Product and Furniture Design - MA

Taking an internationalised stance, this module is concerned with the meaningful context of design practice and considers the cultural, aesthetic, political, economic and social factors that influence designers. By focusing on how these macro conditions effect an individual designer’s decision-making processes and Praxis, the development of specific design ‘cultures’ can be evaluated at an individual, corporate, national and global level. By focusing on a design precedent, you will consider how the designer’s outputs are utilised, valued and absorbed by the design industry at large – including curators, journalists, bloggers, businesses, brands, retailers and the general public. By applying practice-led research, you will form a better understanding about the international and local influences that impact on your own respective design specialism and the resultant design cultures that are emerging within this industry sector.

This module provides you with the opportunities to engage both with perspectives of commercial markets, design processes and models of design management, and also with alternative notions of concept generation through deconstructing and then reconstructing new design based narratives. This inter-related module will be defined by using a combination of theoretical and practical analysis applied to the evolution of contextually specific design sectors and also to the challenging expectations and conventions of existing products by looking at alternative directions and product opportunities. In doing this, you will define alternative theorems and strategies relating to the construction and deconstruction of design ideas, mechanisms, and processes as part of the your own design practice.

The module is an opportunity to learn and critically reflect on the skills of collaboration. Collaboration is a vital employability skill within the Creative Industries and this module allows you to develop these skills, making use of University facilities, with the support of academic staff. Within this module framework, several kinds of collaborative opportunities are available. Your supervisor may set you a predetermined live project, to enable you to work with other students in a way that is appropriate to your subject area; or there may be opportunities for you to collaborate with staff on research projects. In all cases, you must apply your subject skills to a project which will be agreed in advance with your supervisor.

The module supports the advancement of your professional standing, through engagement with externally generated briefs and ascribed parameters. It will develop your critical awareness of contemporary practice and advance your subject knowledge. You will be required to demonstrate self-direction and originality in undertaking, solving problems and act autonomously in planning and implementing solutions at a professional level.

The purpose of the module is to enable you to undertake a sustained, in-depth and theoretically informed research project exploring an area that is of personal interest to you. It is important that we can support you appropriately, so you will be guided towards choosing a research topic which is relevant to your discipline and in which your lecturers have expertise. The outcome may take the form of a written dissertation or a practical outcome with accompanying reflective, critical and contextual material. The main consideration when choosing your topic is that it must be relevant to your programme and you should consider the relevance of this topic to your future academic or professional development.