Introduction to Product Design 2: Practice (H7064F)

15 credits, Level 3 (sub-degree)

Spring teaching

How are new products born? What does it take for an idea to become a fully finished, mass-manufactured product in a shelf, ready for sale?

This is the second of two modules aimed at providing you with an initial taster of the field of product design, and the type of activities it involves.

In this second module, you will respond to a more challenging design brief requiring you to develop a new product. This will include understanding the brief, developing a full product design specification, and creating a fully functional prototype (including its packaging).

In the process, you will further your knowledge of the basic processes, techniques, tools and theory behind new product development, as well as the multiple dimensions of a product and how they relate to each other.

You will learn how to:

• understand a design brief
• carry out research
• enounce a problem statement
• come up with ideas
• develop and evaluate your ideas
• communicate those ideas using a variety of tools and methods
• produce a product design specification
• present your design solutions to an audience.

The module assumes you have completed the module 'Introduction to Product Design I'. As with that module, this module aims to equip you using the right balance of both theory and practice. You can expect to spend a substantial amount of time developing your designs in the classroom, and spend an equally substantial amount of time outside of the classroom devoted to this goal.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 33 hours of contact time and about 117 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.