Undertake an in-depth and comprehensive research project into an area of personal interest and synthesise the skills and knowledge you have acquired on this programme. This module will allow you to engage in research design and implementation in a subsequent research project.

It provides you with an opportunity to co-ordinate and manage your own learning experience and formulate this within a coherent research project.

Where appropriate, you will be encouraged to engage with other units across the university in an interdisciplinary manner. Typically, teaching and learning strategies for this module are based around lectures, seminars and personal tutorials. During the project, you will verbally report your work at specific points and will also have support from a supervisor.

Explore key dimensions of contemporary issues in design, with a specific theme serving as the central focus throughout the module.

Through important emergent topics within these themes the module explores the meanings of modern design and its potential role in addressing critical contemporary issues and challenges.

You will be introduced to different ways of thinking about the ‘outcomes’ of design, which may be concepts, material artefacts, services, plans, schemes, participatory methods etc. In the module we address the changing role of design and the designer and the evolving relationships between design, society and contemporary issues.

Developed to cover multiple aspects of the relationship between design and business, this module will examine how design can add value to a product or service. It will also explore the role of design in transforming an idea or invention into an innovation by considering factors such as business model, value proposition, design thinking and user-centred design.

Understanding the business context is one of the main requirements of managing a design project. The dynamic nature of the business world requires flexibility and proper multidisciplinary communication. Dealing with different stakeholders who have different perspectives can be a major challenge for designers and design managers.

You will experience these different aspects practically in a design project, in which you will need to consider a client and a potential future product or service of that organisation. In different parts of the project, you will deal with various, and sometimes contradictory information, which is similar to what you would experience in the real business contexts.

This module explores futures literacy through specific design approaches. These approaches help anticipate and manage potential societal and environmental changes introduced by emerging technologies and systems.

All designers navigate the unknowability of the future. Artefacts they create today, may well come into use under some future conditions they may neither know nor control. In this module, you will learn how to grapple with unknowability by combining systemic and human-centred perspectives, with creative design approaches and methods such as:

• Speculative design
• Design fiction
• Forecasting
• Backcasting
• Experiential futures
• Defuturing

These approaches will empower you to concretise potential futures. This enables a variety of stakeholders to effectively consider and strategise for the wider societal and environmental challenges that new technologies and systems may bring. The module will help you develop the advanced level of critical perspectives and creative skills needed for such an endeavour, and experience how they may be applied in a variety of organisations.

Familiarise yourself with the origins of design management, its past, present and emerging forms; its functions and purposes; and its relationships with policymaking.

This module provides the historical and practical context for design management in general and the role of the design manager in particular. It explores the meaning of designing versus managing and the many ways design managers can contribute to organisations.

You will begin to develop specific skills in managing projects, developing design strategies as well as in branding, marketing, innovation, strategic design-skills necessary to be an effective design manager.

Develop an understanding of a range of design research methods and their application within real world contexts, as we aim to develop analytical and creative design thinking through theoretical investigation and practical activity.

This module introduces and develops research approaches, methodologies and tools used to inform design research, as well as ideas about how and when to deploy these research tools appropriately. It supports the application of these practical and conceptual tools in a range of research methods appropriate to design.

This project-based module offers learning in project management and practice at an advanced level. Projects will vary from year to year but will centre on contemporary issues in design, including emerging research directions and issues related to design and business.

Projects may be based on academically significant topics, thereby enabling you to become exposed to areas of contemporary design research.

You will develop skills in team working and individual design thinking, self-organisation and time management, and there will be opportunities for you to demonstrate this knowledge and skillset in design practices and methods.

Project activities in this module will directly relate to and integrate with academic studies in other modules and will provide an important opportunity for project-based creative activities and synthesis.