Master in Design Management

Content 1
FINDING VALUE OPPORTUNITIES
This module empowers students with the methodologies, tools, and skills
needed to understand the context of current ecosystems in which businesses can foresee their future opportunities and scenarios of value.

DESIGN THINKING BOOT CAMP
This is a 3-week-long course to introduce and immerse students in the design thinking approach and process. Students will work through the different phases of design thinking on a given challenge. The work experience is highly collaborative among students, with regular tutoring from the teacher. The structure of the entire workshop itself is built on the divergence/convergence principles: Innovation, Problemsolving, Creativity, Co-Creation and Customer value.
These concepts have a major impact on today’s business strategy. They are the ingredients that
spur new growth opportunities, optimise business
processes and create strong connections with
customers. Design Thinking is a human-centric set
of work processes and frameworks that help
identify, develop and deliver on these concepts
creatively and efficiently.

TRENDS & FORECAST
This subject helps students to identify and learn
about trends in today’s social context. Aesthetic,
artistic, and cultural movements and technological
innovations can help students design from the
present and acquire competitive advantages in the
short-, medium-, and long-term future.

STRATEGIC DESIGN PLANNING
This course focuses on ways to plan an
organisation’s strategic position in the market by
going throughout a rigorous innovation planning
process. Students work to conceive a defensible
innovation strategy plan to create a successful
start-up or help an organisation seek a new
opportunity. The course guides them to apply
structured methods, tools, and frameworks to
create a viable strategic plan for the organisation.
Special emphasis is given to understanding the
value exchanges that happen among all the
participants (stakeholders) of the system.

DESIGN RESEARCH
This subject tackles qualitative methods of
research drawn from ethnography and
anthropology studies. Students learn how to use
user-based research and other methods to
understand and choose the different goals of
research (market, trends, users), create a research
system based on the goals and sources available,
and understand the different results of research.
This helps them come up with ideas and concepts.
Generating key insights through processes of
analysis and synthesis of the information is treated
in-depth, this subject is directly applied to the
research needs of the transversal real-industry
project to gain relevancy with its methods and
results.

SUSTAINABLE INNOVATION
This subject starts with a macro perspective of sustainability in industry and what types of actions are being taken to work towards sustainability across industry, from start-ups to multinationals. Students study the various strategies that companies are taking, case studies of sustainability and the circular economy and how companies have integrated this from business strategy to product design. Students learn design tools, methodologies and approaches, and also obtain an understanding of the consumer attitude towards sustainability, studying different user profiles and how to respond to each of them through design and innovation.

Content 2
DEVELOP DESIRABLE SOLUTIONS
This module introduces students to the different disciplines of design needed to conceptualise, prototype, and develop innovative solutions. It aims to create business opportunities and design concepts: evaluative scenarios and prototypes by considering business strategy.

SERVICE DESIGN
This subject provides students with the tools and methods used by professionals to contribute creating new services, improving existing ones, creating value for all stakeholders, whether they operate in the front end or in the back end of the service. The goal is to obtain a user-oriented vision of a service from the various user and stakeholder perspectives, build different types of service prototypes to address different scenarios and extrapolate valuable information to develop further the initial service concepts.

CO-CREATION
Co-creation involves all relevant stakeholders and also provokes their creativity by using creative and design thinking tools. In this way, co-creation processes generate excellent results for innovation in design practice, placing multidisciplinary design teams and users at the centre of the innovation process. This not only ensures that products and services are designed for them, but also with them. The emphasis for this subject is on co-creation activities taking place from pre-design to design, and these may be practiced with real users through the student’s transversal project.

EXPERIENCE DESIGN
This subject aims to equip students with an understanding of core interaction design principles and methods that they can use to design engaging user experiences. Sessions include practical exercises of conceptualising and designing an experience with a digital product (e.g. web, mobile or other devices). The theoretical part of the subject provides a brief overview of the field of human-computer interaction (HCI) and the relevant research areas that have influenced current technological trends. Students explore the various methods and creative processes in user-centred design and apply these in a group project. Understanding how customer and user experiences are being built and perceived helps students to understand the rules and principles for creating new user experiences while creating value for businesses and stakeholders.

CREATIVITY
An introduction to creative techniques to help students enhance their creative power. Students discover which cognitive biases represent barriers to creativity, and how creativity can be triggered effortlessly when embracing the right attitude and a set of alternative techniques.

Content 3
DELIVER VIABLE & FEASIBLE SOLUTIONS
This module provides strategic and business tools to help the implementation of innovative value scenarios and offers while addressing the requirements of business operations and models.

MARKETING

The main objective of this subject is to understand alternative approaches to marketing strategies and operations, becoming familiar with the key challenges in service companies and reviewing modern marketing concepts and frameworks: customer relationship marketing, social marketing and marketing trends: marketing and technology – how to reach customers directly. Through this subject, students learn how effectively articulate their ideas and arguments with realistic marketing strategies. Students work in teams to discuss cases and examples to help them understand what marketing managers do.

BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
This subject aims to provide the key elements to move from ideas to profitable business. The basic method is to understand all the elements of a successful business plan and practice business cases and models to support the creation of a business plan. Students acquire expertise in innovation and entrepreneurship elements, business plan structure, develop the 10 main steps of a business plan (marketing, operations, finance, etc.), link idea and concept to cash materialisation and to providing the appropriate information to business leaders.

BRAND MANAGEMENT
The main objective of this subject is to learn how to think from a brand standpoint, understanding what it stands for, what it brings to the average person and how it establishes and evolves its relationship with us. The methodology used combines theoretical classes and discussion in class, mainly through real-life examples and exercises suggested during the subject. The main expertise to be built together is that of becoming better listeners and observers of our environment.

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
Design managers need to understand how financial statements interrelate and what information they convey, understanding and using such tools helps to understand which innovation project attribute is needed to produce a financial statement and how to use these tools to help managers decide the path forward.

BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN
Business model design is a process that frames the right questions, with the right tasks for the right job: searching and experimenting to validate your client, your product/service value proposition and its path to commercialisation. This course aims top define what constitutes a business model and how to test it with target customers. It is a key foundational tool that helps innovators to build the coherence of key business model building blocks. Students learn how to create a system of value for both customers and business leaders.

Content 4

GROW YOUR INFLUENCE
This module is focused on developing transversal skills needed for personal and team management.

STORYTELLING
Students learn how to analyse, organise, filter, structure, and present information in the most simple and appealing manner to facilitate understanding of the messages and decisionmaking of a complex problem. Students learn how to filter and categorise all the information obtained during the research phase. They learn how to sketch and visualise diagram information flows, information design and hierarchies, how to apply the tools of visual representation and diagramming flows to present the content in a clear and effective, and visually attractive way.

PEOPLE MANAGEMENT
Leading people is a wide field of knowledge that covers anything relevant to people in organisations. The subject of leadership requires increasingly
more skills and expertise to whoever has people’s responsibilities, given that it is one of the fields that most impacts how we run businesses. People are the most important asset in a company

CREATIVE PERSONAL BRANDING
The aim of this subject is that students can develop an in-depth awareness and understanding of themselves as well of others, and identify common ground to build bridges and evolve.

Content 5
TRAVEL EXPERIENCES AND PROJECTS
Students are recommended to approach design and innovation from an integral perspective, so they are constantly developing relevant projects in teams and focused on applying all the skills learned during the classes. They complete two main real industry projects and their final Personal Research Project or Final Thesis (MFT).

The study plan includes two travel experiences to provide real-world
experiences and complement theoretical knowledge, providing students with the opportunity to learn from industries, international fairs and professionals from different European countries. Accompanied by specialists and professionals, the study trips provide new inputs to enrich the Master course.

REAL INDUSTRY PROJECT
Following the challenge-based methodology, the acquired learning and expertise are applied to real industry projects alongside the programme. Students are challenged to identify broader or deeper problem statements from in-depth analysis of all user touchpoints with the company. Briefings may be procured by multinational corporations engaged in global commerce, by local firms, or even by start-up companies engaged in international commerce.