The course sequence for the Certificate consists of four courses: one foundation, two design skills, and one advanced design.
- The foundation level offers students a variety of points of entry into design — encouraging you to explore foundational design courses offered throughout campus. The foundation course cannot be used to fulfill major requirements as it is intended to introduce you to design in other contexts.
- Next, a pair of design skills courses are required that focus on particular design capabilities such as visualization, understanding customer/user needs, concept generation and selection, prototyping, collaboration, and communication. These courses may leverage design expertise within a single discipline or have a multi-disciplinary focus.
- The final course is an advanced design course that challenges you, while working in teams, to tackle a difficult “wicked” problem and innovate around it using interdisciplinary design.
No more than one of the four courses fulfilling certificate requirements can be used to fulfill a student’s major requirements. The minimum number of required units for certificate completion is nine.
The Design Innovation Certificate allows you to take a range of courses outside your discipline that introduces you to, or expands, your context for design. The courses include existing courses in a variety of departments as well as newly developed courses in Design Innovation (denoted by the DES INV course designation). Since not all DES INV courses satisfy requirements of the Certificate, students are advised to check the official listing of approved Certificate courses.
Current BCDI Course Listings
Looking for approved BCDI courses currently available for enrollment? Check out our course listings via the following links:
For more course options, please review our list of successfully petitioned courses:
How to Enroll
We suggest you take a Design Foundations Course before you submit your Declaration of Intent form. If you feel comfortable signing up before taking a design course, this is also fine.
After you have completed your coursework, you can submit the Completion of Certificate form for verification. If you plan to complete your certificate requirements during the Fall 2023, Spring 2024, or Summer 2024 semesters, please fill out the 2023-24 Completion of Certificate form. If you’ve completed your certificate requirements in a previous academic year, please fill out the 2022-23 Completion of Certificate form, or the 2021-22 Completion of Certificate form (whichever, is applicable).
A certificate from all four sponsoring units will be issued upon completion of all course requirements. Applications will be reviewed once final grades are submitted for each semester and certificates will be issued after the review and verification process. Please note, the Certificate will not appear on your transcript.
Who is sponsoring?
This unique campus-wide undergraduate certificate is co-offered by the College of Engineering, College of Environmental Design, College of Letters and Science – Arts and Humanities Division, and the Haas School of Business. The current BCDI Academic Committee members include: Simon Schleicher (CED), Eric Paulos (CoE), Sara Beckman (Haas, Chair), and Jacob Gaboury (L&S, A+H)