MSc Eng. in Design and Innovation
Technical University of Denmark · 2024 – 2026
- Institution
- Technical University of Denmark
- Degree
- MSc Eng. in Design and Innovation
- Period
- 2024 – 2026
- ECTS
- 120
Design and Innovation at DTU is a synthesis degree rather than an analysis one, in that the point is not to go deeper into a single discipline but to be able to hold a mechanical problem, a user problem and a commercial problem in the same project without dropping any of them. This means the programme is built around projects with real constraints rather than around problem sets, and that the method courses sit next to the mechanical ones deliberately.
Furthermore what I took from it is mostly about sequencing, since the two years taught me that the expensive mistakes happen at the front of a project rather than at the end, where a requirement nobody wrote down becomes a mechanism that works in CAD and not in a hand. Here the thesis is where it came together, as 30 ECTS on counter-drone mechanisms used the interview and affinity work from the method courses, the tolerancing and CAD from the mechanical ones, and the Build-Measure-Learn structure from the entrepreneurship ones.
The thesis
The final 30 ECTS went on biologically inspired drone immobilisation mechanisms for civil protection, written at the Department of Civil and Mechanical Engineering. This is the project I would point at first, since it is the only one where I owned every stage from the interviews through to the free-flight testing, and it is documented in full under Projects.
Mechanical design and product architecture
These are the courses that put numbers under a design, and the thing they have in common is that each one ends with a model or a scheme that either survives manufacture or does not.
- Mechanical CAD5 ECTS
- Parametric and surface modelling through to drawings, sections, tolerancing and a bill of materials.
- Robust design of products and mechanisms5 ECTS
- GPS tolerancing, stack-up and sensitivity analysis, and why a mechanism fails on clearances rather than on concept.
- Mass customization - application of product configuration10 ECTS
- Product variant masters and configure-to-order, and the move away from manual quotation.
Design method and the front end
This is the half of the degree that decides what gets built, and the common thread is that each course replaces an opinion about users with something observed.
- Biologically inspired design5 ECTS
- Abstracting a biological function rather than copying a form, and using nature as a solution database.
- UX design prototyping5 ECTS
- Iterating a prototype against targets set before testing rather than against opinion afterwards.
- Staging co-creation and creativity5 ECTS
- How a workshop is staged, framed and resourced decides what participants are able to produce.
- Facilitating innovation in multidisciplinary teams5 ECTS
- Coaching a team through its own process without quietly taking the work off them.
Systems, business and technology
Here the scope widens from the artefact to everything around it, meaning the use cycle, the cost, the organisation and the market, and this is the part that most often decides whether a good design is ever made.
- Holistic design of engineering systems10 ECTS
- Designing the whole use cycle, from installation through operation to end of life, rather than only the object.
- X-Tech Entrepreneurship10 ECTS
- Taking a technology concept through market sizing and unit economics to a venture case.
- Technology and innovation management5 ECTS
- Matching an innovation tool to a company's actual constraint rather than to its ambition.
- Design for circular economy5 ECTS
- Value retention, life cycle thinking and business models that keep a product in use.
- Applied AI for entrepreneurs5 ECTS
- Where AI carries a defensible business case, and where the hard part is regulation rather than the model.
Transferred credits
Fifteen ECTS were transferred from the IT University of Copenhagen, and these were the most hands-on courses of the two years, in that both ended in something physical that had to work in front of other people.
- How to Make (Almost) Anything7.5 ECTS
- Mechatronics end to end: CAD, fabrication, microcontrollers and sensors in one build.
- Designing Aesthetic User Experiences7.5 ECTS
- Designing for the hands and the senses rather than for a screen.