The students, faculty, staff, and researchers in the Design Studies Department at UW-Madison consider and produce designed artifacts, and study the process of designing. Through scholarship, analysis, curriculum, and outreach, we advocate design as an encompassing discipline central to every aspect of life.
We emphasize and promote a unified, multi-disciplinary, global approach to design, and we value connections, nationally and internationally with other campus, community and professional programs.
Our undergraduate majors prepare students to take leadership positions in the fields of Interior Architecture and Textiles and Fashion Design. And, our graduate program offers a holistic approach to design that considers both theory and practice.
Faculty include interdisciplinary scholars associated with the arts and humanities, the social sciences, and the physical sciences. While the backgrounds and scholarship areas of the faculty are diverse, we are tied together by an interest in the relationship between objects, individuals, cultures and environments.