Humanities and creative industries (HIC)
The Humanities and Creative Industries (HIC) specialist degree lies at the intersection of the human sciences and technological innovation. Its aim is to train professionals and research scientists capable of understanding how technology structures and shapes our activities and experience.
Presentation
The Humanities and Creative Industries (HIC) Master's degree, with its two courses, offers an original approach to technological design, combining design methodology with theoretical contributions from human and social sciences. When many courses focus on the technical and methodological aspects of experience design, we favour an approach that questions the role of technical devices in shaping our individual and collective experiences.
Students are trained to conduct field surveys and develop a critical analysis of user situations with tools from design and cognitive sciences. This research-based training enables them to go beyond standardized approaches to experience and interface design and to explore the relational, social and ecological dimensions of technologies.
Professional opportunities
This programme is particularly suited to students from technical backgrounds wishing to develop a ‘reflexive’ approach to innovation, to designers wishing to deepen their knowledge-span in humanities and to students enrolled in humanities and social sciences interested in technological design issues. This new Master's degree opens the way to a wide range of careers in technological innovation, design and research.
Potential outlets include:
- Corporate research: UX research scientists, R&D research scientists and engineers, innovation consultants;
- Academic research: doctorate in human and social sciences, public or private laboratories;
- Design and conception: UX designers, product designers, interaction designers;
- Consulting and expertise: digital transformation consultants, usage analysts;
- Innovation policy framing: think tanks, public institutions, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).
Courses
The degree offers two paths: the “User Experience Design” path, run entirely at UTC-Compiegne and the “Design & Experience Creation” path, which is the fruit of a partnership between UTC-Compiegne and the École Supérieure d'Art et Design (ESAD) in Amiens. The “Design & Creation of Experience” course is aimed at students who already have a background in design, particularly graphic design.
Please note: the Design and Experience Creation specialty is partly outsourced to the École supérieure d'art et de design (ÉSAD) of Amiens.
Pedagogical organization
The programme alternates theoretical courses, methodological seminars and practical workshops over four semesters. Each semester combines three core courses with three elective courses, enabling students to build their own path according to their interests in philosophy, cognitive science, economics, design, management or sociology
The first year introduces students to methods for investigating and analysing situations of use. Students learn to document users' actual practices and to analyse how technical devices help structure these practices. In the second semester, this learning process is deepened through concrete case studies and experimentation with different observation and interview methodologies.
The second year is devoted to research. Students carry out their own investigative work in the UTC-Costech laboratory, learning about experimental methods and taking part in a research-creation workshop. A six-month internship in a laboratory or company completes the programme.
Contact and documentation
Plaquette master