All applicants must have a bachelor's degree or its equivalent from an accredited college or university.
As a program intended to investigate the boundaries of interaction design across disciplines, we are interested in candidates who have a multi-disciplinary background. We believe that the ideal candidate for MFA in Interaction Design program is a user-centered designer with a cross-disciplinary set of interests, comes from a design or design-minded field, and is a systems thinker. Simply, the candidate is equal parts abstract thinker and craftsperson.
Background
We recommend students have at least two to five years of professional experience, although some may come directly from an undergraduate degree. Prospective students need not be advanced web, mobile, or interactive designers already, but should be curious and imaginative, experimenting with interactions on their own. Prospective students from fields such as research, writing, and engineering with a fluency in design provide an interesting complement to the program as well.
Portfolio Requirements
Applicants are strongly encouraged to curate a portfolio of work that demonstrates a broad range of interaction design work. We recommend a guideline of 20 pieces that demonstrate your work through concept, communication, craft and process. Work should demonstrate a fluency in at least some of the following''Web design, application design or industrial design; design research; a proficiency with interface design, information architecture or usability methods; prototyping methods; typography and layout; attention to shaping human behavior.
- The clarity of your portfolio is a critical part of presenting the quality of your work. Thus, each portfolio piece must be paired with a brief statement describing it (including URL where appropriate).
- For web-based portfolios, only a URL is required, and all URLs must be active through August 2010.
- Disk-based portfolios can be submitted on CD or DVD. It must be accessible from a Macintosh platform to be considered. Title the disk, lastname-firstname. Include any required plug-ins.
- For non-dynamic sites or sites no longer live, we recommend duplicating them on CD or DVD. Include any plug-ins or resources, and zip the folder
as filename.zip. Presentation formats (PowerPoint, Keynote) will not
be accepted. Slides, printed portfolios and all other file formats (swf, exe, etc.) will not be accepted.
- Personal phone interviews are required.
Note: All portfolio submissions become the property of the School of Visual Arts and will not be returned. For this reason, we strongly recommend that applicants NOT submit original art work. The College is not responsible for any media that is received in damaged condition and cannot be viewed.
Designing the Portfolio
Because we emphasize diversity in students' background'from industrial design to graphic design to cognitive psychology to business'what characteristics might one emphasize in a design portfolio? Is it a design portfolio at all?
Attributes
We are looking for five characteristics in the portfolio: concept, craft, communication, process, and empathy. When considering each piece you include in your portfolio, consider how each might contribute to the story you're telling about your work across these five criteria.
Diversity
Because this is an interaction design portfolio doesn't mean that it should only include interaction design work. Demonstrating that you have a design range that spans multiple disciplines, and that you have fluency across multiple media demonstrates that you have a holistic approach that will be not only valuable to other students and to the program. While we suggest that you consider including 20 pieces in your portfolio, you should use that as a guideline. You should only include pieces that you are proud of.
Details
Don't be afraid to show details. We're equally interested in reviewing a final product as we are the concepts and sketches that comprised the process. Consider including process sketches as portfolio pieces in their own right as they contribute to a visual story of your personal design process.
Format
Most of all, your portfolio should be easy to use. Consider your audience'the portfolio committee. While we don't want you to innovate (no need for fancy Flash or superfluous design), we do want to be able to experience your portfolio the way you would like us to. After all, you are the curator. If you were designing a space, you'd consider whether you'd like us to turn left or right through the gallery. Make the same considerations with your portfolio and the experience of your portfolio committee.
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