Communication Design

Master Program in Communication Design at SDU Sonderborg

The master program targets two main competencies: 1) document- and communication design, comprising also ‘user-centred design’ and interaction with technology, combined with

2) advanced foreign language skills.

The master program enables students to carry out all language-related tasks in business and institutional contexts, to work as communication designers on a free-lance basis or to take an academic career.

Document design concerns the presentation of information on a page, in particular, text, image, and their relationship. It applies to all kinds of documents, e.g. letters to customers, bills, manuals, forms, communication within the company, presentations, web sites, interactive web interfaces, dialogue systems, etc. The particular focus within the master program in Sonderborg is on participatory methods, i.e. to study how real readers read documents by employing read-aloud protocols, constructive interaction and focus groups in addition to knowledge on psycholinguistic processing and gestalt perception to improve document design.

User studies on how people interact with technology aim to contribute to successful innovation; that is, we study how people use technology in order to develop ideas for innovation in close cooperation with engineers and technology designers. Understanding how people use products and services can feed back into the different phases of developing, testing and releasing goods and services to the market. Students learn to analyze users’ interactions in technological environments. They get acquainted with the special affordances of technology for special needs and disabilities. Students learn about different approaches to user-centered design with a particular focus on the Scandinavian tradition of participatory innovation; and they learn to carry out interaction analyses based on authentic videos of real-life situations, and to apply their analytical results to innovation in product and service design.

Students are therefore well equipped with a broad spectrum of empirical methods as well as with methods for knowledge structuring that will help them to develop and carry out interesting and well-founded design projects.

In addition, students acquire solid linguistic knowledge of the foreign language they choose (English, Danish, German) concerning language structure, text structure and register, oral presentation, linguistic norms and usage conditions, together with detailed metalinguistic knowledge on the textual and interpersonal functions of linguistic forms.

The program comprises two semesters of study in Sonderborg, a semester abroad with one of our many international partners, and a semester for writing the master thesis. Teaching activities include classes of about 12 lessons per week.

More about the program can be found on the program's home page at the University of Southern Denmark.

For further questions please contact: Ella Mølgaard elm@sitkom.sdu.dk

-- KerstinFischer -- 18 Nov 2010