BA (Hons) Industrial Design

Course details On this course you will usually be taught by a range of staff with relevant expertise and knowledge appropriate to the content of the unit. This will include senior academic staff, qualified professional practitioners, demonstrators, technicians and research students. You will also benefit from regular guest lectures from industry. Year 1 Core units Industrial Design Projects 1: A series of design projects for you to apply creative design methods to industrial design. You'll develop your own design process through conceptual and detail design, and present this through a range of design media. This includes freehand sketching and rendering to CAD modelling and visualisation. Materials & Processing: Learn about important properties of metals, plastics, ceramics and composites and why and how they're picked for product design. Energy and other environmental issues of materials and their processing is also covered. Design Media: Present two and three dimension drawings, renderings and designs using manual and computer visualisation techniques. You'll learn how to professionally present your design media in an industrial situation. User Centred Design: The psychology and physiology of your design users. By considering user capabilities and limitations, and likes and dislikes, you can make your designs more usable and pleasurable. Contextual Design: How design history, culture, environment and social issues influence the modern designer. Combined with knowledge of future trends in technology, innovation, art and fashion, You'll use ideas to produce good design. You'll present your views through a personal development portfolio that uses new media. Year 2 Core units Industrial Design Projects 2: Another series of design projects for you to develop creativity and a professional approach to industrial design. You'll make design specifications for industrial production, and present this through a range of CAD tools and digital media. Manufacturing & Production: You'll learn about modern manufacturing processes for competitive product development. Visualisation Tools: Learn about applied 3-D modelling techniques to support your design visualisation, realisation and presentation. You'll learn to support your design process by using computer, physical modelling and presentation skills, and colour, texture and light using computer and manual techniques. Management & Commercialisation for Technical Projects: An introduction to business and management. You'll learn to identify and use a company's strengths and evaluate opportunities for competitive products. There will be a focus on consumer marketing, decision making, intellectual property rights, product liability and financial and management accounting. Interaction Design: Design for the aesthetic aspirations and ergonomic needs of people. You'll use semiotic methods to identify and create aesthetic images and styles. You'll use ergonomic methods for a range of designs and evaluate from an ergonomic viewpoint. Year 3 You may choose to complete an optional 30-week minimum work placement which can be carried out anywhere in the world. The placement year offers a chance to gain experience and make contacts for the future. Year 3/4 (Final Year) Core units Industrial Design Projects 3: You'll manage an entire industrial design project through specification, conceptual and detail design and present this through CAD visualisation and digital media. You'll design for the needs of people, industry and society. Business Development: The importance of strategic management in the business development process. You'll raise your entrepreneurial spirit and business decision-making. This will enhance your capacity to recognise and capitalise on competitive and innovative opportunities in a changing business environment. Industrial Design Studies: Learn to identify and evaluate human needs in industrial design. You'll be imaginative and realistic when making identities for practical items for everyday use, and justify and criticise a product's human attributes and spatial design. Visual Concept Communication: You'll produce an interactive digital model using advanced surface modelling and techniques such as photorealistic rendering, real time visualization and 3D animation, creating an immersive experience. Scheduled learning and teaching activities The hours below give an indication of how you can expect to spend your time during each year of this course. You will learn through a combination of lectures, seminars, tutorials, workshops and practical sessions. Your independent learning could include reading books and journal articles, working on group projects, preparing presentations, conducting library research and writing your assignments. You will spend a large proportion of your time independently developing their CAD skills to give you the ability to visualise your creative design concepts. The ability to produce photorealistic renderings of a design is a key employability skill. Year 1 – 23% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 272 hours Independent learning: 928 hours Year 2 – 23% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 274 hours Independent learning: 926 hours Non-assessed learning and teaching: 15 hours Year 3 - Placement year Year 4 - 25% of your time will be spent in timetabled learning & teaching activities Learning and teaching: 276.5 hours Independent learning: 923.5 hours Non-assessed learning and teaching: 0.5 hours 60% of the course is assessed by coursework Year 1: 80% Year 2: 75% Year 3: 0% Year 4: 83% Throughout the course you will be assessed by coursework culminating in your final year research project, but you will also undertake group work and written exams. Programme specification Programme specifications provide definitive records of the University's taught degrees in line with Quality Assurance Agency requirements. Every taught course leading to a BU Award has a programme specification which describes its aims, structure, content and learning outcomes, plus the teaching, learning and assessment methods used. Download the programme specification for BA (Hons) Industrial Design. Whilst every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of the programme specification, the information is liable to change to take advantage of exciting new approaches to teaching and learning as well as developments in industry. If you have been unable to locate the programme specification for the course you are interested in, it will be available as soon as the latest version is ready. Alternatively please contact us for assistance. All statistics shown are taken from Unistats, Destination of Leavers from Higher Education (DLHE), BU institutional data and Ipsos MORI (National Student Survey) unless otherwise stated.