Design ethnography, and more generally user research, are important functions across product, service and systems design companies globally. Demand for user researchers and design ethnography is growing steadily and new markets such as India and Japan are opening up.
The MSc in Design Ethnography is the first taught postgraduate programme to address the specific information, skills and knowledge needs of the next generation of design ethnographers.
Students will study alongside design and engineering students - giving them real insight into the needs and contexts of the primary consumers of user research in the design process. A three month long major personal field study at the end of the course gives students an opportunity to develop their skills responding to realistic, and in many cases industry-partner set, project briefs.
In summary, the course provides a rich, practice-based opportunity to engage with the challenges of doing user research in the 21st century.
Admissions
Linda Spalding
l.s.spalding@dundee.ac.uk
Tel: 01382 385298
Detailed Enquiries
Dr Catriona Macaulay
c.macaulay@dundee.ac.uk
Tel: 01382 386522
Welcome
Welcome to the MSc in Design Ethnography website. It's a huge pleasure to finally be able to say that - we've been working on this idea for a long time! The idea for the world's first MSc course in Design Ethnography has been circulating around a number of academics here at Dundee University for a number of years. Its roots are in the launch of our undergraduate degree in Interactive Media Design in 2001.
That course brought together a rich mix of staff from across the Schools of Computing and Design, many of whom have been instrumental in setting up this course. We have collaborated over the years on a number of projects which involved user research and design ethnography, and developed a rich understanding of the key challenge facing design ethnographers - how to make the results of our work usable and actionable by designers and all the other stakeholders in design projects. Looking around at industry we also saw that design ethnography as a profession was growing in strength and size.
The instigation of a major international conference, EPIC, for ethnographers working in industry pays testament to the increasing seriousness with which industry and practitioners alike are treating the profession. Yet there was nowhere one could study the tools, methods and techniques of 'doing design ethnography' in depth at taught postgraduate level. Until now.
So please explore our website. And if you are interested in joining us (to study, to get involved in our Industry Steering Group, or to collaborate on research), contact me now via email c.macaulay@dundee.ac.uk.
This is one of the most exciting and challenging areas of design to be working in right now, and Dundee has exactly the right mix of design, engineering and social science expertise to take on some of those challenges.
Dr Catriona Macaulay
Course Director, MSc Design Ethnography