Since completing my Masters in Multidisciplinary Innovation at Northumbria University (link) back in 2018; I’ve been approached by prospective students asking me – What is the course like? And of course, the more interesting question; is the MDI course worth it?
Since completing the course; I’ve had a number of times to reflect back on the key insights and lessons I’ve learnt from the course; had time to digest on what I liked, and what I perhaps have critique of; some of which I will share in this blog post.
My original motivations for doing the course was that I needed to shake up my career. Having spent the previous few months unemployed, getting nowhere with interviews and job applications; I felt that my own skills needed upgrading. In the fast paced world of computing, coding and software development, it can be very easy to be left behind if you are not constantly improving, pushing out a product.
In some ways, being in the chair of a web and app developer; especally in those early days of pre-2018, we perhaps didn’t get a good chance to ask why? or what problem is it solving? To the owner of the business it was a sale, transactional, and the faster we got it out, the faster we got paid. We got paid on results, on outputs, on artifacts, not on outcomes.
Further still, I felt that the world of concrete transactional websites and apps seemed to miss something; a clarity of why, who it affects; and all the work that needs to be done before a single line of code is written. In short, the value. The value to society, to the end-user, the business, how it reinforces innovation and marketing efforts and keeps businesses competitive, but has an interplay outside the scope of the transactional into the transformative.
This may sound incredibly fluffy. It did to me before the course; but having since completed the course, it did open my eyes to the prospect of the three main spaces: problem space, solution space, market space and how innovation isn’t necessary a medical product, or a new invention; but could be framed through design.
If we imagine innovation as two primary world spaces, the world of exploration and exploitation as best described by Alex Osterwalder (@AlexOsterwalder) in his book Invincible Companies; then the former (exploration) is where MDI sits; it looks through ideas, themes, design briefs through specualtive, explorotory work; however this does not mean that students cannot test ideas with either offline or online customers (there were times that we did this).
This can be difficult to process for many, I found it quite hard to grasp at first; having spent most of my career (as many do) in the world of the concrete, or as Alex Osteralder describes it, exploit; then it can be hard to put yourself in positions where you don’t need to get it right first time, that its okay to explore ideas without first putting constraints on it. It was difficult because I framed everything through the lens of business cost first and mitgitating risk.
This is where I feel the MDI course sits, and plays well in; the idea of exploration, speculative; but also through framed experimentation, students can test ideas and then create a provocation to a client.
Most of your time is on live client work, working in teams; using techniques as diverse as project management, strategy, design, scoping, pitching, crafting documents and reports; it is similar in scope to a design consultancy, but also has themes of a management consultancy, or an agency.
To this end, I feel it is important to note that the course is NOT a traditional course in the sense of academic theory, exams, etc; but rather, its about the discovery, weight of argument, and reflective learning garned through the course.
To reinforce this point; I thought I’d reflect on an email I recieved some time ago from a propsective student who wanted to do the course, but wasn’t sure whether it was worth it. Rather than posting the full email, I thought I’d share the most important insights.
What do you do on the course?
Its a 12-month course, aimed at a wide range of people, and you use design-led innovation working on live client projects, building up a portfolio, and your objective is to deliver innovate ideas, thoughts, provocations, solution drivers for those projects; work in teams, use strategy, ideation, design thinking, agile practices, pitching, presentations.
It is more about the process than the outputs. Its more about the lessons and insights you learn about yourself, about the problem space, of continious improvement and how you worked with others, including the client.
Does it have exams, how much theory is it?
There are theoretical lessons, though we didn’t take exams. On a side note, even though the course has project management; do not expect a certification in Prince, Agile, SCRUM or indeed any other formal certification to support your exit from the course. If you require a professional certification, I would recommend a different route.
It is mostly self-directed; I think it’s important to underscore this — it is self directed; are you comfortable with this?
For some it can be a bit of a shock to move from a traditional top-down teaching approach to self-directed style; in this way, the teaching and academic “hand-holding” is light touch.
Practally you will be exploring all sorts of live client facing projects in different domains. One week it might be a charity another time it’s a major utility company. Each has its own unique challenges.
So is it a UX course?
No. Its not a UX course. There is UX in it. But it is not directed, taught. There is nothing to say that you cannot learn UX, CX; in fact you should be; and then test the ideas of CX, UX on the project.
Further, you can use your experiments to form the basis of your reports.
Will I learn Photoshop or [Insert tool of choice]?
No. Again, it’s not about tools. Its about the process. However, that does not mean you cannot learn Photoshop or, whatever tool of choice. In fact, you may be in situations where you have to learn it, and fast; this is where you learn the most about yourself.
Why should I do this course?
Your reason for doing the course will be different to mine. For me, it was about refreshing my career opportonities, getting a fresh perspective on my domain; understanding that I can leverage my abilities in discovery, finding unmet needs, or using constraints to test scope. I found this the most enjoyable.
As always with courses it’s really down to you, your reasons, your goals and where do you want to be and who do you want to be.
General advise
Watch the videos on their site, check out testimonials, case studies, do a virtual tour; ask previous students what they got out of it, what pitfalls to look for, what they didn’t like; then ask yourself is it for me?
Be creative in the delivery
So when you create your delivery work package to the client or whomever it might be; try to be creative and break the cycle of death by powerpoint. Want to make a newspaper, go do it? Want to make a video of the problem, go for it. Want to present the ideas in a comic? Go for it!
Get outside the building
To quote Steve Blank, “get outside the building”; by this I mean, its very easy to be in the bubble of your group and think “we got this”; its hubris, and you should try to test it — this could be with interviews with the public, online surveys, facebook groups, graduates, industry, you name it.
I would like also to add to this that you should try to make connections with industry; go to events, introduce yourself, the team, MDI, etc. It could be your ticket to a job, or at the very least gets you into doors for your final presentation.
What are the pitfalls?
I think its three-fold. One is yourself, your confidence in your own abilities, not necessarily self-image, but being able to push yourself to complete the task; job at hand, to take it seriousily, to learn, to identify when your getting “hot” and being able to identify areas where you’ve grown.
Second, I would say is working with a team, this can be very hard to do and you may spent most of your time managing relationships within a team.
Third, is managing expectations of the client, of the people you present to.
You mentioned there are critiques of the course, what are they?
My views are based on my contextual background within computing / software development and my expectations of what the course could and should be looking at.
So, I felt there wasn’t enough exploration of new business model frameworks; such as the Amazon flywheel model, or what is disruptive innovation; how do you know when your business is disruptive, and what are the materials needed.
There was a lack of theory; but this is so you can do client work. I recall my past software engineering course had 3-4+ hour lectures on C++; there is nothing like that here.
I wanted more stuff from the insights from product / tech startups, what is product ownership, how did these organisations become successful; I did spend some time reading up on it, so it wasn’t really my expectations of this were not within scope of what the course could realistically offer.
Finally, since leaving the course; I’ve found it quite hard to explain to prospective employers what we actually did, why its relevant to them; part of this reason is that employers are in the world of the transactional, the concrete, or; to put it more bluntly, in exploit mode. So it can be hard to explain to them why they should hire someone who is more interested in exploring the why, the what, the impacts and unintended consequences, or how design can be used to reframe the problem space.
To add to this, I’ve found a number of innovation roles require some level of certification, be it Prince or SCRUM; so please bare this in mind.
So was it worth it?
For me, yes; It was worth it; but at the same time, I wish I had more — more lectures or theory on the things I’m interested in, especially from the current high tech space (be it how Amazon works, how NetFlix disrupted Blockbusters, etc); more chances to test ideas with the public.
Also, I missed chances to explore what commericalisation of innovation looks like; what is presented to investors, etc.
Regardless of these gaps, It did show me that I do enjoy the explore side of things much more; and I feel MDI can be worthwhile for any prospective student, however; if you feel you need a hard science masters, then it may not fit your requirements.
As always, I would advise try to do a bit of due diligence on any course.
Good luck.