Studying Design Management Our offer to students: Discovery and growth to shape futures

We are looking for dedicated learners who are curious, culturally aware, service-oriented professionals committed to being responsible citizens; students seeking to develop a professional attitude by assuming responsibility for their personal and professional development; students with a critical mind striving to work and use their expertise for the benefit of society. The programme is taught in English only – advanced (C1 level) language skills are therefore required for all applicants.

The focus of our Design Management programme 

This programme focuses on people in the context of organizations and the world. It is about management of processes and effective communication, about economy and business to grow in quality and not just in quantity, about using system thinking to recognize patterns and look at the whole, and it is about the design and management of transformations so that organizations and society can adopt new models and act at their full potential. Design management builds on a mix of disciplinary fields to look at complex problems from different perspectives to achieve positive outcomes: to make visions, strategies, and dreams real. To do this DMI graduates apply a human-centred, systemic, evidence-based, and outcomes-oriented approach.

Students explore the following questions throughout the programme: Which are the circumstances? What is the design problem? What is the need? Who is involved? Why does it happen? Where does it happen? How can it be reduced or transformed? How can the strategy contribute and add value?

1st year 
Fundamentals 
Understand people in the context of daily activities. Understand design management as a process of inquiry and planning. Understand the value of design management research and a systemic approach to address complex problems.

2nd year 
Framed transformations 
Apply design management research processes to overcome current organizational challenges collaborating with the people involved in the problem, while addressing complexity.

3rd year 
Unframed transformations 
Identify matters of concern, learn about the problem area applying human-centred design, create possible courses of action for more sustainable futures.

What comes after graduation?

Our graduates work in very diverse areas, such as learning and development, social responsibility, and organizational alignment. For example: developing strategies to foster gender equity and cultural diversity within organizations; creating learning processes to deal with VUCA circumstances; designing mechanisms for policy implementation; helping professions, such as artists, deal and adapt to the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic; rethinking renting services to cultivate trust and reduce discrimination; creating instruments to deal with the impact of digitalization on our daily life; and fostering innovation at different system levels.

How DMI changes perspectives

One of our students tells his personal story of how Design Management, International changed his perspective and how he had to realize that his idea had a bigger impact than he thought.