Contemporary design, particularly in interaction design, is no longer confined to the form of objects but unfolds through the relationships between human actions and complex environments. Today, it extends into what is not immediately visible, from responsive spaces, to wearables, to agentic home assistants. This can be seen, for instance, in driver assistance technologies that provide visual or haptic feedback, in the simple swipe gesture used to navigate a gallery, and in smart devices that react to voice or patterns of behavior.
Within this context, the Master of Arts in Interaction Design. Emerging Technologies for Products and Services at IED Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin focuses on training designers who can shape and manage interaction ecosystems where physical and digital dimensions converge. Rather than being an additional layer, interaction design defines the logic of the project itself, determining how technologies behave and how they are interpreted in use. It goes beyond the interface: it is where experience takes form, when a gesture triggers a response, a signal guides a decision, and interaction becomes clear and meaningful.
At the core of the program is the relationship between humans and technology. The focus lies on perception and decision-making processes, on how people process information and respond to stimuli, even under uncertainty or distraction. This perspective also requires an understanding of the physical, social, and cultural context in which interactions take place, and how it shapes experience. In this sense, interaction design moves beyond purely technical problem-solving, ensuring that technologies are not only functional but also accessible and usable in real-world conditions.
This perspective becomes tangible in the Design Labs, where interactions are built, tested, and observed in action. The program spans multiple interconnected domains. In Digital Services, students work on platforms and services, structuring information and interaction flows. In Mobility, autonomous driving is explored as a communication challenge as much as a technological one, focusing on how vehicles express intent in urban environments. In Connected Worlds, everyday objects are transformed into connected devices capable of collecting and translating data, such as energy use, pollution, or movement, into meaningful feedback that informs behavior without imposing it. The two-year course concludes with a thesis project based on a real-world brief, where ideas are tested against feasibility and real constraints.
It is precisely within these contexts that a deeper shift becomes evident. With artificial intelligence, interactions are no longer fully deterministic: technologies become adaptive, generative, and at times unpredictable. This changes the role of the designer, who is now responsible not only for defining functionality but also for making these behaviors interpretable in practice. What matters is no longer whether something works to how it behaves, what it communicates, and how much agency the user retains. In this sense, design is increasingly about negotiating opacity rather than eliminating it, placing trust at the center of the process and requiring systems to be transparent, interpretable, and navigable.
This is also where new territories of practice begin to emerge. Conversation design, for instance, introduces an interaction grammar based on language, turn-taking, tone, and context management. Chatbots and AI assistants are not just interfaces, but dialogical systems, requiring expertise at the intersection of linguistics, cognitive psychology, and interaction design.
The structure of the educational program reflects this complexity. Rather than focusing solely on tools, it builds an interdisciplinary foundation that combines theory, methodology, and hands-on practice. Students explore cognitive psychology, semiotics, systems thinking, and ethics in technology to understand the principles behind effective design decisions. Research skills are developed through interviews, usability testing, field observation, grounding projects in real human behavior. Prototyping plays a key role throughout, from early sketches to high-fidelity digital prototypes and fully functional physical artifacts, including work with hardware and sensors. This is complemented by knowledge of design systems, basic coding, and product and business logic, enabling designers to contribute across the entire development lifecycle.
Seen from this perspective, studying interaction design today means engaging with a landscape where interfaces extend beyond screens into environments, objects, and distributed systems. It is a field where analytical rigor meets creative sensitivity, and where understanding human behavior becomes the foundation for shaping meaningful, real-world experiences.
The course is led by Alice Mela, Product Experience Lead at Arduino, and Andrea Pinchi, Founder of Bomberos Design, both designers with extensive experience in complex physical-digital products, bringing industry practices directly into the classroom. The Master of Arts is open to applicants from design, communication, and humanities backgrounds, as well as those with technical expertise seeking a solid, internationally relevant specialization across areas such as digital products, services, automotive, smart environments, retail, social impact startups, and AI.
Career paths include Interaction Designers, working on flows and microinteractions; Product Designers, combining research, strategy, and design; Service Designers, addressing complex service infrastructures and touchpoints; and UX Researchers, focused on user behavior and validation. Emerging roles include Physical-Digital Experience Designers, operating across space and technology, and Conversation Designers or AI UX Designers, shaping intelligent systems. With experience, these paths can evolve into leadership positions such as Design Lead or Head of Design.
Torino provides a unique context for this approach. With its strong industrial design heritage and growing tech and startup ecosystem, the city acts as a living laboratory where product, service, and system design intersect, offering students the opportunity to work on real-world challenges within a dynamic innovation landscape.
The Master of Arts is recognized by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. The next academic year begins in October 2026. Prospective students can join on-campus or online Open Days to meet the faculty and explore IED Torino’s learning environment. Applications for scholarships open in April, with additional financial support options available (see ied.edu for details). For further information and application details, contact Valeria Venere at v.venere@ied.it.
