Master's in Transportation Systems and Design Course Descriptions

A Pass in this course means the student has submitted the thesis and the thesis has been approved by the department. This is the final requirement for graduation.

Course number: TRAN-700
Prerequisite: n/a

If we see our role as transportation designers to be designing a better world for humanity, then we had better know very well who we are designing for! This course will take the form of workshops, which teach students robust methodologies for researching for the information required and then gaining the best insights from their research data. In turn this will significantly inform the final project brief and ensure appropriate solutions. In addition to these workshops, the faculty member will also provide support for the concurrent studio projects during the term to apply the workshop learnings appropriately.

Course number: TRAN-503A
Prerequisite: n/a

Following on from TRAN-503A in the first term, students will develop further skills in conducting research relevant to their studio projects. Again, their faculty will also be available to help them apply their enhanced research skills and techniques to their specific term projects (TRAN-554 and TRAN-531) to ensure great insights.

Course number: TRAN-553A
Prerequisite: n/a

Students will be required to work in teams for certain parts of, and maybe complete studio design projects. This reflects the reality of professional life as a designer. It also enables the final outcomes of projects to have much greater significance, value and complexity. It also leverages the different strengths and backgrounds that each of our students brings to the program. As a student in our program, we are preparing you to also be natural leaders in your professional life - both as thought leaders and to enable you to seize opportunities that you spot, which benefit the projects, the departments or the enterprises that you will be working with. That said, working in teams or taking the lead can be challenging and not comfortable for many aspiring designers. While our faculty, experienced team-players and leaders, will always help students throughout their studio project work, this course will take the form of three workshops over the term where specific experts will help students learn foundational skills in creative leadership and teamwork.

Course number: TRAN-506
Prerequisite: n/a

Throughout the program, students are encouraged to regard their future, thought-leadership roles as applicable beyond traditional "design projects". The design methodologies they will be shown can be equally applied to creative strategies for business models and board-room issues. This course will be the first, short, spontaneous creative exercise where students are asked to consider a "hot topic" issue emerging somewhere across the transportation landscape. Taking on the role of competing consultant teams the students will be required to become conversant with the surrounding issues and recommend to the senior management of the appropriate enterprise or agency, smart and creative strategies for mitigating the issue. The topic will be deliberately chosen to familiarize students with the workings of a part of the transportation world that they may not be familiar with and yet is an important part of global business.

Course number: TRAN-517
Prerequisite: n/a

A continuation of TRAN-517 (M2) Design Strategy Sprint #1, students will be thrown another topical issue to which they will develop recommendations for strategic solutions. The topic will be quite different to the first Design Strategy Sprint.

Course number: TRAN-567
Prerequisite: n/a

While visually communicating via pen and paper is still extremely valid, designers have access to many different digital tools with which to sketch, render, visualize, design and present. Again, we expect our incoming students with diverse backgrounds to join the program with disparate skills (and sometimes no familiarity) with the digital tools that designers prefer. As they develop successive studio projects, this course will familiarize students with the software appropriate to their specific work. As a department we keep a close eye on emerging digital tools and when appropriate, introduce them too.

Course number: TRAN-505A
Prerequisite: n/a

Continuing with their progress during TRAN-505A (M1) Digital Design Skills Part 1, students will develop further ease with the digital skills that are appropriate for their project work. When a particular studio project calls for a specific, perhaps emerging, digital platform, specific workshops may be added to the curriculum.

Course number: TRAN-555A
Prerequisite: n/a

If and as required, evening or weekend, 0-Unit workshops may be provided in a timely way when students clearly need some deeper training in software tools to really enhance the outcomes of their studio projects.

Course number: TRAN-560
Prerequisite: n/a

Ideally students should be beginning to orient themselves to the program and perhaps be assessing/reassessing where they see their career paths starting upon graduation. This course will help students build a picture of how to position and ready themselves for their desired transition into professional life. They will be advised on how to consider desirable Thesis Project topics that can provide a logical stepping-stone into their desired career opportunities. Linked to this their faculty will help them to consider the kinds of internships that can be an additional stepping-stone and perhaps dove-tail with their Thesis Project.

Course number: TRAN-646A
Prerequisite: n/a

Course number: TRAN-596
Prerequisite: n/a

Course number: TRAN-696
Prerequisite: n/a

Building upon the course TRAN-507 (M1) Introduction to Future-casting and UX for Mobility, students will now engage in a one-term project that focuses on a specific aspect of their TRAN-554 Studio project. Students will explore design interactions/user experiences based on probable or plausible technologies and demonstrate their ideas using low fidelity prototypes.

Course number: TRAN-530A
Prerequisite: n/a

Following on from the TRAN-530A (M2) Interaction Design for Mobility course, for this term, students will be required to develop an interaction or user-experience solution to a much deeper level of execution. This should include a higher-fidelity, demonstrable working prototype from which meaningful feedback and validation can be given.

Course number: TRAN-531
Prerequisite: n/a

Course number: TRAN-590
Prerequisite: n/a

Course number: TRAN-690
Prerequisite: n/a

If we are truly designing transportation to support the best human and environmental conditions for the future, then there are two key additional areas of knowledge that tomorrow's transportation design thought-leaders need: 1. The understanding of timescale for projects we work on and therefore how to minimize the risk of solutions-failure by trying to determine the likely characteristics of the future environment that we are designing for. 2. The understanding of what we mean by User Experience and Interaction Design. This course will explain to students, techniques for creating plausible future scenarios relevant to their work. In addition, the course will introduce students to important and specialized approaches to designing for experience and relationships between human beings and the devices and systems that they will participate in. This course will be seven weeks long and will be directly relevant to future design studio projects.

Course number: TRAN-507
Prerequisite: n/a

This 0-credit lab grants recent alumni access to campus facilities and resources as needed to complete your final projects and portfolio work from the last semester. Access will be coordinated with our facilities team in a safe and staggered schedule. Students will need to communicate with their department a specific list of projects and identify the specific resources you need to complete your work.

Course number: TRAN-692
Prerequisite: n/a

Not a specific course but a series of timely interventions by their faculty, students will be supported in their research for both TRAN-620 Transportation Systems Studio Part 3 and TRAN-531 (M3) Interaction Design for Mobility Systems. As the nature of the research for both these studios might be more nuanced, students and their results will benefit from this support.

Course number: TRAN-575
Prerequisite: n/a

Building upon TRAN-508 (M1) Storytelling Fundamentals, students will continue to develop their abilities to present information, creative ideas and design solutions clearly, succinctly and memorably. By the end of this term, students should feel confident in their ability to do this and through their own initiatives, develop their individual presentation "style".

Course number: TRAN-558
Prerequisite: n/a

The ability of designers to convincingly present their solutions to wide-ranging audiences is as important as the solutions themselves. The art of storytelling is therefore a fundamental basis of our curriculum. By storytelling, we mean visual narratives - a blend of well-chosen visuals and logical verbal or written explanations that are meaningful and efficiently informative to various stakeholders. These audiences might not be designers or even transportation experts, but they will often be very influential in the decision-making processes required to further the project. This is true whether it is convincing faculty to accept the validity of your work or whether it is to persuade an investor to fund your innovation. Because we welcome design students into the program with a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, we recognize that our first-term students can have a wide variation of sketching and drawing skills. Therefore, the instructors of this course are ready to work with all skill levels to ensure that each student gains confidence in and improves their visual communication abilities as a prelude to producing compelling presentations - the latter a standard department method of reviewing students' project work.

Course number: TRAN-508
Prerequisite: n/a

Course number: TRAN-695
Prerequisite: n/a

Course number: TRAN-595
Prerequisite: n/a

As a department, we are very clear that we view transportation at the level of systems. Systems require a more complex level of thinking than objects or products. "Systems Thinking" can mean many different things to different disciplines. This series of workshops with systems experts will help students understand different aspects of working with systems that are appropriate to transportation designers.

Course number: TRAN-509
Prerequisite: n/a

Psuedo course block

Course number: TRAN-521.PC
Prerequisite: n/a

Pseudo course block

Course number: TRAN-523.PC
Prerequisite: n/a

Thesis continuation is the vehicle by which students who have completed all their required curricular courses have access to program faculty for guidance towards finalizing their Thesis Report. The submission of a final Thesis Report, which has been reviewed by the department head and the Thesis Faculty Panel and deemed satisfactory according to the department guidelines, is a requirement for the granting of the Master of Science Degree.

Course number: TRAN-699
Prerequisite: n/a