This innovative programme offers the best of studio-based design learning in an online context. It provides opportunities for you to develop skills and insights in the creative use of design practices and technologies for digital media across a range of uses and platforms.

You will:

• acquire wide skills in creative digital techniques
• investigate practice contexts for application across the arts, entertainment, performance and industry
• probe the social, cultural and commercial implications of such developments
• work together, and with colleagues located on campus in Edinburgh, to realise imaginative design outcomes.

Programme structure

What will I study

Digital media technology is at the heart of modern life. At work, in education, in leisure and entertainment, even in sport, digital tools and devices are everywhere. How we communicate, our social life, the core of our society, is now based on digital media.

Design also continually shapes contemporary experience. The products and services we use, the environment we inhabit, the information we use, or are presented with, are all designed with specific intent. Things that are not themselves digital are commonly designed digitally.

Digital design requires a multi-perspective approach to developing media and interactive experiences, and this programme deals with the complex relationships between design and digital media.

Our programme is practice-led and there are significant demands on our students to create innovative design for, and with, digital media and technologies across a range of creative contexts that can include:

• visual design
• user interface design
• user experience design
• interactive media
• mobile web applications
• animation
• game design
• augmented reality
• virtual environments

Part-time study

You can choose to apply for the MSc either full-time (1 year) or part-time (between 2 and 6 years).

Part-time students can exit the programme at any stage with the qualification they have earned, which is determined by the number of courses completed.

You can study for a single course, a certificate, a diploma or the MSc, with a minimum of 20 and a maximum of 60 credits in any given semester.

Teaching

You will be taught through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical sessions and critique.

Projects encourage original thinking and independent achievement within a framework of team-working and creative ability. You will also engage closely online with colleagues following our highly successful programme in Design and Digital Media.

In the first semester, the programme focuses on developing design thinking and digital skills. You will explore approaches to the design of interactive media and discussion of cultural theories about living and working with digital media. Teaching is through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, practical sessions and studios.

In the second semester, the focus moves to dynamic and data-driven web applications, immersive experiences such as game design, cross-disciplinary design and the artistic dimensions of design as creative practice. Students are given the option to include subjects offered by other Schools within ECA and across the wider University of Edinburgh.

The programme concludes with a self-directed but supervised research-led final design project over the summer period in an appropriate area of design and digital media.

Learning outcomes

On completing the programme, the students should be able to:

• Make skillful use of digital tools and techniques in the context of a design project producing immersive and engaging digital media.
• Use design and information technology to creatively solve problems.
• Contribute to the integration of external data and the development of interactive behaviours in digital applications.
• Comprehend the main principles of iterative design and research and their relationship with evaluation.
• Critically evaluate digital technologies and their applicability to design.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the cultural and business context in which digital technologies are developed and promoted.

Employment prospects are diverse. During this programme, students create project work that may include:

• integrated elements of graphic design and three-dimensional modelling
• interactive and immersive media
• moving image and animation
• user interfaces and user experience
• augmented and virtual reality
• web and mobile applications
• creative coding
• data visualisations
• digital art installations.

Our graduates work in all these areas, as well as:

• advertising
• education
• journalism.

The programme’s critical and reflective framework is also ideal if you are considering continuing to advanced research at a doctoral level.

If you'd like to study on a postgraduate programme at Edinburgh College of Art, you must apply through EUCLID, our online application system. You can find out how to do this on the University of Edinburgh website, where you'll also be able to:

• see detailed entrance requirements for each programme on the Degree Finder
• get information on what to expect after you apply
• find out about study modes, start dates and fees
• find out if, and how, you need to submit a portfolio, showreel or research proposal
• find out where to go for further advice and guidance.