BA (Hons)/BSc (Hons) Product Design

If you’re creative and you’d like to explore how your ideas could have real impact in the world, our Product Design BA/BSc(Hons) courses give you the chance to develop the skills to become an enterprising professional designer. So much goes into a finished product: the initial sketch, physical model making, prototyping, digital visualisation and animation. While you’re working on the practical side, we’ll also encourage you to: * Think about how to research a product, and what goes into product development and manufacturing. * Use our industry links to help you get started on your career. We focus on commercial product design, and give you the chance to experience real design challenges set by businesses or design organisations. This can offer opportunities to win prestigious design awards and even for your design solutions to be licensed. For example, one recent student designed an innovative clothes hanger that is now used in a major high street store. * Acquire listening skills to identify gaps in the market, people’s frustrations with everyday tasks and existing products and develop ideas to solve them.We believe design can improve people’s lives, aiding an individual or a community’s wellbeing. Whether you’re designing solutions physically or digitally, in sketch form or 3D, we’ll focus on end results that are capable of being mass-produced. Both the BA(Hons) and the BSc(Hons) routes of the course have the same programme for the first year. After that you’ll be able to choose which way to go in the second year, and our staff are on hand to help you make your decision. Product Design has an 83.3% student satisfaction rating (NSS 2020) Additional Costs – Materials:You’ll need to supply some of your own materials during the course, such as sketch pads and basic drawing equipment. We also recommend you purchase an external hard drive to back up your work. The University will provide basic materials to enable you to produce sketch development models and hand fabricated photo-realistic representations. For some projects, you may choose 3D printing as an alternative to making models by hand, or produce a 3D animation. You’ll need to cover the cost if you choose 3D printing, and costs can range between approximately £10 and £300 depending on the size, output quality and complexity of the model. However we offer a range of 3D printers to meet your quality needs and budget; from desktop printers through to advanced machines. You could look to secure external sponsorship to cover the full cost of larger 3D prints, especially in your final year. The approximate cost of equipment/materials per student in recent years, including an average amount of 3D printing, has been approximately £260 in the first year, £365 in the second year and £500 in the final year. These costs may vary based on the materials you choose and the approximate costs are given as a guide only.