Product Design
We offer the following awards in Product Design:
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BA/BSc Product Design
Click here for more information on our BA/BSc Product Design course
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Master of Design (MDes)
Click here for more information on this course
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Master of Design (MDes) – SADI (Korea)
Click here to visit the Samsung Art & Design Institute (SADI) website
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MSc Advanced Product Design
Click here for more information on this course
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Postgraduate Certificate in Research Methods
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MPhil/PhD
Click here for more information on this course
Product Design at CSAD is concerned with design innovation and research. We are especially interested in user insight and in the ethical issues of design. Our focus is on design to manufacture and on the commercial realities of product development. The stance taken is an international one, enabled through the many industrial contacts we have developed over the years. The academic team are also practicing designers who, over the years, have designed for such companies as Bentley Motor Cars, Apple, Hoover, Sony Ericsson, The Product Group, Glasdon, London Associates, Pace-Micro, PDD as well as many others.
Our design experience has influenced the ways in which we have developed and equipped the studios and workshops at CSAD, resulting in facilities that simulate industrial practices. The spaces promote play, innovation and risk-taking. We like experimenting and sometimes even like getting things wrong, before we get them right. In this, we can employ a range of approaches to proto-typing and testing, many involving high-end technologies. We are very involved with the National Centre for Product Design and Development Research (PDR) at Cardiff Metropolitan University (UWIC), with much mutually benefit flowing between Product Design in CSAD and PDR.
Product Design works closely with the other areas in CSAD, enabling a fusion of both ideas and practices that enriches and challenges. Engagement with textiles, fine art, illustration, ceramics, making, graphics and architecture, employing a range of critical approaches and theoretical positions, is releasing a phenomenal creative energy across the School.
The research interests of the academic team shape our programmes. They include: user-centered design; ethnography, usability testing and evaluation; prototyping and product innovation; creativity, play, and product development; brand form development; conceptualization, from sketch to constructed object; information ergonomics; computer embedded products; physicality in design; humans and technology interaction in the construction of everyday reality; and user testing environments.
Students at all levels of study work in specially designed studios, within a community of practicing artists and designers, where discussions between students in different years, on different levels of award and in different subjects are promoted and encouraged.
They have access to well-equipped workshops, across the School, and are supported by technician demonstrators highly skilled in their crafts and processes. Students practice through enquiry-based learning, informed by well-developed theoretical and historical positions. We expect self-motivation and autonomy, as the basis for originality and risk taking. We support and promote the absence of boundaries, as the basis for real innovation.
Download the product design prospectus here.