become leaders of their time, ready to work in transdisciplinary and multicultural teams developing innovative concepts, willing to tackle the complexities and uncertainties of the current day in order to design a new and better future.
We are awaiting applicants to present their creativity, skills and enthusiasm in the application process.
As we seek students with very different backgrounds, they will also pursue various career paths. Students of engineering develop an understanding of the power of design skills so they may act as leaders of development, while students of design refine their skills and competence in running multidisciplinary creative teams. All students are taught to have an entrepreneurial mindset. Whatever our students go on to do, they are valuable team members even during difficult projects with fuzzy goals. The paths of our alumni range from successful entrepreneurs to creative directors, development engineers or design thinkers in global corporations.