Programme Aims
The Master of Design Scheme contains four specialisms: Innovative Business Design (IBD), Intelligent Systems Design (ISD), Smart Service Design (SSD) and Transitional Environments Design (TED). Hong Kong, a world-class city, offers an international environment that blends Eastern and Western influences. Students study in English but explore the increasingly world-changing context of Chinese culture as they acquire interdisciplinary skills and cultural experiences that extend their creative, critical and analytical thinking and development across boundaries. Exploring aspects of interdisciplinary design across specialisms in line with global trends is highly encouraged within the Scheme. International and interdisciplinary faculty members prepare students to take charge of their future learning and development in the nimble and quickly changing world of design.
Master of Design (Innovative Business Design) (IBD)
The Master of Design (Innovative Business Design) (IBD) is an interdisciplinary specialism based on a design-centred entrepreneurship approach. Students apply integrative design thinking processes and methods to define business opportunities, configure resources, and manage projects with dynamic capabilities in an era of digital presumption and business uncertainty.
The aims of this specialism are:
Master of Design (Intelligent Systems Design) (ISD)
The Master of Design (Intelligent Systems Design) (ISD) is an emerging specialism with interdisciplinarity at its core, based on the integration of intelligent technologies, system theories, and innovation design approaches, pulling together professional knowledge in the areas of design and STEM. To achieve "industrial transformative innovation", ISD aims at bolstering the most cutting-edge and competitive industries, enabled by advanced technologies and processes such as AI, Industry 4.0, robotics and AIoT (AI+IoT), through systemic design innovations.
Master of Design (Smart Service Design) (SSD)
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" with a critical, systemic and human-centred perspective within the context of service.
Master of Design (Transitional Environments Design) (TED)
The Master of Design (Transitional Environments Design) (TED) is a specialism developed in response to the unprecedented rural and urban changes that have occurred during the last few decades in Hong Kong and mainland China. TED aims to develop students’ intellectual and practical mastery of the analysis and design of diverse rural and urban environments in the region, with broader implications for global contexts. The approach of this specialism is based on an understanding of the socio-cultural dynamics of the regional context, transformed into new design strategies and design interventions.
*Price shown is for indicative purposes, please check with institution
September 2025
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
ST305, 3/F, Ng Wing Hong Building,
Hung Hom,
Kowloon City, Hong Kong, Kowloon
A Bachelor’s degree or equivalent;
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 fulfil the University's minimum English language requirement for admission purpose: A Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) score of 80 for the Internet-based test or 550 for the paper-based test; OR An overall Band Score of at least 6 in the International English Language Testing System (IELTS). All English language test scores are considered valid for two years after the date of the test.
*There may be different IELTS requirements depending on your chosen course.
PolyU ranks 65th in the QS World University Rankings and 79th in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings internationally.
