Smart Service Design, MDes, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (PolyU Design)

Hong Kong

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (PolyU Design)

Study options for this course

The award	How you will study	Study duration	Course start	Domestic course fees	International course fees
MDes	Full-time, Part-time	1 - 3 year	September	HKD 240120 total	HKD 240120 total

About Smart Service Design, MDes - at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (PolyU Design)

The Master of Design (Smart Service Design) (SSD) is an interdisciplinary specialism focusing on designing at the intersection of business, technology, and human ingenuity to create meaningful service interventions for broader societal and business challenges. This specialism expands the scope of design beyond the current commercialised and compartmentalised professional practices by orienting it towards the ‘socio-technical dimension of design’, taking a critical, systemic and human-centred perspective within the context of service design.

The specialism is designed to nurture and develop students’ theoretical and practical knowledge of service design. SSD fosters the extension of students’ abilities through a deep understanding of the technological, commercial, societal and organisational contexts of service design, and demonstrates the transformation of design opportunities into new and sustainable service experiences.

The aims of this specialism are:

to deepen the understanding of end-to-end service journeys and design service ecosystems across multiple services;
to identify how the centrality of users’ needs and the interests of different groups of stakeholders in the human-centred design process are complemented in businesses and organisations in the broader service industry, and apply the same in practice;
to develop and apply service design to a range of business, societal and environmental challenges through studios, collaboration with stakeholders, partners and experts across multiple disciplines, and to use service design at a strategic, operational and systems level; and
to accelerate new service design practices and systems thinking methods to advance students’ development of the skill sets and practices required for service innovation.

Notes about fees for this course

The programme tuition fees (1 year, 3 trimesters) for local and non-local students for the academic year 2026-2027 are HK$266,400.

Entry requirements

A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent in design, business, humanities or a technological field is required. Candidates with other tertiary qualifications complemented with substantial relevant professional experience will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

If you are not a native speaker of English, and your Bachelor's degree or equivalent qualification is awarded by institutions where the medium of instruction is not English, you are expected to provide one of the following proficiency test results (taken within 2 years) for fulfil the minimum English language requirement for admission purpose:

A score of 80 or above in the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) Internet-based test; or
An Overall Band score of 6.0 or above in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS) Academic module.

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Smart Service Design, MDes, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (PolyU Design)

Study options for this course

About Smart Service Design, MDes - at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (PolyU Design)

Notes about fees for this course

Entry requirements

Courses you may be interested in at other institutions

Postgraduate pathways and pre-masters at other institutions

Other courses at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University School of Design (PolyU Design)

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