Business needs an injection of design—preferably right into the heart. The marketplace changes so fast that leaders must be agile, resilient, interdisciplinary acrobats who command a range of skills and knowledge crossing any number of creative disciplines. Foundations of Design Leadership surveys language, tools, principles, and theories crossing fields of product, service and experience design to prepare you to solve old and new business problems. We will synthesize design, technology, and business skills by building a foundation for practice grounded in topics like ethnographic research, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Cultural Studies, Knowledge Management, Information Architecture, User Experience, Narrative Practice, Philosophy of Research Methods, Marketing, Prototyping, Applied Creativity, and knowledge of self. Students from many backgrounds collaborate and co-create in an immersive studio-based experience while learning about Design in 2020. Foundations of Design Leadership connects you to your cohort, your future practice, and your potential as a design leader through shared learning experiences, skill building, and study.

Forms of business have been in use since tribes of primitive people began to move into close proximity to one another. Business itself has always been innovative as the result of our innate curiosity and creativity, but the development of mass industry at the turn of the 20th century forced business to lose some of its creative power. That creativity was replaced with speed, consistency and a need for duplication. In the 1950s something new happened to industry that began a second renaissance for business. We’ll discuss that change and how it’s evolved. In this course students will learn how creativity, what we refer to today as design, has created a new source of competition for businesses and has allowed for consumer benefits that were once considered unnecessary, bringing consumer satisfaction to the forefront of new products, services, experiences, and communications. Students will learn how to use a structured design process to create consistent results, drive increased revenue, expand market share and immediately contribute to their employers’ operations or their own business. Elements of the process will be studied and put into action.

Forms of business have been in use since tribes of primitive people began to move into close proximity to one another. Business itself has always been innovative as the result of our innate curiosity and creativity, but the development of mass industry at the turn of the 20th century forced business to lose some of its creative power. That creativity was replaced with speed, consistency and a need for duplication. In the 1950s something new happened to industry that began a second renaissance for business. We’ll discuss that change and how it’s evolved. In this course students will learn how creativity, what we refer to today as design, has created a new source of competition for businesses and has allowed for consumer benefits that were once considered unnecessary, bringing consumer satisfaction to the forefront of new products, services, experiences, and communications. Students will learn how to use a structured design process to create consistent results, drive increased revenue, expand market share and immediately contribute to their employers’ operations or their own business. Elements of the process will be studied and put into action.

Central to this course is an acknowledgement of the intrinsic limitations of individuals and individual disciplines and the need for collaboration among and between disciplines. Students in Collaboration explore the possibilities presented by design activity and perspectives that fall between multiple disciplines and those that are shared among disciplines. Focus is on the development of a shared base of knowledge, methodology, context, and language, and on creating systems of shared accountability and coordination. Projects are designed to provide students with the opportunity to share their knowledge and approaches to design solutions with their colleagues through small teams which create cooperative structures and processes that operate nimbly to assess the dimensions of a design problem, measure the resources represented by the group’s heterogeneity, and conceive pioneering design outcomes. Throughout the course, we will address advanced-level concepts in teamwork, including team dynamics and communication techniques, the value of collaboration, and innovative problem-solving by looking at how to build the capacity for collaboration through three lenses: individual, teams or groups, and systems.

Catalyst to meet, interact and learn from a wide variety of creative entrepreneurs and design professionals. Guest-presenters will discuss the risks, endured setbacks, and the rewards as independent business people in a variety of creative fields. Conversations and class projects will focus on conceiving design solutions through analyzing fundamental assumptions, assessing intuition, and working through iterative sequences that generate unexpected outcomes. Students’ work will culminate in independent multimedia projects that blend research, interviews, and innovative design.

Conventions to create and identify the role of design and its assets vary greatly across and within populations. In Cultural Relevance and Awareness, assumptions about good design are contextualized from distinct cultural perspectives and the nature of “good design” is challenged. Students will investigate principles of cultural variance, inclusive design, Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and design research methods that focus on communities of various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Rather than the promotion of design approaches that reflect cultural diversity through appropriation and embellishment, students will explore a more holistic and inclusive view of design. This class will not just be the “study of.” We will balance thinking and making.

What problem are you solving? This is the first and most critical question entrepreneurs grapple with when designing a new product or service and one we will explore in depth in this eight-week studio class. Emphasis is placed on identifying complex or "wicked" problems and market opportunities through user research, rapid prototyping, and measurement. Students engage in research focused on identifying market opportunities through a deep understanding of the user and market maturity, which is the foundation for creating products and services that solve real problems and create long term impact. Led by continuous research cycles, students will test and prototype their designs, create a market entry strategy, and employ methods for testing their assumptions and insights.

The Competitive Advantage is a 16-week studio designed to synthesize all the various concepts explored throughout the program to date. Projects in this course are typically student-generated, researched, and defined. Students work in teams to fully realize designs based on real-world problems. Members of the program faculty evaluate team progress and project quality and innovation through regular presentations by student teams. Critical themes for The Competitive Advantage are the overarching themes of the degree: a human-centered approach, the synthesis of two or more contrasting concepts or altogether new ideas, creativity/innovation, iterative processes, tolerance for new ideas, rationality, praxis, research, intuition, collaboration, synthesis, and empathy.

Students in prototyping class assess scenarios and identify areas of opportunity for innovative services and products. They will ideate and validate these service and product ideas through modeling paper and digital prototypes. Design sprints, customer research, system feasibility, risk assessment, and the use of visual tools are all methodically employed as the class explores a variety of approaches including storyboarding, proof-of-concept, micro-pilots, service design, user experience (UX), visual design, and interactive prototyping. Additional emphasis is placed on design methods to combine, expand, and refine ideas, and the creation of multiple drafts while seeking feedback from diverse groups of people, including end-users, stakeholders, clients, etc. Students have access to MICA’s prototyping resources and investigate commercial prototyping resources as well.

Emphasis is on the way design impacts our world. Methods of design in Sustainability and Social Responsiveness include tangible projects centering on community focused collaboration, civic engagement, research focused on cultural, social, political and economic factors, advancement in public policy, changes in lifestyle habits, or mass awareness of important issues. Students also investigate design strategies that use low-impact, non-toxic, sustainably produced, or recycled materials. Design concepts that emphasize energy efficiency, durability, product longevity, reuse and recycling, carbon footprint and life-cycle sensitivity, biomimicry, service substitution, and other such sustainable approaches are investigated.

The Competitive Advantage is a 16-week studio designed to synthesize all the various concepts explored throughout the program to date. Projects in this course are typically student-generated, researched, and defined. Students work in teams to fully realize designs based on real-world problems. Members of the program faculty evaluate team progress and project quality and innovation through regular presentations by student teams. Critical themes for The Competitive Advantage are the overarching themes of the degree: a human-centered approach, the synthesis of two or more contrasting concepts or altogether new ideas, creativity/innovation, iterative processes, tolerance for new ideas, rationality, praxis, research, intuition, collaboration, synthesis, and empathy.