MDesInteraction Design
Overview
Imagine, prototype, and build the future
View of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Study in the creative capital of Silicon Valley
You’ll be continually inspired by our location in the San Francisco Bay Area, home to leading technology companies, animation and film studios, and groundbreaking art galleries. Graduates of our program have found great success in the many research-driven design practices in the Bay Area and beyond. We’re also in one of the best art and design schools in the world. With a community of fine artists, industrial designers, curators, writers, and other creative practitioners at your fingertips, you’ll find unique ways to make technology meaningful and delightful.
Studios & Shops
Go from concept to final product
You’ll start with foundations, research, and form, and an investigation about the very meaning of language. Then, you’ll build prototypes and envision new systems, and culminate with creating experiences and crafting stories—all the while developing leadership skills by design. Recent student projects evolve beyond speculative design to realize full-scale solutions:
- Wearable air quality monitor
- Smart lock with facial recognition
- Data visualization portal for municipal health trends
- User interface for semi-autonomous vehicles
Design for the greater good
At the heart of our program is a space we call the Social Lab. Each semester, you’ll have the chance to make a positive impact in a community you help define. We partner with arts organizations, bookstores, educational nonprofits, and Bay Area neighborhoods to harness emerging design technologies for the greater good. A recent collaboration with the African American Art & Culture Complex (AAACC), for example, resulted in a beautiful parklet. Co-designed with CCA architecture students, the parklet celebrates and promotes the AAACC’s important mission and unique public programming.
Your MDes IxD experience at CCA
- Master digital prototyping tools
- Explore hierarchy, layout, grid, line, shape, and typography
- Create user scenarios, information flows, and wireframes
- Apply systems thinking to real-world challenges
- Collaborate with arts organizations and nonprofits
- Utilize print, screen, mobile, web, and vehicle canvases
- Experiment with auditory, tactile, and motion inputs
- Study organizational systems and leadership skills
- Design for systems, behavior, and interactive technology
- Create performances, storyboards, and personas
- Learn to pitch design and business concepts
- Build small-scale hypotheses, then at-scale responses
Faculty
Founders and craftspeople
Our faculty are all practicing designers with extensive industry connections. They work for Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, IDEO, and numerous design consultancies in the Bay Area and beyond. Their expertise in user experience design, user interfaces, interactive media, gaming, and service design—just to name a few fields—helps shape our intentional curriculum for future design leaders.
Elena Pacenti, Director of MDes Interaction Design
Elena Pacenti has over three decades of experience leading cutting-edge design research projects and establishing innovative education programs at international design schools.
After earning her PhD research at the Polytechnic University of Milan, she joined Domus Academy, where she directed the Research Center, the Master in Service & Experience Design, and the Design Department. She then established the School of Design at the NewSchool of Architecture & Design in San Diego.
She has also focused much of her career on pioneering work in the field of design for services and advocated for the strategic value of design and the arts in organizations such as Service Design Network, Design Forward, and Future of Design Education.
Curriculum
STEM-designated program
Our intensive one-year, three-semester program is STEM-designated. The coursework emphasizes craft, social impact, and leadership. You’ll learn to address critical, complex challenges through powerful design process skills and intuitive organizational systems. To get a feel for what awaits, view sample courses.
MDes Interaction Design
Fall Semester
- IxD Studio: Foundations
- 3.0 units
- IxD Studio: Design, People, and Society
- 3.0 units
- Communication by Design
- 3.0 units
- IxD Studio: Form
- 3.0 units
Spring Semester
- IxD Studio: Prototyping
- 3.0 units
- IxD Studio: Systems
- 3.0 units
- Social Lab 1
- 3.0 units
- Any Grad-wide elective
- 3.0 units
Summer Semester
- Leadership by Design
- 3.0 units
- IxD Studio: Story
- 3.0 units
- IxD Studio: Experience
- 3.0 units
- Social Lab 2
- 3.0 units
Total 36.0 units
Careers
Make life-changing products and experiences
Our students’ talent for creative, human-centered design sets them up for success in a variety of professional fields. Hands-on experience in the Social Lab gives them the practical skills they need to leverage design for social impact. Our alumni develop augmented reality interfaces for surgeons, design semi-autonomous electric cars, and make apps that help people overcome addiction. Wherever they are in the world, they make an impact through elegant, ethical, and sustainable design practices.
Alumni success
Five questions with Purna Mehta
Senior Product Manager at Redis applies design thinking to cloud-native data products, sharing insights on creative problem-solving and exploring how Redis can power next-generation AI applications with agentic memory and real-time intelligence.
Alum spotlight: Designer and educator Kristine Yuen
Kristine Yuen (MDes Interaction Design 2016) reflects on her user-centric design approach and motivation to mentor aspiring young designers.
Changing careers to become an interaction designer
News & Events
What’s happening in the design community?
MDes Social Lab turns 10
Celebrating 10 years of student-led design projects addressing social/environmental challenges through partnerships with organizations
CCA welcomes new Director of MDes Interaction Design Elena Pacenti
Elena Pacenti takes the helm of the college’s MDes in Interaction Design program with decades of experience building on innovative research, establishing new academic programs, and mentoring the next generation of designers.
Five reasons a STEM-designated program at an art school might be right for you
Combine art and design with technology and science to impact change and grow your career in CCA’s STEM-designated graduate programs.