Postgraduate Certificate in Space and Service Design Thomas More University of Applied Sciences

Who better to ask than our own students!

Designing for change

• Are you ready to use your design skills to create products, services, and communication systems that have an impact?
• Many of today’s social, cultural, and economic challenges can be solved with future-proof, inclusive services.
• Build on your BA or MA in design (industrial, product, graphic, etc.) or architecture with this fully accredited (60 ECTS) international postgraduate program.
• Use your own, personal vision to add sustainable value to public spaces and improve the accessibility and user experience of the clients of public services.
• Learn and apply research-led, user-centered design methodologies to create solutions to real, socially oriented design challenges.
• Expand your professional network with weekly Master Classes from industry experts and challenge yourself through collaborations with design agencies on real-life design projects.
• Make tangible differences as a proactive and socially aware agent of change in your community.
• Transform your design career or business aspirations to new heights via this one-year program in service design developed in collaboration with the Department of Interior Design & Architecture.

Structure

First semester | Your first semester provides you with knowledge and skills in researching and designing services and experiences. The methodologies and tools presented support you in developing innovative design ideas and delivering relevant solutions to real-world design problems presented by our client organizations.

You collaborate in international, multidisciplinary design teams and take up individual designer roles (the designer-researcher, designer-sustainability coordinator, designer-manager, designer-entrepreneur, designer-social media guru, etc.). As part of the team, you will apply and share your previous knowledge and interact directly with our clients and users. The SSD Master Classes bring in professional experts from creative industries that will share their knowledge, approaches, and experiences.

Second semester | The second semester offers the opportunity to focus on your own strengths by working on a challenging real-life project and taking part in an (international) internship, taking a client project to production, or contributing to a service design research project. You expand your professional network.

Major Project | In the major project you will demonstrate your research skills and your ability to define the tangible and intangible context and needs related to the project. Your end work will be the creation of a relevant user-centered space and service design solution that you effectively document and present.

Courses

Below you can find an overview of the courses (under reservation of changes), with the number of credits per phase. Credits express how many hours you need on average to process the subject matter (incl. lessons). Count about 25 to 30 hours for 1 study credit.

Professional bonus

Postgraduate programs aim to build upon the skills and knowledge acquired in a bachelor's or a master's degree program. A postgraduate largely focuses on developing your professional skills in a way that can be immediately useful in a work environment, while simultaneously helping you develop your professional network. A postgraduate program is a specialization for students who already have a degree in design or architecture (bachelor's and master's).

Why do postgraduate? A postgraduate from Thomas More will give your CV and portfolio added value on the labor market, transforming you into a future-proof designer!

Personal Coaching

Throughout the design process, student teams are coached by a team of design professionals, lecturers and researchers. They collaborate with stakeholders, users, and experts from the project field through desk research and first-person participatory, co-creation, or feedback research sessions.

Postgraduate students are further supported by ID&A services such as Whats’on (the Design Learning Centre and Fab-Lab) and the ID&A Workshop Facilities (wood/metal/plastic workshop) and by Thomas More’s Admissions and International support service.

Go International

Fostering international and intercultural collaboration is vital for a society-oriented design course. Besides welcoming Belgian students, we welcome international students with their specific design knowledge and specific cultural background that creates a dynamic international class setting.

Student learning is facilitated through a range of workshops, seminars, lectures, and tutorials by both national and international professionals and experts which allows for the exchange with other service design schools and networks.

Over the past decade, the ID&A unit has collaborated with various professional, national, and international design firms looking for talented interns. Continuing this tradition, in the second semester, postgraduate students work within a professional design context through an (international) internship or service project.

You have a degree (BA or MA in interior design or interior architecture, architecture, product or industrial design, furniture design, graphic design, interaction design, social sciences, business, tourism, etc.)

• you are convinced that we can not only design the shape of spaces and objects but also improve the experience and well-being of users.
• you share the idea that the future-proof designer can take up a role in tackling contemporary social, cultural, and economic challenges, in contributing to achieving the UN Sustainable Development goals.
• you want to learn more about how to apply evidence-based and user-centered methods to improve spaces, objects, communication, and services so they become more effective and closer to day-to-day lives.
• you want to exchange knowledge and skills and collaborate in a cross-disciplinary way in challenging design projects in real contexts such as Design for Learning, Design for Health, Design for Ageing, Design for Sustainable Development, Design for Hospitality, Design for Nature Preservation, Design for the circular economy, Design for inclusive societies, and much more.
• you are looking for a specialization course that can empower and complement your current (design) competencies.

Add value to the labor market

The postgraduate program is a specialization course that aims at widening or deepening existing design competencies with service design knowledge and skills in a cross-disciplinary educational setting. Professional experts share their insights about service design and design methodologies and approaches in our SSD Master Classes.

Our partners in education also offer internships, site visits, guest lectures, and workshops in design agencies and service organizations. With this, you are not only focussing on developing professional skills but also on expanding your personal network. The acquired knowledge can be used immediately in a working environment.

Additional Studies

Once you have completed your postgraduate, there is the opportunity to extend this to a Master of Design in Service & Experience Design.

Space and Service Design graduates can enroll in a short-track master's program in English at our partner university Jiangnan University in China.

Working in Belgium

After graduation, you have the skills as a service designer to identify and satisfy unmet needs in a wide range of sectors — such as health care, education, hospitality, culture, and retail. From roles in service organizations in the private and public sectors to multidisciplinary design agencies.

Launch your career as a professional:

• service designer
• user experience (UX-) designer
• design researcher
• project manager
• public service architect
• public space architect
• customer experience designer
• retail designer
• interaction designer
• sustainability coordinator
• design facilitator
• change coach
• workshop facilitator
• service design consultant
• consumer expert
• digital service designer

International students who have studied in the program are now able to apply for a new residence permit so that they can extend their stay for up to a year in order to find work and launch their careers here in Europe.