Industrial design is the professional service of creating and developing concepts and specifications that optimize the function, value, and appearance of products and systems for the mutual benefit of both user and manufacturer. The industrial designer's work touches all of our lives in the form of home products and furnishings, communication devices, healthcare equipment, rehabilitation technologies, and a myriad of other consumer and industrial products and services. While giving form to the efforts of industry, the designer is at the same time a consumer advocate, providing the humanizing link between technology and people. As such, the industrial designer's central responsibilities include fitting the artifact, system, or service to the person through considering appropriate aesthetics and ergonomics, technical processes, requirements for manufacture, marketing opportunities, and economic constraints.
At the graduate-level, Georgia Tech's Master's of Industrial Design (MID) focuses on an inclusive design approach that is dedicated to the creation and development of products, systems, services and environments that are usable by all segments of the population. With the growing diversity of the population, inclusive design is becoming increasingly important to designers of tomorrow to ensure that design is responsive to the individual and collective needs of all people.
Capitalizing on Georgia Tech's rich traditions in technology and research, the MID program stresses a user-centered design process and evidence-based design practice that offers students unique opportunities to explore the design of new and existing technologies. Faculty members, who are practicing designers and experts in their fields, maintain active research programs in tangible products within communication technologies, enabling environments, supportive product systems, rehabilitation technologies, and healthcare systems technologies.
The Georgia Tech MID program offers a well-rounded course of study with early emphasis on exercising design principles and developing project-based design skills. Design projects stress realistic design situations, where students can have the opportunity to be involved in sponsored and/or funded projects. Within this model, the program encourages students to expand individual disciplinary talents and respond to changing opportunities in the field.
Students who have an undergraduate degree in industrial design from an undergraduate ID program similar to Georgia Tech's can complete a two-year program consisting of 48 graduate credits.
Students who do not have an undergraduate degree in industrial design will need to successfully complete an additional 28 undergraduate industrial design credits, which at a minimum includes one year of undergraduate industrial design studios, Advanced Sketching, History of Industrial Design, Industrial Design Computing I and II, and Professional ID Practices. These classes are the minimum requirements students with a previous degree other than industrial design need before proceeding into the graduate-level studios and coursework.
All graduate students will be reviewed each year for satisfactory progress. Credit toward the MID degree will be granted for courses in which a grade of C or higher is earned.