Courses & research | Management of Product Development

During your Master’s in Industrial Design Engineering (IDE), you will collect 120 EC within two years. The first year and the first quartile of the second year consist of compulsory and elective courses. You will spend the final three quartiles of your Master’s working on your master’s thesis.

European Credit Transfer System

Student workload at Dutch universities is expressed in EC, also named ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System), which is widely used throughout the European Union. In the Netherlands, each credit represents 28 hours of work.

Courses

Just like the other two Master’s tracks, the Management of Product Development track offers you a lot of freedom to make your own choices. In total, you will collect 75 EC worth of courses. Which courses you are going to follow, is mainly up to you. Roughly speaking, you can draw up your own curriculum around the following components:

Core MPD-courses
In composing your study programme, you will start by choosing a selection of core MPD-courses within IDE. These courses are the backbone of the Master’s track, but together with your track coordinator, you can decide that a different course might better suit your personal development. If that is the case, not every core course is necessarily compulsory. You can find the core MPD-courses below.
Elective courses
You have a lot of freedom in composing the rest of your study programme. You can choose to further specialise yourself with some other MPD-electives, but you can also add courses from other Master’s tracks, or even courses of other Master’s programmes, at the University of Twente or even at other universities. You can also choose to follow a Capita Selecta, of which you can choose your study topic yourself. You can do this as a preparation for your master’s thesis, for example. Below, you can find some examples of elective courses per Master’s track.
- Management of Product Development
  Life Cycle Analysis
  Distributed Product Development Project
  Safety by Design for Products, Equipment and Systems
- Human Technology Relations
  Brand Management
  Design and Behaviour Change
  Multisensory Design
- Emerging Technology Design
  3D Printing; Processes and Use
  Surface Engineering for Look and Feel
  Durability of Consumer Products

Or plan an online meet-up with a student and gain first-hand experience!

Master's thesis

You will finish your Master’s in IDE with your master’s thesis, which is worth the remaining 45 EC. The majority of the students complete their graduation project at an external organisation. The choice of your specific graduation subject is largely up to you and within the MPD track, the list of topics is highly various and nearly endless. You will most likely focus on improving a product, a production process or a product identity in whichever way you can, whether you focus on new techniques or technology, sustainability, efficiency, packaging, communication, marketing or a strategy as a whole.

Your Master's thesis could involve undertaking projects such as:

Developing sustainable, reusable packaging for food delivery and takeaway.
Researching the impact of mass-customisation on the design and production of bikes.
Integrating user experience with new technological possibilities for a boiling water tap.

Internship

Do you want to gain more practical skills and experience within the job field by doing an internship? Although it’s not incorporated in the curriculum, you have the opportunity to add an industrial assignment to your Master’s. You can add this within a Capita Selecta, which is a course on which you can choose the topic yourself – and needs approval from your track coordinator. You will earn 5 EC by doing this. It means you have to complete part of your internship on your own time. Many of these industrial assignments are executed in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Project Center at the University of Twente. Consult your track coordinator for your options.

Career perspectives