Product Design BA (Hons) module details

Year one (Level 4)

Block 1: DMU Designer

This module delivers the core skills of a Product Designer, which are: Drawing, Digital Drawing, POP model making, Workshop Activities, Electronic engineering, and Mechanical engineering - you will engage in a project in each of these areas. The culmination of this module will be your entry portfolio which you will review with your personal tutor.

Assessment: 100% portfolio.

Block 2: Advanced Product Design Skills

You will focus on the core Product Design skills of visualisation, styling, and branding. You will also gain a deeper knowledge and understanding of Human Centred Design, looking at how users experience and interact with products and systems. These subject specific skills will later be called upon to enhance future design work in other modules.

Assessment: 100% portfolio.

Block 3: Design Conception – Thinking and Methods

This module covers both the Discover and the Define stages of the Design Council’s Double Diamond Design Process and will focus on core skills like Ethics, Good Research Practices, user profiling, Product Design Specification (PDS) Development and Concept Generation. This module will encourage you to engage with others, develop essential listening practices and will provide strategic tools to allow you to progress a researched idea into a defined Brief, Aims and Objectives.

Assessment: 50% report and 50% portfolio.

Block 4: Design Delivery

The scope of this module covers both the Develop and the Deliver stages of the Design Council’s Double Diamond Design Process and will focus on core skills like Proof of Principal (POP) rig development, Design for Manufacture (DFM), Sustainability, Testing and Presentation Skills. This module focuses on developing industry ready graduates who can balance the current limitations of DFM with the future needs of a sustainable world.

Assessment: 80% portfolio and 20% presentation.

Year two (Level 5)

Block 1: DMU Designer 2

A large portion of this module focuses on Professional Practice, helping you become industry ready and enabling you to apply for placements and work experience. Again, there is a strong emphasis on engagement with personal tutors, allowing you to personalise learning outcomes to focus on the industry areas of importance to you and group work, teaching you collaborative and real-world skills.

Assessment: 100% portfolio.

Block 2: Advanced Product Design Skills 2

This module builds on your subject specific knowledge gained in the first year. You will advance the core Product Design skills of visualisation, styling, and branding in addition to you developing a deeper knowledge and understanding of Human Centred Design, designing the experiences and interactions you want your customers to have. These subject specific skills will later be called upon to enhance future design work, particularly in your final year.

Assessment: 100% portfolio.

Block 3: Design Communication and Definition

This module will focus on design products which are manufacturable utilising current and future technologies with an awareness of sustainable and commercial interests. You will focus on delivering these core skills through a fun project, encompassing a review of current and future technologies, innovative manufacturing techniques, ergonomic constraints, and full industry ready specification. Including ID Spec Drawings, CMF Documentation and Product Pitching Skills.

Assessment: 80% portfolio and 20% presentation.

Block 4: Design Practice

This module provides an opportunity to synthesise the skills you have learnt in the programme so far and deliver them through a client pitched brief. This supported design project will allow you to investigate what project management techniques work for you in a supported environment, allowing you to learn what techniques work best for you as a designer before moving either into a placement year or your final year.

Assessment: 80% portfolio and 20% presentation.

Year three (Level 6)

Block 1: Design Practice 2

This design sprint is aligned to the Royal Society of Art’s (RSA’s) design briefs. This allows you the opportunity to engage with, and design for, real world and societal challenges - utilising your skills to make the world a better place. This project is seen as more conceptual than many of the other more practical projects within your design portfolio and allows an opportunity for you to create a broader graduate portfolio. The work of this module will also be an excellent stepping stone to inform your design decisions in the next module, Personal Design Project.

Assessment: 80% portfolio and 20% presentation.

Block 2: Design Conception – Personal Project

This module explores the conception stage of your Personal Design Project. The scope of this module covers both the Discover and the Define stages of the Design Council’s Double Diamond Design Process and will focus on the development of a Product Design Specification (PDS) for your major project and a series of concepts that align with the Brief, Aims and Objectives set out within the PDS. This module will encourage you to engage with others, deploy essential listening practices and will utilise strategic tools to allow you to progress through the next two modules.

Assessment: 50% report, 30% portfolio and 20% presentation.

Block 3: Design Development – Personal Project

This module will encompass most of the design work of this project and will allow you the opportunity to take the concepts developed in the previous module through to a realised product proposal. You should demonstrate the majority of the tools in your Designer Tool Kit, including but not exclusively: Development Sketching, CAD, DFM, POP Model Making, Rendering and Animation. This work will also provide the bulk of your graduate design portfolio.

Assessment: 100% portfolio.

Block 4: Design Delivery – Personal Project

You will be asked to deliver and present your final design proposal developed through the previous two modules. This will consist of a final opportunity to practice pitching your design prior to you presenting your design publicly at the DMU Art and Design Degree Show and a final condensed, graduate level portfolio of your work so far. The latter half of this module focuses on employability, developing a full graduate level portfolio of your work throughout the programme, helping design and build your Degree Show and having mock interviews with your personal tutors.

Assessment: 80% portfolio and 20% presentation.