Design: Products and Technology - MSc

20 credit points
Total contact hours: 50
Total non-contact hours: 150

• This module will provide students with the research methodologies, languages, methods, knowledge and skills necessary in building contemporary arts, design, manufacturing and technology-related practices.
• Working in small groups you'll complete a research project in consultation with your supervisor, identifying your aims and objectives within the framework of their course and beyond.
• You'll engage with a range of quantitative and qualitative research methods, and evaluate primary and secondary methods with reference to design issues.
• You'll learn to critically appraise theoretical and experimental methods of research in your chosen field of interest and apply them in your practice, and reflect on the relationship between theory and practice.

20 credit points
Total contact hours: 80
Total non-contact hours: 120

• This module will provide you with the necessary practical skills and knowledge to devise creative design solutions at an advanced level.
• You'll undertake a series of exploratory workshops to become familiarised with the facilities and staff at the university, and to develop an awareness of the potential for emerging materials and technologies relating to their design interests.
• You'll generate ideas for new products and develop and evaluate a range of new solutions, communicate ideas, concepts, plans and designs, using a variety of approaches including written, oral, graphic illustrations and computer-based presentations.
• You'll consider different elements of your individual design interests through studio and reflective practice, skills such as drawing, and prototyping as well as investigations to materials such as wood, metal, plastics, ceramics, composites and sustainable materials, and fourth-generation development platforms, computer aided design and additive manufacturing.

20 credit points
Total contact hours: 50
Total non-contact hours: 150

• Working as a member of a small team, the Professional Collaboration module will provide challenging simulated work environments, to enable you to engage in the design and management of real-world design projects with industrial partners.
• You'll choose from a range of problem-based scenarios and benefit from working with others on innovative projects set in the context of contemporary real-world issues, and find solutions to difficult and complex challenges.
• You'll be challenged to define the value in a design proposal, and to develop it into a viable commercial proposition, informed by current developments in design management, venture funding, manufacturing technologies, intellectual property (IP), open innovation, and brand management.

120 credit points
Total contact hours: 100
Total non-contact hours: 1,100

• This module provides you with the opportunity to develop innovative artefacts, products or systems. You'll work on your own design concept, an industrially-led, or research-based project, as individually negotiated through your learning agreement.
• Projects may be based on developing innovative products and their supporting systems, concentrating on the technical and manufacturing aspects of the design. Projects should consider not only materials and manufacturing, but also a broad range of strategies and approaches driven by user-centred, market-driven, sustainable, ethical, technological or critical methodologies.
• The first element of this module is called design and emerging technologies. The main aims of this phase are to enable you to employ appropriate methods of research, and apply them to the development of effective design strategies for a negotiated Masters Project.
• In the second element, manufacture and management, you'll progress your project by applying research methods and creative concept generation and ideas prototyping to the development and testing of a range of possible design outcomes for your project.
• In the final element, realisation and evaluation, you'll realise the outcome of your design project through the development of manufactured artifacts, detailed prototypes and/or digital simulations which will enable effective testing and evaluation of the project outcome and successfully communicate the product, system or service to all stakeholders in the project.