B.Tech. in Computer Science and Design (CSD)

"Design tomorrow's information technology products, services and systems which combine emerging technologies with rigorous design methods & practices."

With internet expanding in all spheres of life, and most industries increasing their web presence and interactivity with their stakeholders and customers, demand for incorporating good design and interaction design with rich media is increasing in all businesses. With increasing focus on user experience, the importance of Interaction Design and Design Methods is also increasing rapidly in IT products and services.

The B.Tech. in Computer Science and Design aims to develop graduates that are not only well versed with computing approaches, tools, and technologies, but are also experienced with Design approaches and new Media technologies and uses. The program has a small set of core courses in CS and Design, and many electives which can be taken from CS as well as Design and Digital Media. This enables the students to build a program most suitable for them. The program will prepare students to work in the IT industry as well as digital media industry like gaming, animation, virtual/augmented reality, etc. The program will also allow students, who want to pursue higher studies, to take up higher studies in CS/IT or in Design.

The program aims to develop capabilities in CS as well as Design and Digital Media. At the end of the program, a student will have:

  • Understanding of foundations, limits, and capabilities of computing.
  • Ability to design and implement efficient software solutions using suitable algorithms, data structures, and other computing techniques.
  • Understanding of design principles and techniques and ability to apply these for developing solutions to human/societal problems.
  • Ability to independently investigate a problem which can be solved by an Human Computer Interaction (HCI) design process and then design an end-to-end solution to it (i.e., from user need identification to UI design to technical coding and evaluation).
  • Ability to effectively use suitable tools and platforms, as well as enhance them, to develop applications/products using for new media design in areas like animation, gaming, virtual reality, etc.

In addition, the graduate of this program should also have the following general skills that are common with other B.Tech. programs:

  • Ability to function effectively in teams to accomplish a common goal.
  • An understanding of professional and ethical responsibility.
  • Ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of audience.
  • Ability to self-learn and engage in lifelong learning.
  • Ability to undertake small research tasks and projects.
  • Ability to take an idea and develop into a business plan for an entrepreneurial venture (if desired).
  • An understanding of the impact of solutions in an economic, societal, and environmental context.

Program Structure

The B.Tech. (CSD) program at IIIT­-D follows the philosophy of having a small set of core courses and many electives allowing students significant flexibility in designing their curriculum and specialization. The first semester program is common with other B.Tech. programs - this allows change of discipline after 1st Semester. 2nd , 3rd and 4th semester is mostly core courses. In the 3rd year, there are some core courses and rest are electives. In the final year, all courses are electives. Below is a list of some of the CSE & DES electives.

Computer Science Electives

Student will do CS electives from a set of courses which will include courses relevant to this program including relating to images, vision, graphics, multimedia, etc. A tentative list of electives that may be available is:

  1. Computer graphics
  2. Data visualization
  3. Image processing
  4. Spatial computing
  5. Mobile computing
  6. Information retrieval
  7. Computer vision
  8. Machine learning
  9. GPU Computing
  10. Multimedia technologies (including authoring tools)
  11. Software engineering

Design and Media Electives

In most of these courses, students will also use a platform widely used for that, and build their project on it. They may also develop some add-ons for the platform. A tentative list of courses that may be offered are:

  1. Aesthetics and art
  2. Usability studies and evaluation
  3. Visualization
  4. Computer game design and programming
  5. Animation principles and design
  6. Special effects
  7. Virtual worlds / Virtual reality
  8. Photography
  9. Video editing
  10. Sound engineering / production

Admission to the Program

Admission to this program will be through two channels – approximately half of the seats will be through the Joint Admission Counselling (JAC) of Delhi, which takes students through JEE (Main), and approximately half the seats will be filled through UCEED conducted by IIT Bombay. More information about the admission to all the B.Tech. programs at IIIT-Delhi will be made available on the admissions pages from time to time.​ More details regarding admissions are available here

For B.Tech. (CSD), the program structure, regulations about the program, including the requirements for graduation and the Honors program, are available here.

Description of various courses is available here.