Product Design - BA (Hons)

• New programme structure for Product Design - BA (Hons)

We provide a dynamic learning experience that explores cutting-edge methods of design to enable students to operate at the forefront of the discipline. We believe that the only way to create the product design innovators of the future is to teach students the research skills needed to discover unique opportunities for design, the thinking skills to see their world critically and the design skills and technical knowledge required to develop those opportunities into desirable products that meet real needs.

Our mission is to ensure that students develop the necessary creative, technical, thinking and interpersonal skills to become highly employable graduates, entrepreneurs and thought leaders. We seek to unlock the potential of students’ ingenuity to address the challenges they will face designing new and improved products. We believe in cultivating empathic, experimental and provocative designers with excellent communication skills; flexible design thinkers, able to take advantage of change, and able to discover unique, genuine problems and opportunities for the design of original, useful and thought-provoking products.

Our definition of product design is broad; encompassing all manner of objects from mass produced consumer goods to batch-produced limited edition pieces and from commercially focused products to products designed to meet humanitarian needs. You will be taught through a hands-on, project-led approach, and will work on design briefs that enable you to design a wide range of products ranging from electronic products to furniture, lighting to fashion accessories, products designed for the home and garden to products designed for use in public environments.

You will develop a wide range of knowledge and skills including design research, research analysis, creative thinking, design sketching, critical thinking, product semantics, model making, computer aided design, computer aided engineering drawing, model making, electronic prototyping, workshop prototyping, computer-aided design, ergonomics, anthropometrics, manufacturing materials, design for manufacturing processes, rapid prototyping, rapid manufacturing, additive manufacturing, production economics, sustainability, computer presentation tools and visual communication, providing you with a comprehensive understanding of the product design process.

We encourage students to take risks, to rebel, to reject the status quo by trying new things, to be radical, to see things differently and to work with people to develop solutions that change things. We teach students that designing innovative products is an iterative, experimental process that involves working with others, a process that often involves a great deal of risk taking, and therefore also a great deal of failure, but that failure and having to do something many times to succeed is not something to fear but to embrace as an often necessary part of the process of making things better than they are.

If you are interested in the man-made objects that surround us, in why things look the way they do, in how things make people feel, in how things work, in materials and technology and how things are made, in questioning and challenging existing ideas and ways of doing things, in learning different ways of researching with people in order to discover their needs, in learning the methods used to help generate creative ideas, and in learning the knowledge, skills and process required to develop ideas into successful products, then we’re the programme for you.