What to study if you’re into design and technology: a guide to finding your field of study
If you’re interested in both design and technology, you don’t need to choose between creativity and technique, but rather to identify the type of problem you want to tackle. Disciplines such as Fashion, Interior Design, Product Design and UX, Visual Communication, Animation, Video Games, and Data Science and AI apply varying degrees of both tools depending on whether they are working with the body, space, use, meaning, time or systems.
When something isn’t working, what’s the first thing you notice?
Having a simultaneous interest in visual expression, aesthetics and how technology works is neither a contradiction nor a sign of indecision. Confusion often arises when we try to fit that curiosity into the rigid framework of a university degree programme before we understand what each discipline actually involves.
To discover where your way of thinking fits in, the best starting point is not a catalogue of degree programmes, but observing how you react to your surroundings.
Imagine that six people walk into a newly opened café for the first time. The place is packed and the service is chaotic.
The first person doesn’t notice the café: they notice that the counter blocks the natural flow of people coming in, forcing customers to dodge each other in a corridor that’s far too narrow. The second person looks at the menu hanging on the wall and immediately realises that the typography, the contrasts and the price hierarchy make it difficult to understand what they’re ordering. The third tries to sit down and notices that the chair is wobbly, the table is at the wrong height relative to the seat, or the material feels uncomfortable to the touch.
The fourth person takes out their phone to scan the table-side ordering QR code and finds that the interface requires too many steps and confuses the user before payment is confirmed. The fifth person looks at the information screens and notices that the animations are too fast-paced and fail to convey the information in time. The sixth, on the other hand, immediately works out why the orders arrive cold: the ordering software neither distributes the workload between the bar and the kitchen in a logical way nor synchronises the notifications.
They have all been in the same place and witnessed the same situation. Yet none of them has spotted the same problem.
What bothers you when something isn’t working is usually the best indicator of the discipline through which your perspective naturally operates. Finding your direction isn’t about taking a questionnaire that pigeonholes your tastes, but about answering a more honest question: what sort of friction do you tend to spot, understand and want to fix?
The way you identify what you’d change may say more about your affinity with a discipline than the list of subjects in a degree course.
Design, innovation and technology address different questions
The terms design, technology and innovation are often used as if they were interchangeable or equivalent marketing labels. They are not. Each concept addresses a different dimension within a project:
- Design: asks ‘What should change so that this situation works better for people and their context?’. Far from being limited to an aesthetic or decorative layer, leading organisations such as the World Design Organisation define design as a strategic problem-solving process. Its aim is to research, conceptualise, design and test tangible or intangible solutions that respond to real human needs, technical constraints and business viability.
- Innovation: it asks , ‘What new or significantly improved change can actually be implemented?’. According to the criteria set out in the OECD’s Oslo Manual, a novel idea does not in itself constitute an innovation unless it is made available to users or effectively implemented in a real-world context.
- Technology: it asks , ‘What capabilities, systems or knowledge enable that solution to work?’ Technology ranges from software development, data architecture, electronics and artificial intelligence to the development of new materials and manufacturing processes. It functions both as a specialised field in its own right and as a cross-cutting layer that enables solutions in other areas.
Design can drive innovation. Technology can enable it. None of the three terms automatically replaces the others.
Six areas to help you decide what you want to change
To understand which field of study best suits your curiosity and how creativity and technique interplay within each one, it is helpful to organise the options according to the subject they address and the type of decisions they require.
| When your focus turns to… | Key question | Area | What decisions are made about |
| Body, clothing, identity and brand culture | How do we dress, express, produce and communicate identity? | Fashion | Garments, collections, materials, brands, the market and the fashion experience |
| Ways of living and moving about | How should this space function and feel? | Interiors | Layout, use, light, materials, fittings, atmosphere |
| Objects, services and interfaces | How should this be used? | Product and UX | Function, ergonomics, interaction, prototype, service, experience |
| Messages, information and identity | How do we ensure something is understood, recognised or remembered? | Visual communication | Imagery, visual storytelling, identity, illustration, advertising, graphic systems |
| Stories, worlds and participation | How do we create an experience that unfolds over time or responds to the participant? | Animation and video games | Narrative, movement, characters, space, gameplay, interaction |
| Systems, data and automation | How do we make the system calculate, learn, connect or respond? | Technology | Software, data, AI, algorithms, infrastructure, security |
Fashion: when you first look at the relationship between the body, identity and culture
The world of fashion is not limited to designing garments. It approaches clothing as a formal language, a technical structure in contact with the body, and a complex cultural and industrial phenomenon that today incorporates digital tools for pattern-making, 3D modelling and research into new materials.
Two complementary approaches coexist in this field. On the one hand, there is the creation and realisation of the product: pattern-making, fabric selection, volumetric experimentation, sustainable processes, and physical or digital garment production. On the other, there is the strategic dimension: art direction, brand management, communication, trend forecasting and business models.
The defining question in this field is: are you more interested in imagining and creating what’s in fashion, or in understanding how it acquires meaning, identity and value within an industry?
Interior design: when the issue lies in how we live
Thinking about interior space is not simply a matter of choosing surface finishes. Interior design addresses the architectural, sensory, technological and functional conditions within which daily life, work and leisure take place.
Those who specialise in this field do not merely consider the aesthetics of a room; they analyse how traffic flows are organised, what level of acoustic and thermal comfort exists, how natural light interacts with automated lighting systems, how durable the materials are under continuous use, and how technical installations affect liveability.
The central question is : when you enter a space, do you think about how it looks, or do you immediately consider how you would change it to make better use of it?
Product and UX: when you can’t help but wonder how it should be used
Physical product design and user experience (UX) design represent the natural meeting point between ergonomics, an understanding of human behaviour and technical feasibility. They share the same root: the direct relationship between a person and the object they use to carry out a task. However, they operate on different platforms.
Product design focuses on the physical object: its ergonomics, mechanisms, materials, industrial manufacturing methods, durability and life cycle. UX design focuses on digital products and services: information architecture, navigation flows, the reduction of cognitive friction and the technical system’s response to the user’s actions.
The question that distinguishes these two approaches is: are you more interested in the form and materiality of an object, or in the logical sequence of decisions a person makes when interacting with a digital service?
Visual communication: when the problem is that something is not understood
The core of visual communication is not graphic embellishment, but the ability to structure and convey meaning in an unambiguous and memorable way, combining aesthetic judgement with contemporary production tools.
This field encompasses the creation of visual identities, editorial design, typography, wayfinding in complex environments, applied illustration, art direction in advertising and audiovisual storytelling. Its aim is to translate abstract concepts or dense information into clear visual systems, capable of guiding the perception and behaviour of those who interpret them.
The starting point here is: does seeing disorganised information frustrate you, and do you feel the need to organise it hierarchically so that anyone can understand it instantly?
Animation and video games: when you’re interested in what happens next
Unlike static graphic disciplines, animation and video game development are deeply hybrid fields where artistic narrative and technical execution are inextricably linked. They introduce a decisive variable: the passage of time.
Animation works with transformation, rhythm, movement and visual expressiveness along a linear timeline, guiding the viewer’s attention through advanced technical pipelines. Video game design goes one step further by incorporating user agency: the player does not merely observe what is happening, but intervenes in the system through mechanics, rules, game engines, code and interactive feedback.
The key question in this field is: do you want to construct a story that the audience experiences in a guided way, or would you prefer to design an interactive system that actively responds to their actions?
Technology: when you want to understand what makes the system work
Technology as a core discipline is not merely about writing code, but about designing the logic, data structures and computational models that underpin any contemporary solution. It is a field where creativity manifests itself in architecture and the logical resolution of complex problems.
This field encompasses software development, artificial intelligence algorithms, big data processing and analysis, cloud computing, process automation and cybersecurity. It requires imagining how to structure a system so that it is scalable, efficient, secure and capable of making informed decisions based on the data.
The question here is: is your main drive to imagine how an experience should be presented, or to understand what technical architecture is needed to make it viable and scalable?
Real-world projects do not follow this map
Dividing knowledge into areas is essential for rigorous learning and for delving deeper into a methodology. However, contemporary professional projects rarely remain within the confines of a single discipline, and it is precisely at their intersection that creative and technical profiles learn to collaborate.
- A connected technical garment: requires an understanding of pattern-making and textiles (Fashion), designing the rigid casing for the sensors and its physical ergonomics (Product Design), structuring the mobile app that monitors the data (UX), and programming the firmware and biometric signal processing (Technology).
- An interactive museum installation: this requires planning the spatial flow, lighting and acoustics of the exhibition space (Interior Design), developing the identity and wayfinding (Visual Communication), creating the dynamic visual elements (Animation) and developing the sensor system and software that reacts to visitors’ presence (Technology and UX).
- An e-commerce platform for a design firm: requires articulating the brand universe and product selection (Fashion or Product), optimising the purchase funnel and navigation (UX), maintaining typographical and aesthetic consistency (Visual Communication) and ensuring the infrastructure of servers, databases and payment gateways (Technology).
Innovation often arises at the intersections: when a new material transforms the possibilities of an object, when data optimises a service, or when a human need forces the redesign of a technical system. But to collaborate effectively within an interdisciplinary team, one must first master the principles and tools of a specific field.
Make a list of the things you simply cannot resist correcting
To gain clarity on your own interests, you don’t need to take a standardised career aptitude test. It’s more revealing to carry out a brief observation exercise over four or five days:
Write down in a notebook five everyday situations in which you have spontaneously thought: ‘This isn’t done properly and could work much better’.
For each of these situations, answer these five questions:
What exactly bothered you?
Who was affected by that friction?
What would you have changed in the first place?
Does your proposed solution require changes to a physical object, a space, a visual message, a digital interaction, a narrative or a logical system?
What technical knowledge would you need to acquire to carry out that change?
Pay attention to the way you describe the problem. If, upon entering a railway station, you think the font on the screens is illegible from a distance, your focus is on visual communication. If what bothers you is that the concourse causes bottlenecks at the ticket barriers, your focus is on spatial design. If you’re annoyed that the ticket machine forces you to tap through six screens for a simple task, your focus is on the user experience. If you’re wondering how data travels between the track sensors and the timetable display, your focus is on technological systems.
Your perspective improves significantly when you learn to describe problems precisely, rather than judging them using vague terms such as ‘nice’ or ‘ugly’.
When exploring a degree course, don’t just ask what subjects it covers
When reviewing university syllabuses, it’s easy to get lost in course names or lists of software that may become outdated within a few years. To assess a degree programme from a professional perspective, it’s worth asking five fundamental questions:
What is the main focus of the student’s work? (Materials, spaces, screens, code, garments, stories?).
What kind of decisions do they learn to justify? (Formal, structural, ergonomic, narrative, algorithmic, business-related?).
What research methods are taught before students begin designing?
How is it verified that the projects work? (Through user testing, physical prototypes, load simulations, code testing, industrial feasibility analysis?).
With which other disciplines does the degree programme teach students to collaborate?
At UDIT, there are degree programmes that focus on objects, spaces, bodies, messages, experiences, digital worlds and technological systems. This guide groups them into six areas so that you can start with the question you’re keen to explore and then delve deeper into the specific disciplines.
A good university education should teach you not only which tools to use, but also what kinds of problems you will learn to identify, formulate and solve rigorously.
Frequently Asked Questions
What types of design are there?
There is no single, definitive classification. Disciplines such as Graphic Design, Product Design, Interior Design, Fashion Design, UX/UI Design and Video Game Design all address different media, contexts and needs. To help you find your way, it is more practical to identify the type of problem you are interested in tackling — a physical environment, an everyday product, a visual system or a digital service — rather than memorising academic lists.
What is the difference between design, innovation and technology?
Design investigates needs and devises formal, functional or strategic solutions; technology provides the systems, technical capabilities and tools that make those solutions possible; and innovation occurs when a new or improved change is implemented and used effectively in society or the market. Although they collaborate constantly, they fulfil distinct roles within a project.
What should I study if I’m equally interested in creativity and technology?
You don’t have to give up either field. Areas such as Product Design, Video Game Design and Development, Animation, UX Design or Software Engineering combine creative thinking and technical problem-solving in varying proportions. The key lies in deciding whether you prefer to focus on conceptualising the experience or on building the technical architecture that underpins it.
Can a single project require several disciplines?
Yes, most complex projects are interdisciplinary. A digital medical product, for example, requires physical ergonomics in the hardware (Product Design), clarity in the on-screen interface (UX Design and Visual Communication) and a secure architecture for clinical data management (Technology). Specialisation enables each professional to contribute rigorous expertise within a diverse team.
How do I know which discipline might suit me?
Think about what kinds of friction or flaws catch your attention in everyday life. If you tend to notice how people move through a building, explore Interior Design; if you’re drawn to the usability of everyday tools, look into Product Design or UX; if you’re looking to structure information so that it’s understood, look into Visual Communication; and if you’re fascinated by the logic behind digital platforms, delve into Technology.
Start with the area that sparks the most questions for you
You don’t need to decide on the exact name of a degree programme just yet. The next step is simpler: choose the type of problem that sparks your curiosity the most and find out which disciplines address it. Explore UDIT’s fields of Design, Innovation and Technology and continue your research from there.
