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Design Project (BA) (H7135)

60 credits, Level 6

Autumn and spring teaching

The BA 'Design Project' is a 60-credit final-year module that allows you to apply your accumulated knowledge and design skills to a self-initiated and negotiated design brief. 

Projects will include research and viability studies to establish the appropriate design objectives. 

You will explore and develop a number of design concepts before designing a fully-specified final design, presented as a 3D prototype and 2D presentation. 

The work must be completed by an agreed deadline, and then presented to an audience not necessarily familiar with your work. This project is designed to expose you to areas of project management, resourcing, planning, scheduling, marketing, documentation and communication. 

This will involve you managing the process of design as a whole, which will involve activities such as:

• observation
• user research and specification
• sketching/sketch modelling
• concept development
• prototyping
• product refinement
• user interaction
• producing the relevant presentation material. 

A good project will demand creative thinking, analysis and implementation. The project will involve you working at least two-days-per-week on a particular area of activity relevant to your Design Projects.

There will be two interim presentations for critique each term and at the end of the second term, you will produce a Technical Report and a Portfolio and give a 20-minute presentation. 

A single member of faculty will supervise your project; a second (minor) supervisor is also assigned to provide occasional guidance and to give an independent assessment of the completed report and portfolio. 

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 600 hours of work. This breaks down into about 176 hours of contact time and about 424 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.