Product Design BA (Hons)

Learn how to enhance a product design specification by using research to inform design decisions. Develop enticing user-focused concepts enriched by exploration of external influences and insights. This should help you evolve your design portfolio, making it ready for the professional world and future industries. This module covers research ethics, trends and insights, alongside understanding stakeholders, personas and scenarios. Develop professional skills through specialist framing of intellectual debate, exploring the global and contextual state of the discipline, investigation techniques, research and writing skills, working with audiences and critical thinking.

Compulsory

Innovation comes in many forms, big or small! Explore the potential for creativity and innovation within an existing product typology, challenging and exploring boundaries. Develop creative concepts through a process of ideation and speculative prototyping, building on your ability to develop and test inventive products that respond to realistic parameters. Explore ideation, evaluation and prototyping techniques along with visualisation skills. The module supports your professional development through innovation and iterative thinking processes, encouraging you to embrace change, challenge preconceptions and position ideas within real-world contexts.

Compulsory

In real life, some aspects of a design brief are fixed and non-negotiable. How do we best integrate these demands and constraints in the development of creative, relevant and progressive concepts? Respond to product design briefs and work with others to develop and refine design ideas in line with clear design parameters. This module introduces key concepts in branding, visual language and storytelling, alongside professional development and practical decision-making. It also covers personal process documentation, teamworking dynamics and inclusive communication, with opportunities to practice sharing and presenting ideas.

Compulsory

What are the contemporary drivers that shape design production, and how do we make decisions that are optimal for future design effectiveness? Being a good designer requires the balancing of conflicting requirements to reimagine existing products. Through investigation, you will consider materiality, sustainability and production in the design and manufacture of your outcomes. This module covers product analysis and design for manufacture, introducing CAD-CAM tools alongside professional development. It encourages you to select and practise discipline-relevant techniques, entrepreneurial approaches, and career planning, while addressing project briefs and industry pathways.

Compulsory

This module provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved placement² undertaken during your programme. A placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes. 

Optional

This module provides you with an opportunity to reflect upon and gain experience for an approved international study/work placement² undertaken during your programme. A work/study placement should usually be at least 26 weeks or equivalent; however, each placement will be considered on its own merits, having regard to the ability to achieve the learning outcomes. 

Optional

What sort of product design would you like to engage with in your graduate career, and what steps might you take to get there? In what way do you need to communicate and work with others to further your creative activities? Explore and frame design briefs for projects that align with your professional aspirations and respond to them through personally developed and collectively refined creative narratives and project outcomes. This module covers storytelling and visual identity alongside professional development and project management. It includes recording and presenting project activity, establishing team roles and responsibilities and developing skills in listening, contributing, leading and negotiation within project contexts.

Compulsory

Research is key to making product design that works for the right audience. Draw together and apply all your research skills to help you ideate and evaluate a range of design concepts in service of your interests. Good research and evaluation means being able to justify and defend your ideas with authority. This module focuses on recording research and establishing context, alongside ideation and evaluation techniques. It includes project management and responsible researching with attention to ethics and sustainability, creating audiences, applying critical thinking and developing personal manifestos or principles for practice.

Compulsory

Build on your accumulated knowledge and skills by conceptualising and prototyping desirable, feasible and viable products related to your interests. Make your voice heard by developing your identity as a designer. Explore your position as an innovative designer and create prototypes to test out your conceptual thinking capabilities. This module covers product development with a focus on prototyping, testing, ergonomics and Colour, Material, Finish (CMF). It also emphasises project management, encouraging you to challenge your ideas, position yourself as an innovative creator, advance process-based thinking and question discipline norms.

Compulsory

What are the product design industry standards you need to recognise in your area of interest? How do you know that what you’re doing is commercially viable, future-focused and responsible? What specific elements of your specialism do you need to develop and demonstrate in your project and portfolio? Present your articulation of these factors in your practice. This module addresses design for manufacture with a focus on sustainability, costing and routes to market. It includes project management and developing skills in presenting and articulating your practice, while reflecting on your work in relation to specialist focus, industry context and emerging trends.

Compulsory