The industrial and interaction design (IID) program prepares you to embrace the complex challenges of creating innovative products, systems, and services in the 21st century. You develop skills and learn to address contemporary problems through creative and critical thinking guided by leading scholars and design practitioners.
Admission + Portfolio Requirements
Studio courses introduce you to diverse areas of practice within industrial and interaction design today. Through project-based learning (PBL), you experience industry-standard tools, processes, and methods. You explore emerging technologies and apply best practices to create design solutions that respond to the needs of people and planet.
You enhance your IID studies with a range of elective studio and academic courses and minors from across Syracuse University. In spring of your fourth year, you may apply to live and study in London or Florence with Syracuse Abroad. Through the University’s Blackstone LaunchPad, you gain entrepreneurial skills and partner with students in other disciplines to develop, pitch, and launch your own seed-funded startup companies. You may also wish to engage in Intelligence ++, an innovative, interdisciplinary initiative at the University focused on inclusive entrepreneurship, design, and community.
The IID program, which leads to a bachelor of industrial design (B.I.D.) degree, culminates in a year-long independent thesis project and exhibition. You emerge from the program ready to address contemporary global concerns and assume product design, user experience design, design research, and product development roles at world-leading enterprises and consultancies.
Examples of jobs recent graduates have moved into include:
- Product design for accessories, sporting goods, home appliances, and manufacturing tools
- User experience design for mobile applications, online retail services, semi-autonomous vehicles, unmanned aircraft, and medical equipment
- User research for financial services, healthcare, and education
IID alumni are currently making an impact on design teams at companies like Ford, Amazon, Reebok, Google, IBM Design, Fjord/Accenture, IDEO, Frog Design, and Continuum Innovation.
Student Work
IND 476 Industrial Design: Environmental Practicum
Real-World Projects Spring 2020
Students in IND 476 Industrial Design: Environmental Practicum had an interdisciplinary, international and multilingual collaborative project in Spring 2020. Fourth-year IID students collaborated with first-year game design students from the Video Game Creation program at UQAT in Montreal. The group worked on a gaming experience with video game components in an immersive physical environment. UQAT students developed game concepts and Syracuse University students designed interactive and immersive spaces for the games to take place.
Some concept drawings and models for the game proposals are included above. IID student Noah Hollander designed a fantastical environment for Tri Cells, a game about battles between single-cell organisms. Also included is an early sketch by IID student Jingren Zhang for the battle game Crazy Door, designed by Charles-Étienne Roy at UQAT.
IID students drew on lectures on topics including immersion, entertainment, environmental storytelling, and flow and visited the Breakout Escape Room for inspiration. Ultimately several games/environments were chosen for further development, with plans to build one winning design at the Syracuse University Warehouse. These included Unstable Company, a game about a dysfunctional office environment, and Power UP!, a game in which players control a robot in a battle against mutant creatures. Images of the digital games and the planned environments are included above. The Unstable Company design team included Ricardo Sanchez, Noah Hollander, and Jingren Zhang (IID) and Lucas Homont, Joey Bruneau, Charles Caron, Léonard Remartini, Frédérik Roberge-Locat, and Alexander Tanasie (UQAT). The Power UP! design team included Timothy Tin Yiu Li, Deanna Lazo, and Qian Liao (IID) and Pier-Olivier Bellemare, Maxime Beachamp, Kevin Falardeau, Samantha Lauzon, and Samuel Payeur (UQAT).
Unfortunately, the project was cut short due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and a planned class trip to Montreal was cancelled. Rather than continuing the project while in isolation, IID students opted to devote their attention to the COVID-19 response. In March 2020, the IID class began a new project on Design for Emergency. Each student developed a practical design response to the pandemic with exciting results. For example, students have initiated design collaborations with a disinfectant company and a manufacturing facility in China. The hope is to restart a new collaborative project between Syracuse University and UQAT students in Spring 2021.
Curriculum
Below are the general program requirements for the B.I.D. degree in industrial and interaction design.
View official major requirements.
Major requirements: 78 credits
Art history requirements: 12 credits
Academic requirements: 6 credits
Academic electives: 21 credits
Studio electives: 24 credits
Free electives: 9 credits
Total Credits: 150