Hello everybody
I have a hard decision to make, I’ve been accepted at three great universities for a Masters program in Interaction Design, and now I need to choose one of them. Maybe you can help me, please advice. The schools are:
Carnegie Mellon University (USA)
Umea School of Design (Sweden)
TU Delft (The Netherlands)
All of them are great but I need to choose one.
Which one would you choose and why? 
Why did you choose to apply to those school in the first place?
Because I’m really interested in the subject and, all their program approaches have very much to do with my particular point of view.
you should not rely
on strangers
to decide
your
fate
you need
to ask
yourself
more questions
than
us
c’mon, i’m not just relying on strangers, I know what I want, I was just asking coleagues about their points of view.
I would like more info before giving any kind of opinion.
Where did you get your bachelors and in what exactly?
What are your goals after you get this degree?
Do you have any preference so far?
Good luck
I’m Industrial Designer, but I’ve been working in interface design for almost 3 yrs. I want to learn and meet people. After that I would like to be really close to product development. High tech related.
my humble opinion:
Carnegie Mellon has a more cognitive, ergonomic approach to interaction design and arent as good at graphic or industrial design. I think they have close ties to the CS people at the univeristy, one of those profs being Brad Myers, who is quite well know in the HCI community.
Umea and Delft have a more similar approach to interaction, and I think are better suited to people with an industrial design background…especially those that want to stay in or around industrial design. I think Umea is better but i am of course probably very biased. Both schools are active at the CHI conferences (CMU also), both have in house design/research labs, and both are small schools within a larger university. They also are both in europe, which I think is a bonus, and tuition is without a doubt much lower than CMU. I dont know about Delft, but Umea has a lot of ties to industry in europe and abroad (I would assume Delft does also). For me, the small size of the school and fact that I was working in the same studio space as the Advanced Product and Transportation students was really nice…and the students and instructors really are from all over the world.
If you havent already checked it out, Umea’s gradshow is online at http://www.dh.umu.se/default.asp?sida=118
in the interest of fairness i tried to find a gradshow page for the other two schools but couldnt…sorry
anyway, hope that helps. good luck next year
Thanks a lot for your opinions, I really apreciate them
BTW, are you coursing a masters in Umea?
Yes, I just finished the MA Interaction program at Umea this spring.
Wow, tell me about it
how was it? Is it too cold? How is the people there?
going to Umea was easily one of the best things I could have done for my design career. I really had a great time there. Like I said, the people are great and come from all over the world. You will learn a lot from them, as there is an amazing range of design talent and experience there. The small size of the school makes it like a family. Is it cold? yes, but its not so bad. I guess it depends on what you’re used to though, but I had no problem with it.
cmu interaction design = the best
where are you from?