Rotunda of Margaret Morrison Carnegie Hall

Look around. Almost everything you experience physically, spatially, visually, or through interactions or services has been designed, including those by alumni of the School of Design.

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Eric Anderson making a presentation at a Design Week show

Businesses and institutions continue to embrace the value of design because of its unique ability to frame humanity-centered problems and creative contributions that drive innovation. As a result, the demand for design professionals has never been greater, and the potential impact on the world through design is limitless.

For nearly a century, the School of Design at Carnegie Mellon has developed advanced knowledge and hands-on learning experiences that have positioned and maintained its presence as a leader in design education. We graduate students who leverage opportunities and contribute to solutions to complex problems facing humanity. We excel at preparing successful graduates who have studied the design of communications, products, and environments at the undergraduate level; design for interactions at the master's level; and transition design at the doctoral level. Our alums are placed in some of the most desirable positions throughout the field — leading, practicing, researching, or teaching design in small and large organizations worldwide. We are successful and respected because of our extraordinary faculty, students, and alumni, and our ability to adapt and remain at the leading edge of design education.

Design for interactions.

Design for interactions is an overarching theme that runs throughout all our programs in the School of Design. Rather than focusing on an artifact’s form and most basic function, design for interactions considers the quality of design-mediated interactions between people, systems, the built world, and the natural world. Design for interactions grew out of research and teaching in the School of Design over the past several decades, and remains a core component of how we approach design today.

Process work on display at Design Week

School of Design Learning Pathways.

The School of Design’s programs and curricula and the research and practice expertise of our faculty are foundational to the essential traditions of design, while responsive to existing and forecasted changes in the discipline. We see the work of designers as essential to responding to the escalating business, social, and environmental challenges that we face in the 21st century. Our contribution as one of the only leading design schools to offer degrees at the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral levels within a top-ranked multidisciplinary research university is to prepare the next generation of designers who are capable of working within and across these challenges.

UNDERGRADUATE PATHWAYS: Following a world-class foundation year, our three tracks offer students the opportunity to select an area of specialty within the broad discipline of design. Students in our undergraduate program can choose to study the design of products (industrial design), communications (graphic design and screen-based digital interactions), and environments (physical spaces and related digital experiences).

GRADUATE PATHWAYS: The School of Design offers three programs of advanced study: the Master of Design (MDes) in Design for Interactions; Master of Arts (MA) in Design; the Masters of Professional Studies (MPS), to which only current MA students can apply, and Doctorate (PhD) in Transition Design.

The MDes program enables students with a background in design to deepen their expertise in designing for a range of interactions. Through the study of systems thinking and use of design research to ethically identify and address unmet needs, students amass skills and knowledge that enable them to tackle contemporary design challenges in thoughtful ways.

The MA program teaches students from non-design backgrounds the fundamentals of design, expanding their breadth and depth of understanding of the field. After one year of study, MA students are poised to integrate design into their native disciplines, or apply to continue their studies through the MPS or MDes program.

The MPS program is a two-semester program to which only MA students can apply. Courses required in the first year of the MDes program, except for Thesis Prep, comprise the curriculum. The MPS offers students a practical and attainable means of developing a strong, forward-thinking design practice.

Our PhD in Transition Design develops future design leaders with the capacity to envision and realize purposeful change in the world across a range of complex systems, from natural resources to policy, culture, economies, cities, and social movements. In addition to offering a self-funded route, we offer a small number of teaching fellowships to qualified applicants.

All of our students are exposed to a broad curriculum, and are encouraged to collaborate with peers from other disciplines across the university. They become “systems thinkers” able to see and solve complex problems in the context of a globally connected and interdependent world. Our students are comfortable working collaboratively in transdisciplinary teams, and bring a holistic, design research-based approach to their work that helps them stand out among their peers. These key factors shape our school and inform the thinking, methods, and practice of designers who graduate from the School of Design.

The School in Brief

  • We are one of few design schools to offer degrees at the undergraduate, master's, and doctoral levels within a top-ranked multidisciplinary research university
  • We are small in scale with a low student-teacher ratio, enrolling approximately 225 students: ~160 undergraduates, ~45 master's, and ~20 PhD
  • Students come from various backgrounds inspired by a wide range of motivations and career ambitions
  • We provide a deep yet practical education at the undergraduate level that prepares students for entry-level design positions or master's studies
  • We provide advanced knowledge and skills at the master's level to advance or shift the direction of careers
  • We prepare our PhD students to help transform complex systems and practices to more positive futures for humanity and the planet
  • Our students become "systems thinkers" able to see and solve complex problems in a globally connected and interdependent world
  • Students work collaboratively in transdisciplinary teams and bring a holistic, research-based approach to design
  • We acknowledge the social and natural worlds as the context for all design problems
  • We introduce an ethical mindset and practice through complementary studio, lecture, and seminar courses