MDes vs. MHCI @ CMU — Carnegie Mellon University
Know what you’re getting yourself into… They seemingly converge to the same career destinations — so where do they diverge?
A lot of people are looking into the MDes and the MHCI program @CMU to become some sort of a User Experience (UX) Designer / UX Researcher / Interaction Designer / Product Designer (not in the traditional industrial design sense, I mean the new “product designers” a.k.a. UX Designers in some tech companies like Facebook) / Web Developer… and the list goes on.
Well if you got into either (or even better, both) of the programs, congrats! You are well on your way to earn a median salary of $93,600–$108,000 as one of the positions mentioned above! Sounds all rosy so far right? No — these two programs offer a very different experience and you want to make sure you choose the right experience for you!
But what are the differences between the two programs?
Table of Contents
- Internship
- Program Focus
- International Students — OPT Matters!
1. Internship
MDes will offer you the chance to do an internship, while MHCI won’t. (Bear in mind CMU School of Design offers three types of Masters degree — MDes, MPS, and MA. Only MDes will let you do an internship since it’s the only two years program out of the three.)
MDes is a two years program, therefore you will get a summer break off, in which you can use to do a summer internship. MHCI is a one year program, where you won’t get a summer break, and instead work on a client-based capstone project.
Why does this matter? Because when MDes students are taking their time looking for summer internships first, (which is easier to score compared to a full-time, given the same company) MHCI students are looking for full-time positions right away when their program is over in August.
The difficulty difference in scoring a full-time position with vs. without an internship in a relevant field is huge. Companies are less willing to take risks on candidates without relevant professional experience, and would much prefer ones with relevant internship experiences.
Also, internships typically connect to a return offer if you perform well in the internship, which means once you score an internship, there is a good chance that you can also get a full-time job there.
In short, people with internships have an easier time getting a full-time job than those who don’t.
Does that mean I’m less likely to get a job as an MHCI student?
No, not necessarily.
From a purely statistical point of view (2018), MHCI had a 100% employment rate, while the School of Design Masters programs (MDes + MPS + MA) did not have a clean 100%.
Wait, so what you said doesn’t add up.
Yeah, there are multiple factors to consider. (Also the statistic doesn’t isolate MDes from MPS / MA. MDes might also have a clean 100%, but I have no way of knowing.)
First, let’s look at the salary range.
- Lowest MHCI salary is $50,000, while the lowest MDes +MPS + MA salary (which I will just call as MDes for now) is $80,400.
Hmm. (Bear in mind, not everyone reported their salaries). - Average MHCI salary is $96,809, average MDes salary is $103,880.
Hmmm. - Highest MHCI salary is $160,000, the highest MDes salary is $125,000.
Hmmmmm.
I personally wanna neglect the highest salary as a factor, because any senior level designer could’ve come to the program, gotten a degree upgrade from Bachelors to a Masters, and returned to his/her workforce as a Design Lead or something at $160,000. There’s too much room for variability.
However, the lowest and average salaries do signal something, because they are indicative of some graduates not meeting the minimum / average salary of MDes, and there must be a reason why (not that it’s a bad thing! Could purely be a location thing, more on that below).
How about career destinations?
Everyone in MDes who did get employed and reported (2018) went to big-name companies. (Alibaba is huge in China, Naver is the Google of Korea). Nice, good for them!
Everyone in MHCI got employed, but you will notice that there is more diversity in terms of the companies that are represented. We have the same big names (Google, Microsoft, etc.), but we also have many companies that we may not have heard of. Location is a lot more diverse too, CT, OH, CA, NY, IL, PA, GA, Germany, Switzerland, China, etc.
Can we safely assume that the chances of getting into big-name companies are higher for MDes than MHCI? Not for sure, the cohort size is very different as well. MHCI: 68 vs. MDes+MPS+MA: 26.
Geographical location has a huge impact on your salary. This may explain the salary statistics we saw above. A lot of MDes tend to go to CA, MHCI peeps tend to go to many different places. If you get hired in CA, because of the high living cost, your salary will be higher (you will also spend a lot). But if you get hired in Ohio, your salary will be lower NOT because you’re less talented, but because the living costs are much more affordable.
Big-Name Tech Companies
If your goal is to get to a big-name tech company with six-figure salaries, I think this is where yes-internships vs. no-internships make a huge difference. I have many friends in the MHCI program, and many of them don’t have prior UX-related internship experiences at a big-name company. They definitely feel the pressure of applying to full-time positions straightaway, especially the ones who wish to go to big-name companies. They would prefer doing an internship before applying to full-time positions, but they don’t have the choice to do so.
On the other hand, the MDes students I know are comparatively less pressured, since they are looking for an internship instead of a full-time gig. The big-name companies tend to have large internship programs every year, and the MDes students typically have little trouble scoring big-name company internships, which can lead to return offers.
I have no concrete statistical evidence of the relationship between yes / no internship and full-time destination company sizes, but I know for sure that scoring an internship at Microsoft is easier than scoring a full-time position at Microsoft.
But also, MDes is a two-year program, and if you don’t have a Bachelor’s degree in design, you have to go through the MPS / MA before going to MDes, which equates to three years. Are you willing to spend that much time in school? I don’t know. Maybe you are, maybe you aren’t. But either way, you should clearly understand the added benefits of an internship.
I just want to say that if your end-goal is working for a big-name with six figures, and you’re willing to spend 2–3 more years in grad school, you might wanna consider this carefully.
2. Program Focus
The two programs have very different focuses. The following descriptions are extracted from each of the websites:
Masters in Human-Computer Interaction (Link)
“The Master of Human-Computer Interaction (MHCI) program at Carnegie Mellon University is the first program in the world dedicated to preparing professionals for careers related to human-computer interaction, user experience design and user-centered research. It is a professional degree that prepares students for industry and a career related to user experience, human-computer interaction and beyond.”
As mentioned above, I can tell you for sure that the MHCI program is very much focused towards getting you ready for a career in the HCI field in a short period of time. As a result, the courses are very heavy on the technicals. The project scopes are tightly defined, and courses are designed to guide you through a somewhat pre-defined project path with the aim of equipping you with as much UX Research / Design methodologies as possible.
Masters in Design (Link)
“Our students become “systems thinkers,” able to see and solve complex problems in a globally connected and interdependent world. They are comfortable working collaboratively in transdisciplinary teams, and bring a holistic, research-based approach to design that helps them stand out among their peers.”
Disclaimer: I’m less qualified to talk about the qualities of the MDes program. However, I’ve talked to many current MDes students, and I’m taking a design studio course in the School of Design to understand this program better. I’ve already seen so many differences from MHCI and I’d love to share them here.
The biggest difference about the MDes program is that it is less about equipping you for employment — but more about teaching you how to approach problems on a fundamental level. As a result, the MDes courses won’t necessarily teach you the UX Design methodologies 101 like the MHCI, but will grant you a much broader area of freedom for problem explorations and project directions. Projects have a much wider scope, and you may choose to take many different project directions to solve the exact same problem spaces as the MHCI program.
Wait that’s too vague.
For a more concrete example, take problem space of health as an example:
Project scope
MHCI: Design a mobile service for a _____ health company.
MDes: How can we improve the sleep quality of individuals?
MHCI project prompt already defines the project scope to a mobile service. This means the end deliverable has to be a smartphone app. Also, the project must align with the goals of the given health company. Therefore the project direction is also somewhat defined.
On the other hand, the MDes project prompt allows you to explore many different ways to improve sleep quality. You could do a smartphone app, but you can also do a VR / AR experience that helps you better prepare for sleep. You could create a portable physical space to allow sleeping in the public more comfortable and socially acceptable. You could create a smartwatch app that measures your procrastination rate and nudges you to sleep if you procrastinate too much at 1 am.
Here you can see the clear differences between the philosophies of the two programs.
MHCI, by narrowing the project scope, can precisely teach you the necessary skills you need for mobile app design. The faculty will teach you the standard UX methodology for designing for a mobile environment and will offer you critiques on that. This nature will continue for different design patterns, such as designing for Conversational UI, Internet of Things, AI, etc. You are there to learn the methodologies you can use directly in your future careers.
MDes, on the other hand, will teach you ways to explore the vast problem space of sleep quality. You will explore the different factors affecting sleep, and how sleep affects different aspects of your life. You choose the project scope and direction you want to take. Then, you decide the best medium that will solve the scope you defined. Whether that’s a VR experience, a physical artifact, or a mobile app. You can take full control of the outcome. I also noticed the MDes students have a stronger sense of visual design than the MHCI students, perhaps due to the admissions requirement of a previous Bachelor of Design degree (or a MPS / MA degree), or because of the courses themselves.
So which approach is better?
I’ve heard mixed reviews from students of both programs. Students in MHCI often criticize how the project scopes are too strict and narrow, and therefore find many of the projects boring and uninteresting. The program also lacks focus on the visual design, which is a key skill of any UX Designer. The program feels like a factory that inputs standardized UX methodologies into students and spits out an army of UX Designers / Researchers, all with the same portfolio projects and knowledge in the end. Imagine 68 people with exactly the same portfolio projects. Jeez. How you differentiate yourself from others is the key.
MDes students mention the lack of training in the formal UX methodology practices and therefore find it very difficult to construct a portfolio and perform well in interviews for internship / full-time searches. Because the projects are very broad, unless the students know exactly what the companies are looking for, they can be too abstract or foreign for recruiters to understand how the projects may apply to their company’s products. MDes students also don’t follow the traditional UX methodologies so it may be harder for interviewers to fully grasp the process they employ.
Eventually, both programs will get you jobs. However, your program choice can determine what kind of designer you become. Both programs can get you to Google. Whether you become a Google designer who knows your UX design methodologies off by heart or a designer who approaches problems in a creative and experimental way, can heavily depend on the program you come from.
My personal opinion is that MDes teaches Design, and MHCI teaches you UX Design. Design and UX are not interchangeable terms, UX is a small subset of a huge field that is Design. MDes fosters designers (who can end up working as UX Designers / Researchers if they choose to focus on these fields), and MHCI specifically fosters UX Designers / Researchers, who can become generalist designers if they continuously explore the vast field of design. It just so happens that the field of UX is so popular that both programs end up producing UX Designers / Researchers.
Another huge consideration is the length of the program. Completing a Masters degree in 1 year rather than 2–3 years can be a huge advantage depending on your situation. MDes focuses on a much broader field of Design than MHCI, and therefore requires more time to master the field. If you just want to quickly focus on the field of UX rather than the entire design field, MHCI could be a winner for you. It all depends on what you hope to get out of your Masters program.
Generalist vs. specialist — Take your pick.
3. International Students — OPT Matters!
If you’re an international student and the words OPT, H-1B, Green Card matter to you, read this.
- MHCI is a STEM program, so you will receive a total of 3 years OPT.
- MDes / MA / MPS are not STEM programs, so you will only receive a total of 1 year OPT.
Another factor to weigh in if you’re an international student. Yay!
I wrote this article to give prospective students an idea of what they can expect in both of these programs. Not one program is better than the other, it all depends on your own circumstances.
If you see any corrections or better insight about either of the programs, please leave a comment and I’ll make sure to edit the post accordingly. I want this post to be as accurate as possible for prospective students.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask at antoniosong@cmu.edu.
