
Master of Design
Design education, powered by an entire research university.
The UC San Diego Master of Design is a two-year graduate program for designers ready to move from making things to shaping systems, and from contributing to leading.

Fall 2027 cohort · key dates
Application Opens
Mid-September 2026
Priority Deadline
December 1, 2026
Final Deadline
January 6, 2027
Offers Sent
March 1, 2027
Decision Day
April 15, 2027
A master’s degree built for complexity.
Design has always been how people make the world better. Today, the problems worth solving — in healthcare, climate, public life, technology — don’t fit inside a single discipline or a single screen. They require designers who can think at the level of systems, lead across functions, and bring ethical clarity to decisions that affect millions of people.
This is a one-of-a-kind master’s degree — a truly cross-disciplinary degree that trains you to be a leader in the field. It combines the research depth of a world class public university with the studio culture of serious design education, and the opportunity of one of the most collaborative campuses in the world. Graduate ready for leadership roles in a diverse set of workplaces and organizations — startups, companies, governments, nonprofits — working on the hardest problems of our time.
The MDes at UC San Diego prepares students for designing in the 21st century.

Why UC San Diego

Over a decade of design excellence.
The Design Lab at UC San Diego was founded in 2014 by Don Norman, along with co-founders Jim Hollan and Scott Klemmer. Over the past decade, it’s grown into a globally recognized center for interdisciplinary design research spanning healthcare, urban development, the future of work, AI, and climate adaptation. The MDes builds directly on that foundation.

Design as a common language.
At the Design Lab, design thinking, methods, and research bring cognitive scientists, engineers, physicians, economists, and urban planners to the same table. The MDes teaches students to work the same way: using design as a shared method for making sense of complex systems and turning understanding into action.

The university behind the program.
UC San Diego is one of the top public research universities in the world, with leading programs in engineering, medicine, and the sciences. MDes students draw on that full breadth: faculty and coursework from arts and humanities, engineering, management, public health, and medicine, plus proximity to San Diego’s biotech and tech corridor.

The market is ready for you.
Graduate into a field that needs exactly these skills. Demand for designers who can lead at the level of systems, not just screens, continues to climb: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects faster-than-average growth for design roles, with roughly 14,500 openings nationwide each year through 2034. The MDes will prepare students for their rewarding career in design.
Faculty Highlights
The MDes is an interdisciplinary program. That means its faculty aren’t from one department, they’re from across the university. The researchers who teach in this program work on automation and AI, public health and mental health, housing and urban equity, creative tools, ubiquitous computing, labor economics, civic design, and more.
Their work is not background to the curriculum. It is the curriculum.

Michael W. Meyer
MDes Program Director, Associate Professor of Design and Rady School of Management
Design-driven organizational transformation and design pedagogy.

Steven P. Dow
MDes Associate Program Director,
Professor, Department of Cognitive Science
Human-computer interaction, social computing, creativity support, and civic design.

Mai T. Nguyen
Director, Design Lab,
Professor of Urban Studies & Planning
Social and spatial equity, housing policy and planning, community and economic development, climate adaptation.

Jim Hollan
Distinguished Professor, Cognitive Science & Computer Science and Engineering
Cognitive design, distributed cognition, HCI, multiscale information visualization, cognitive ethnography.

Lilly Irani
Associate Professor, Communication
Cultural politics of high-tech work; how actors produce “innovation” cultures.

Scott Klemmer
Professor, Cognitive Science & Computer Science
and Engineering
HCI and design; example and data-driven design tools; ingredients of creative excellence; social learning.
Everything you need to apply
Fall 2027 cohort admissions timeline.
|
➔ Degree
|
Master of Design (MDes) |
|---|---|
|
➔ Program Start
|
September, 2027 |
|
➔ Application Opens
|
Mid-September 2026 |
|
➔ Priority Deadline
|
December 1, 2026 |
|
➔ Final Deadline
|
January 6, 2027 |
|
➔ Decision Notification
|
March 1, 2027 |
|
➔ Admit Response Deadline
|
April 15, 2027 |
|
➔ Application Fee
|
$155 – $185 |
FAQ – About the Program
Ready to take the next step?
Applications for the Fall 2027 cohort open
In the meantime, join our interest list for updates, event invitations, and application guidance.







