Program Learning Outcomes
Mission Statement
ArtCenter's Grad ID program offers a Master of Science curriculum combining the pursuit of extraordinary design and making skills with the knowledge, theories and methods that are essential for creating new value for enterprise and social innovation in a context of complex and unstructured challenges. Our faculty of internationally renowned educators and professionals work with students in a design studio environment where they're encouraged to create with a consciousness that their designs exist in a larger context. Our methodology, Strategic Innovation, takes a forward looking systems-level view and strives to balance the business, technological and human aspects of each design opportunity. This broadly applicable creative process produces empathetic solutions to essential human needs so that designers and enterprises can be resilient and grow.
Systems Thinking
Graduates will be able to:
- Frame, research and analyze an innovation context to identify the important related systems and dynamics.
- Identify appropriate objectives, stakeholder value criteria, and metrics for relative success
- Scan, search-for, and filter information in various forms to rapidly gain intelligence for innovation context
- Apply tools and methods to develop appropriate future foresight and trend analysis for innovation context
Human Centered Research
Graduates will be able to:
- Work to employ appropriate research methods with empathy, especially to discover important related human dynamics
- Work to demonstrate understanding of human behavior, in a context of ethics and S.T.E.E.P. dimensions throughout history
Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Graduates will be able to:
- Investigate, analyze, and identify key insights regarding the human dynamics of a given innovation context
- Create new value; employ abductive reasoning to identify opportunities that align with value criteria and objectives
Quality of Execution
Graduates will be able to:
- Envision and visualize new value as future user experience(s) in appropriate market context
- Invent and create iteratively with effective design skills, production knowledge, and perceptual literacy
- Consistently create original, appropriate, aesthetically attractive, and desirable artifacts and user experiences
Strategic Thinking
Graduates will be able to:
- Conceive and propose innovation solutions as systems that evolve strategically over time
- Define new product and service offerings as viable business models with market context
Professional Practices
Graduates will be able to:
- Listen, sense, and orient efforts for a given innovation context with appropriate actions and methods
- Make smart decisions with high levels of intelligence that produce successful outcomes
- Validate and /or develop appropriate proof(s) of proposed concepts
- Present and communicate at a professional level esp. for executive leadership or potential investors.
- Interact and perform at a high level in organizations and teams throughout innovation process
- Approach any design challenge or opportunity with drive and confidence
- Manage heavy workloads, complex organizational dynamics, and project challenges