IMD Ethnography

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