Core77

Obama says the economy's going to get worse before it gets better, and according to tradition, that means many of you will leave the workforce and weather the storm in the bubble of academia.

One of the programs we'd heard about is the Chicago Art Institute's MDDO (Masters of Design in Designed Objects), but it's hard to get a sense of a program through the web description, though it sounded interesting:

Borrowing critically from product design, systems design, furniture design, and interaction design, the Master of Design in Designed Objects program envisions designers as agentive, social citizens, and maintains an expansive understanding of the object: product/system, practical/speculative, analog/digital, microscopic/monumental, hand-crafted/industrial, localized/galactic. The course-based curriculum immerses students in the most critical discourses surrounding contemporary object design—scenario planning, user interfaces, experience design, and strategic planning—while grounding them in the material world, with a focus on designing and making.

For those of you seeking more information, here's an interview with MDDO grad student Amy Elizabeth Wiggins, who sheds some light on the program vis-a-vis industrial design. An excerpt:

[The Masters of Design in Designed Objects] courses cover the ideation, fabrication, and theory behind creating things. This is significantly different from industrial design programs in that I'm learning more theory rather than specifically designing things like refrigerator and toasters.

Not that there's anything wrong with industrial design. I'm really thankful for industrial design programs every day when I get food out of my refrigerator, but I'm really interested in the interaction between design and culture. How they both influence each other.

Read the full interview here.

If you're a student or faculty member in an interesting or "different" design school graduate program and you'd like to help out your fellow economy-sufferers by telling us about your school, e-mail me at rain@core77.com.