USC Schedule of Classes

One-week campus residential. Introduction to program themes, content, concepts, theories and processes. Opportunity to build skills and meet cohort, with an emphasis on team building.

One-week off-campus residential. Applied, intensive workshop format focused on solutions for real-world problems with input from industry experts.

Overview of design language, process and product. Build fluency in applying core visual principles and design-based problem-solving techniques. Explore historical and contemporary design issues.

Overview of general business and management concepts and techniques that builds theoretical and analytical fluency and identifies and examines leadership and managerial challenges.

Overview of core information technology concepts, methods, and frameworks. Develop aptitude in using tools, applications and systems; learn basic programming languages and methodologies.

Introduction to no-code developer tools; development of a business or creative concept from the initial idea to a functioning minimum viable product.

Discipline-specific, cross-disciplinary and shared approaches to products, services, projects, systems, organizational development. Topics include creative and user-focused perspectives, feasibility analytics, lean startup techniques.

Faculty-mentored project. Demonstrate individual and simultaneous skills and competency across fields and within cross-functional, cross-disciplinary teams.

A project-based course that uses human-centered design research and methodologies to identify and explore a specific problem space or context.

Discipline-specific, cross-disciplinary and shared approaches to recognizing/analyzing opportunities, identifying/framing problems and developing/iterating solutions. Techniques gleaned from entrepreneurship, creative practices, critical thinking methods, ethnography, systems theory.

Discipline-specific, cross-disciplinary and shared approaches to exploring visual, written and spoken storytelling using digital modalities. Topics include communication theory, narrative structures and content creation.

Faculty-mentored, applied project with individual and team components. Implement a prototype solution to a problem. Deploy relevant tools, methods and processes learned throughout the program.

Research leading to the master's degree. Maximum units, which may be applied to the degree, to be determined by the department. Graded CR/NC.

Selected topics in design, business and technology.