During the programme

Challenging Human Bias is a course that lays the foundation of human-centred thinking by inviting you to put yourself in the shoes of others to understand how unchecked biases can affect them. Unconscious bias are made visible in everyday solutions: the way a product, a service is designed can cater for one user but can also exclude another one. This course is also a journey of self-discovery as you will be invited to develop self-awareness by considering your blind spot - one’s tendency to recognize that others are biased while failing to see how bias influences one’s own thinking.

During the course Collaborative Studio students will work in teams on various design challenges for an external client.  Each week there will be a new design challenge waiting for the student-teams, and after receiving background information, design theory and related case studies, the students will tackle the design-challenge pressure-cooker style, following the steps of Design Thinking - empathizing with the target audience, defining the client and customer needs, ideating and generating design prototypes. 

Creativity is a mindset that is essential in developing novel or unorthodox solutions that do not depend wholly on past or current solutions. It’s a way of employing strategies to clear your mind so that your thoughts and ideas can transcend what appears to be the limitations of a problem. Students will also learn how to develop a creative thinker attitude: curious, optimistic, and imaginative. During this course, students will be presented with a palette of case studies revolving around creativity from different angles, fields, and forms of presentations, meant to teach them how to design disruptive solutions and think “outside of the box”.

In the course Effective Communication, you will learn the tools of the communication trade (theories, models, elements of argumentation and so on) and how to apply them effectively in different communication situations: whether one on one, in a group or with various sets of stakeholders. Everything is communication, and in taking this course you will learn how to use it to be persuasive, both at home and at work.

In a world that is constantly changing, businesses and companies must always adapt to new situations and trends to stay relevant for customers. How do you, as a Creative Business professional, add real value to a customer’s life while generating profit and constantly reinventing your business model? During this course, we look into the factors that influence the success of a company and its environment and teach you how to methodically investigate struggling companies and identify opportunities to enhance or reinvent them. 

Marketing is not just about having a great product or service. It's about meeting consumers' needs, understanding what makes them tick, and speaking to them in the ways that make them want to engage. Therefore, understanding consumer behaviour is a marketer's gold. And as we've seen time and time again, those who use it best, and align their marketing decisions to what the data tells them, are those who win. In this course we will focus on developing a good understanding of consumer needs and behaviour in relation to the key principles of the marketing discipline, so you will be able to positively contribute to marketing and marketing communications activities within your future professional field.

From a professional perspective, when you join a new organization, you need to be “onboarded”: going through the process of learning about the new systems, getting to know the team and the company culture. This is also what we do in the additional track Professional Onboarding: make you familiar with the organization (HU, CB), your team (programme, class) and tasks (courses, curriculum). In the first block you will receive regular newsletters, have weekly class sessions with your progress coach, and visit some lecture hall sessions on relevant study topics.

In this course, you will learn the fundamentals of doing applied research in Creative Business. This is an iterative process in which you continuously gather insights and empathize with different stakeholders. You will learn to become a researcher and design thinker – agile, innovative and creative. We take you through the basics of doing research, from unpacking a research problem to formulating specific research questions and selecting appropriate methods.

Media Culture is an introduction to media studies, which focuses on the international media landscape. It offers students an overview of the cultural, social and historical concerns that matter when working in the contemporary media industry. Students reflect on their role as active audiences, consumers and users of global media content. They analyse contemporary trends and conflicts in current media culture. Within class, students debate the social aspects of these new developments in the field of media.

In this course you will demonstrate your ability, collaboration skills and emotional intelligence to become and be an innovation leader to establish and validate innovation for an organisation/brand and determine its viability. You will do this by working on a challenge and demonstrating your leadership skills by creating a new concept that is feasible, always keeping in mind technology, finances and its societal impact.

This course introduces you to key concepts and methods for creating an up-to-date media strategy to launch a global TV show in a chosen city. As a media strategist, you will focus on designing a transcreative brief with a crossmedia plan. This plan will be based on the city’s socio-political background and first-hand data that you will gather by empathizing with a local audience. To ensure a successful launch, you will conduct a social media trend analysis to uncover relevant insights by using fundamental knowledge of media studies, communication, and marketing.

In this course you will learn about prototyping design and testing techniques as well as data analytical approaches needed in the prototyping and research cycles. You will collect and analyse both qualitative and quantitative data and do a series of exercises building diverse types of prototypes, leading to the design, testing and improvement of a main prototype in the iterative research and design process. 

In this course you will critically investigate a sustainability challenge in a country from a foreign continent and develop a solution and prototype through a design thinking process, using Technology for Good. This includes performing an in-depth intercultural analysis, working out a strategic vision and digital business model and critical reflection on your own learning path. You will demonstrate your findings and insights in a Tech4Good Company booklet and showcase.

In business, being smart and savvy is key, and capturing the value you bring to the table is crucial. This course delves into the complex world and the critical role of pricing strategies in correlation with brand equity in capturing value. Based on thorough research of customers, competitors and market data, you will understand the underlying motivations behind each price point and how to gain an edge over the competition. You will learn to make strategic pricing decisions that maximize your revenue and secure the future of your company. 

Today, humanity is facing a range of “wicked” problems such as famine, conflict, pollution, climate deregulation, and environmental degradation. In this course, you will learn about these challenges, their roots and, most importantly, what you could do to address them as creative business professionals. You will explore tools and frameworks that can help you start up and run businesses that are sustainable not only financially, but also environmentally and socially. We will also look into more future-oriented approaches to sustainability, moving from damage minimization towards regeneration of planetary resources through sustainable business practices. 

In this course, you will learn how to analyze and visualize data from social media using R programming language. While this course is not a programming (or statistical) course you will learn basic programming skills. The course aims to provide you with another way of thinking with new tools! It is not required to have prior programming experience but we expect students to be tech-savvy. You will make a report, focusing on a particular area of the creative industries, in which you include your own R code, visual findings, a data-driven solution, and reflections on your learning journey.

Gamers, fans, hackers are examples of technology and media communities which are often described as participatory cultures. These global communities bridge different (media) platforms, nationalities, and businesses. Our common goal in this course is to gain deep insights about emerging participatory cultures, which are self-organized and natural communities made possible by new media and technologies. Through innovative ethnographic methods, you immerse yourselves in these global communities. You will also analyse your own involvement in a participatory culture of your choice.

When news media and organisations (private and public) interact through public relations in the public sphere, they inevitably 'frame' issues, actors, and stakeholders from specific political, social, and cultural perspectives. In this course you will learn how framing in the media works and how to analyse news stories (and thus public discourses) by spotting the different perspectives about relevant issues and actors. You will apply your insights by designing your own framing of a relevant story on behalf of a client (a public or private organisation) and distributing this in a (simulated) press conference with press pack. 

Sound is the shortcut to emotion — try to turn off the sound of a horror movie, game or a funny tv commercial and you’ll lose all engagement.  With masterclasses, hands-on activities, guest lectures from the industry and a real client brief you will learn to understand and apply the power of sound. How can we make use of this sensory force? How can we use audio to solve a business challenge? Which audio (format) speaks to which target audience? And how can we exploit audio for our communication?  During the course you will obtain a full overview of all possibilities available to you in using sound for business. 

In this era of technology data is collected in great amounts and for most people it is not easy to make sense of abstract and complicated data. However, there is a story to be found in data and by using visuals to tell this story, you can ensure that any type of audiences (whether it may be professionals, managers, strategists, users, readers, parents, children…) can understand the story behind the data. In this course you will learn to visualize data into clear data stories. You will explore different analogue and digital tools that can help you in creating an interesting visual data story.

In this course you will learn to analyze, evaluate, and create immersive experiences that engage people in a story. Combining several areas of creative expertise, you will get a taste of what it’s like to work as an experienced director, creative consultant, or story developer. You will become familiar with the history of experience design, its purpose and terminology, user-centered perspectives, building blocks, and the step-by-step process of strategically crafting a successful immersive and interactive experience. Finally, you will come up with innovative and creative ideas for an immersive experience for a (fictitious) client, designed to fit the client and users’ needs.

This course prepares you to become a brand strategist through hands-on learning and real-world case studies. You will gain the skills and knowledge needed to lead conversations with clients about their branding decisions and create strong brands with real meaning. Working with a real client, you will present you advice for approval and make changes that really matter. These skills are in high demand across all industries, from start-ups to corporations. 

We all want people to do things. Whether you want your customers to buy from you, your family to change their (over) consumption habit, or even your flat mate to clean up after themselves. What if you could harness the power of psychology and behavioral science to motivate people to do the things you want them to do? This course aims to equip you with an understanding of the drivers of human behavior and with the necessary skills to apply these insights to impact decision making, engagement and choices in an ethical way.

In this course we'll focus on creating great marketing content from both a strategic and creative perspective. You'll learn that great content wins with three different audiences - it creates value for customers, it gets distributed by digital channels, and it helps your client achieve their marketing objectives. You'll be armed with content theories, strategies and tools that'll help you win with all three of these audiences. You will roll up your sleeves and create a brief, craft a content marketing strategy and then create and publish content on a chosen channel. 

This course allows students to earn academic credits by incorporating their side jobs, volunteer work, or personal projects. You can either nominate a part-time job or project you have worked on in your spare time (Pathway 1) or initiate a new project within the creative business domain that has always interested you (Pathway 2).