SVA MFA Product Design Curriculum

Learn about the courses, seminars, workshops and intensives involved in our NYC master’s design program.

Rollling admissions still open!

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Rollling admissions still open! 〰️

The heart of the the program is the mastering of 3 fields crucial to the future of design:

Making + Structures + Narratives

Making centers craft, prototyping, and experimentation. The formal expression of ideas is what catalyzes feedback and iteration.

Structures center the power, information, and business dynamics that make effective design possible—providing the scaffolding for any innovation or radical change.

Narratives explore the critical storytelling dimensions that animate ideas and make both designs—and their designers—convincing and compelling.

NO GRADES POLICY

Product Design at SVA embraces a zero grades policy. We believe in encouraging students to take risks and explore their creativity much as they would do in a career setting. Grades can create fear and caution where there otherwise would be none.

Our Product Design faculty focus their time on mentoring students instead of evaluating them. Students and faculty build a level of trust that allows students to truly learn from faculty and prepare for their future professional interactions between colleagues.

FIRST YEAR

The first-year product design curriculum is grounded in project-based work—both through semester-long courses and five-week studio intensives—providing a rapid immersion in making, research, strategy, storytelling and entrepreneurship, sharpening skill sets, and fortifying critical thinking. Provocative speakers and inspiring field trips introduce real-world inspiration that expands the definition of “designer.”

FALL SEMESTER

  • Faculty: Becky Stern, Product Manager, Instructables

    Making is at the heart of product design. Serving as an introduction to the re-emerging fields of making, hacking, modding and do-it-yourself (DIY), this course will delve into techniques, tools and resources for expanding what we can make ourselves. We will combine traditional and novel techniques and materials in electronics, computation, crafts, fabrication, entrepreneurship and more, moving beyond ideation and concepting to create fully functional products of design. Students will have opportunities for online exposure and access to a network of innovators, hackers, hobbyists and crafters producing DIY projects. Hands-on skill workshops in electronics and crafts are complemented with field trips, discussions and critiques.

  • Faculty: Evie Cheung, Senior Design Strategist, Johnson & Johnson |
    Antya Waegemann, Founder, Margo

    In this course, we will explore how to create meaningful and innovative design solutions by introducing research methodologies, design thinking, and human-centered design. Through a combination of lectures and primarily in-class workshops, students will get first-hand experience conducting research, interviewing participants, creating user journey maps, generating insights, prototyping solutions, and testing their ideas with users. This course will enable students to think critically about how designers are solving problems, what problems they should be designing/solving for, and the importance of designing for users with an empathetic lens.

  • Faculty: Allan Chochinov, Chair, MFA Products of Design | Partner, Core77

    Affirming Artifacts is a course that quickly immerses the designer into navigating the design criteria of purpose, appropriateness and fit. Too often, design solutions are conceived in isolation or abstraction, with little bearing on the context in which they will ultimately live and thrive. In this course, students will take a rigorous approach to conceiving and executing various products of design—material, experiential, discursive or activist—with an eye toward pushing beyond obvious wants and needs and moving toward preferred behaviors through context-specific persuasive objects.

  • Faculty: Iris Sprague, Program Director, InVision Design Leadership Forum

    UX Beyond Screens is a 7-week course designed to introduce students to the fundamentals of User Experience Design methodologies. The course will delve into UX Research and Synthesis, Design Sprints, Service Design, IoT, Voice Design, AI, Diversity in Design, Cognitive Design, and Storytelling in Design. In addition to readings and case studies, students will be given the tools to explore complex opportunities found in existing communities, and will leave with a solid understanding of how to translate user research into design solutions that incorporate advanced technologies.

  • Faculty: Sinclair Smith, Principal, SS&Co

    Three-Dimensional Product Design introduces students to product development and the design of basic hand tools. It uses the past as a frame and asks students to research and redesign tools that have been rendered obsolete or forgotten by some technological innovation or cultural shift. The philosophical argument of the course is that humanity’s development is inextricably intertwined with the development of its hand tools, and that our survival through an unforeseeable future depends on the sustainability of our handwork.

  • Faculty: Suma Reddy, Co-Founder, Farmshelf

    Many product designers feel trapped in siloed roles, supporting the production of wasteful, disposable and toxic materials. Through the theme of food, this course will examine relationships, systems and infrastructures connecting us to local and global sustainability: growing, harvesting, processing, transporting, distributing, selling, preserving, cooking, eating and disposing of the waste related to food—the elements that shape many aspects of our lives and relate directly to our planet’s future. Working with sustainability experts and change makers (including scientists, engineers, farmers and other specialists), students create designs that address one of the most fundamental aspects of life. Sessions take place at various locations throughout New York City and its surrounding region, as living laboratories for design projects.

  • Faculty: Adam Fujita, Product Designer and Street Artist

    The effective two-dimensional representation of ideas, products, experiences, and systems is one of the foundational skills in design practice. In this course, multiple modalities of drawing will be workshopped—from ideation and sketch-noting, to perspective drawing and storyboarding. Students will be encouraged to experiment with multiple mark-making tools—both analog and digital—and to learn to tell stories through a personalized visual language and style.

  • Faculty: Julia Knoll, Director of Operations | Allan Chochinov, Chair

    Rotating weekly: Lecture Series introduces the students to world-renown design thinkers and practitioners. Studio Visits bring students out into Julia KnollNew York City to visit the most contemporary studios and designers in their own environs. Seminars introduce professional practice, portfolio, interviewing techniques, and creating a network that will fortify students in their professional lives.

SPRING SEMESTER

  • Faculty: Sinclair Smith, Principal, SS&Co

    Each year, Products of Design partners with the Museum of Modern Art Wholesale Division to design products for possible manufacture by MoMA. Through an iterative process that begins in the late fall and progresses through the spring, both years of students work intimately with MoMA to evolve concepts, produce three-dimensional prototypes, and pitch products to both the wholesale and retail divisions, as well as to curators. Product concepts that make it all the way to production result in royalty agreements exclusively with the students.

  • Faculty:Theodore Ulrich and Pepin Gelardi, Tomorrow Lab

    The ubiquity of embedded computing has redefined the role of form in material culture, leading to the creation of artifacts that communicate well beyond their static physical presence to create ongoing dialogues with both people and each other. This course will explore the rich relationship among people, objects and information through a combination of physical and digital design methods. Through a combination of lectures and hands-on studio exercises, students will investigate all aspects of smart object design, including expressive behaviors (light, sound and movement), interaction systems, ergonomics, data networks and contexts of use. The course will culminate in a final project that considers all aspects of smart object design within the context of a larger theme.

  • Faculty: Mariel Beasley

    Behavior change is difficult to achieve; behavioral science offers concepts and methodologies to help close this action-intention gap. In this course, students will explore the theory and practice of behavioral science and learn to apply these concepts to their own design work. The universal drivers of human behavior-—including principles such as default bias, anchoring, social norms, and emotion regulation—will help students learn to think like behavioral scientists themselves, and methods such as behavior mapping, behavior diagnosis, solution strategy, and experimentation will be discussed and practiced throughout the course. Together, we will apply these frameworks to a range of human challenges, including health, financial, and environmental behaviors.

  • Faculty: HK Dunston, Climate Researcher

    Design practice will be dominated by issues of climate change. In preparation for a design career spent negotiating these new realities, this seminar will provide a detailed analysis of the current state—exploring how scientists, activists, and social theorists imagine climate change will affect human life. We will explore the kinds of destabilizations and reorderings that these changes will generate and the different prescriptions people have developed in response. Finally, we will explore the ways in which writers, artists, scientists, philosophers, and others are imagining new, optimistic possibilities for the future, offering us ideas and methods we can use to act on our own positive future paths. This class will enable students to directly confront the difficult realities we face, while also gathering a set of tools that will help them to intervene in those realities to create new and more optimistic futures.

  • Faculty: Toshi Mogi, Global Financial Services Lead, Frog Design

    Taught at the acclaimed Frog Design Studios in Brooklyn, This course examines the critical aspects of successful organizations, including the development of strategy and business models, business plans and pitches, intellectual property and entrepreneurship. Through an exploration of fundamental business issues at the beginning of the 21st century, students develop either a business plan for a new organization or a new business model and strategic plan for an existing organization. The result is a formal “pitch” presentation given to guest professionals and classmates.

  • Faculty: Michael Chung, Founder, Cinematic Reality

    Visual storytelling has become a critical tool in helping designers sketch, prototype, visualize and communicate their ideas. Increasingly, this storytelling takes place within the medium of video, which provides a powerful, immersive and easily disseminated means of articulating the products of design. From context to scenarios, from use to benefits, as product designers expand their purview into the realm of experience design, video has become a lingua franca of both design practice and design commerce. This course will cover the basic principles of visual communication using techniques in contemporary filmmaking. Working in teams on a tangible project, students will get hands-on experience in different stages of the storytelling process, including observation, ideation, script writing, storyboarding, shooting and editing.

  • Faculty: Anne Quito, Journalist and Design Critic

    This course will examine the past 20 years of design history, focusing on some of the objects, personalities and forces that have come to define contemporary design practice and discourse. Over the past two decades, we have seen the emergence of design metaphor, design irony, critical design and design interactions. We have grappled with authorship, the design personality, the role of the media, the interdisciplinary expansion of design exhibitions and the emergence of social media. Additionally, the growing popularity of design-for-luxury and design art has provided a provocative dichotomy for humanitarian design and design for social change. DIY design, hacking, modding, rapid prototyping and an explosion of craft have accompanied a revolution in designers empowered by the Internet, and science and technology have become design drivers alongside design thinking, influencing business culture and policy making alike. What do we make of these developments, and what do they portend for the future?

  • Faculty: Rob Walker, Author

    Point of view is a core building block of any successful design, and any successful design career. It’s about what you believe and why you believe it. While it’s easy to rationalize almost any design project as “good” from various sets of design criteria, the strongest designers take a proactive role in defining and articulating a clear point of view and carrying it through their work. If designers are going to be more than executors of others’ ideas or agents in the service of industry, they must enter the professional world with their own ideas, firmly grounded, passionate and with a personal stake.

  • Faculty: Sigi Moeslinger & Masamichi Udagawa, Partners, Antenna Design

    Interaction design is not limited to the domain of digital media; it is at the heart of every artifact. Similarly, all artifacts can be construed as “interventions,” soliciting reactions whenever they are encountered. One aspect of designing an artifact

    is to encourage an intended activity and mediate the relationships between its multiple audiences, making the interaction a key factor of the design. In this course, students will design an intervention into a public space, providing an object/environment/service—either entirely physical or enhanced with electronics; stand-alone, or connected—intended to encourage curiosity, investigation, thought, interaction, socialization and positive change.

“There are so many courses!
Do I have to choose between them?”

Not at all. Most of our courses are shorter, half-semester intensives, allowing us to cover more material and bring you more amazing faculty. The program is single-track. All students get to take every course.

SECOND YEAR

The second year focuses on business structures, environmental stewardship, design metrics, strategy, and delight, culminating in a year–long thesis project that combines previous learning and individual passion. Interwoven with this purposeful, change–making work, students develop the personal, creative and business connections to enable their professional success. Students leave with comprehensive documentation, robust fluencies, and signature work.

FALL SEMESTER

  • Faculty: Alexander de Looz, Writer, Architect

    Thesis Directed Research explores key approaches to researching for design ideation. The 15-week colloquium involves source-based discussion, group and individual projects, and presentations. It emphasizes critical thinking, ethics, and methodology as well as documentation and creative expression of research material.

  • Faculty: Alexia Cohen, Digital Product Designer, ARGODESIGN

    Thesis Studio is an opportunity to explore design-thinking, design-making and design-doing that is ambitious in scope, innovative in approach and worthwhile in enterprise. Students will create prototypes and experiments across multiple lenses of design—from physical product design, to design gestures, speculative design, and digital product design. Additionally, co-creation sessions with experts and users will inform and expand the thesis territory.

  • Faculty: Mulitple AI experts

    In this seminar series, we examine AI through 5 lenses: Applications, Experiments, Mechanics, Ethics, and Ventures. Each seminar brings in a world expert, who provides a lecture, Q&A, demo, and group exercise to familiarize students with the ever-changing landscape around Generative AI, MMLs, and other emergent technologies.

  • Faculty: Hylnur Atlason, Founder, Atlason

    Products are increasingly seen as the embodiments of brands and consumer experiences, with product design playing a critical role in reflecting a brand’s personality. In this course, students discover how product design, consumer experience and branding interrelate, and how addressing the needs of both users and markets from different perspectives can provide a more holistic approach to the creation of designed objects. We will work through a complete design process, defining an opportunity within a specified consumer space, performing research, developing insights and strategy, concepting and refining. Throughout the process, students concentrate on creating a cohesive and viable brand campaign, including final design, identity and packaging.

  • Faculty: Megan Ford, Program Manager, argodesign

    Contrary to popular belief, business and design do not have to be at odds. In fact, being a creative professional with a strong foundation in business will give you a competitive advantage to think strategically and lead effectively. During this course, students will learn about the current landscape of creative services and explore ways to navigate this ever-evolving industry. We will focus on the models and methodologies that will enable entrepreneurs and innovation-ready designers to thrive in a business environment. Topics covered will include the fundamentals of business, ethical leadership, strategic management, team building and management, leadership in organizations, business strategy, decision models and negotiations.

  • Faculty: Rachael Yaeger, Co-founder, Human

    This course builds a deliberate bridge between pedagogy and professional practice, providing students with the tools needed to navigate the contemporary design industry. Students will explore relevant working methods and models for design practitioners, starting with a core set of values that will create the foundation of their own practice and career. Topics covered will include communication best practices, role identification, and definition, marketing and self-promotion, design ethics, financial (and non-financial) compensation, negotiation, and networking. By the successful completion of this course, students will gain an understanding of the current landscape, their practice, as well as the practical skills necessary to work in solo and collaborative work environments.

  • Faculty: Shanti Mathew, Deputy Director, Public Policy Lab | Pilar Finuccio, Community Education Program Manager, Center for Urban Pedagogy

    Culture, values, law, politics, policy, and the state—these are the materials of a society, but what do each of these words mean, how do they interact as a system, and how do we leverage them to create change? In this class, we will define the terms above and learn the practicalities of government, including common processes of developing policy and delivering services. Students will be exposed to classic philosophical readings on the nature of the state, as well as current design practitioners working to innovate in government. Together, we will interrogate how we practically—and ethically—negotiate power, values, politics, and physicality as we work in the public sector, for the public good. At the end of the course, students will have practiced their ability to connect social theory to professional practice, visually map service systems, identify levers of change, and conduct human-centered policy design initiatives with government.

  • Faculty: Sloan Leo, CEO and Founder, FLOX Studio, Inc.

    This course helps students advance the application of community design in their practice. Community Design refers to the values, methods, and frameworks that foster equitable collaboration. As traditional design has shifted to Human-Centered Design, Community Design asks, “what's next?” How do we move from design FOR, through design WITH, to design BY? Students will explore contemporary readings and examples of social justice values in practice through community design. The course will be anchored in each student's development of a community design product.

  • Faculty:Allan Chochinov, Chair, MFA Products of Design | Partner, Core77

    There are many ways to tell a story, many strategies for finding focus and drawing meaning from one’s work. The goal of this course will be to guide students in determining how to tell the story of their thesis work: what texts, artifacts, images, and other materials can best convey their growth and discoveries. Students will find a cohesive union of what to say and how to say it. The course represents the culmination of the program and will communicate the knowledge, strategies and practices that students have engaged with during the program. The ultimate product of this course is a published book that defines each student’s thesis area and presents their research, thinking and project work.

  • Faculty: Kristine Mudd, Founder, Muddpuppy

    Services have a significant impact in our everyday lives and in great measure determine the quality of our well being as we interact with the world around us. As designers are called upon to imagine and design increasingly complex product- service systems, we need new frameworks for understanding, and tools to steer us toward better outcomes, more meaningful service experiences, and greater chances for the viability of businesses. Great service experiences are about relationships: those between people, between people and things, and between people and processes. These relationships form and grow based upon the quality and effectiveness of the “conversations” that take place. Learning how conversation works among the participants of larger service systems is useful to describe how a service works, and to reveal opportunities for improvement through design. In product-service ecosystems, students will learn to see participants, objects and interactions as opportunities for conversation to define and agree on goals, and the means by which to achieve them.

  • Faculty: Sinclair Smith, Director, Visible Futures Lab

    Futuring and Three-Dimensional Product Design helps students develop traditional 3D product designs that instantiate the central argument(s) of their thesis. Using the future as a frame of reference, students will be asked to imagine how their research will unfold in the future and to imagine how they can meet those behavioral criteria and demands with three-dimensional product propositions. We will examine how, in an increasingly digital world, three-dimensional artifacts will continue to create value for humanity. The course’s approach moves through three phases: deep futuring, near futuring, presenting. As students reel their wild explorations back into the present, they hone a product concept that is ready for an unforeseeable future but meets the functional, aesthetic, and philosophical demands of today.

  • Faculty: Bill Cromie, Partner, Blue Ridge Labs

    Creating iterative business models aimed at uncovering the assumptions that impact the potential success of any venture is the focus of this course. We will explore how to prioritize risks and apply rapid, low-cost methods to generate earnings and increase confidence. The course is structured to help students strengthen their ability to create more robust business concepts by iterating on the fundamental business cases underlying them. By the end of the course, students will be able to access the primary drivers of success for their concepts, map out the path forward and pitch their business plans to a panel of invited experts.

  • Faculty: Emilie Baltz, Innovation Director and Experiential Artist

    This course celebrates the joy of design. While design is traditionally seen as a problem-solving discipline, there are incredible opportunities to introduce products and experiences into the world that find their genesis in other rationales. Through design making, interviews and research, students will play with stimulation, celebration, amplification, choreography, symbolism and emotion as tools that inform a new design ethos. We will challenge traditional needs-based design processes, and delve into celebration, heightened articulation and drama as new expressions of design. Through the lens of the emotional and the experiential, students will explore both the place of design within the world of the senses, and the role of the senses within the world of design.

  • Faculty: Krissi Xenakis, Director of Product Design, Komodo Health

    Digital interaction is a ubiquitous form of communication in today’s world. Designing for Screens provides students with the framework to understand, discuss and create effective interactive designs on digital displays. Through a series of collaborative studio sessions, open discussions, critiques, site visits and guest lectures, students will be immersed in the current culture of screen design. From UI to UX, from mobile apps and tablets to desktops, immersive displays, and AR and VR, this course will cover the process of designing products for screens from concept to wireframe to interface design and user testing.

    Faculty: Krissi Xenakis, Americas Design Lead at the IBM Garage for Cloud

  • Faculty: Allan Chochinov, Chair, MFA Products of Design

    Whether telling a tale through text, video, audio or other medium, knowing how to engage an audience and make a clear argument is crucially important to making an impact and producing a lasting effect. In this course, each student will be assisted in defining a presentation that effectively communicates the message at the heart of the thesis.

SPRING SEMESTER

About Our Curriculum

Graduate Product Design at SVA is an immersive product design program at its heart. Students also benefit by learning about interaction design, social innovation design, service design, design & business, design management, graphic design, and branding throughout the curriculum.

Our approach to classes leaves our students ahead and prepares them for careers across a variety of design specialties.