The Interaction Design and Electronic Arts (IDEA) program is the first of its kind in Australia, created to infuse technological innovation with human-centred design thinking. You will explore these technologies and their potential to solve critical problems in areas including biotechnology, sustainability, social networking, urban informatics, wearable technology, health and responsive environments.

This program offers students of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts an added specialisation in Illumination Design. This will further differentiate your skill set and enable you to work in the emerging area of interactive lighting in entertainment, hospitality, buildings and public spaces. Technology is becoming closely interwoven into everyday life. How we create and design these interactions is crucial to their success and the positive impact they have on our lives. This understanding forms the core of the IDEA program's design philosophy: technology that is designed to delight its users. The IDEA program promotes a creative and critical approach, within the framework of research-driven interaction design and user experience methodologies.

The result is an understanding of how to design interactive products, services and systems that will have lasting cultural and commercial importance. In a foundation first semester, you will develop the essential industry knowledge and skills for working as an interaction or user experience designer, at ease with web and mobile applications. Once you have these core skills in human-centred design thinking, web/mobile interface design and software programming, you are trained to analyse and evaluate their application in a range of design contexts.

This evaluative approach is what enables IDEA students to create meaningful interactive experiences that will become ubiquitous parts of our everyday life. In the second semester, you will engage in design studio projects to extend these skills, both conceptually and technically. We offer a studio-based teaching environment in which you work individually or in teams to creatively solve design challenges. You will learn to design across multiple platforms and scales - from natural, tangible and wearable user interfaces to interactive architecture, creative robotics and urban informatics. Your ideas may even become the basis of prototype products, patents or start-up services.

You can adapt this program to suit your interests and passions by taking electives from other faculties. You will also build a compelling design portfolio showcasing not only your design skills but also your understanding of how best to convey the user experience of new products and services. The course culminates in a capstone research project, industry internship or graduation design project. The Faculty draws on industry and alumni contacts to enable opportunities to build your professional network. These factors combine to position you as a well-connected creative industry specialist with expertise across the strategic, creative and technical domains.

The course is timetabled to suit your busy schedule. Subjects are run either in the evening or in intensive mode (a block series of Fridays and Saturdays). You can also study part-time. The course has embedded qualifications, enabling you to graduate after the foundation first semester with a Graduate Certificate, or continue on to Graduate Diploma or Masters level.

Graduates of the Master of Interaction Design and Electronic Arts will become proficient in the creative use of new technologies which they can then utilise in a practical way in a wide range of professional and artistic settings. Areas studied in this course will prepare them to perform in roles such as interaction designer, usability engineer, new media artist or creative director.