Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Study Details: Two years (60 weeks) Extended full-time
Traditionally, industrial design is associated with the improvement of goods and services through creative intervention. However, as the nature of production and consumption has changed in the face of growing social, economic, environmental challenges and technological development so has the role of the industrial designer.
This places an emphasis on the strategic competencies within the design process and requires a set of responsive and critical skills that complement the creative processes and materially informed skill sets that gave rise to the discipline.
As a pioneering course in the field, MA Industrial Design adapts to these changes continually expanding the disciplinary purview of industrial design.
On the course, you will question how, why and for whom particular goods and services are produced. You will utilise Industrial Design to catalyse change and leverage insight to inform new practices, your discipline and industry. You will question the impacts of design practice and the role and agency of the industrial designer engaging in a broad range of problem contexts. We draw on current thinking and practice in other discipline areas, including the physical sciences, social, psychology, policy design, behavioural science and environmental studies.
The course is concerned with the continued development of industrial design as a discipline and profession and will encourage you to question what industry is today. You will continually reappraise the discipline, question and develop its relevance through critical and socially responsive approaches. You will explore the application of industrial design in both market-led and societal contexts. This constant review of what industrial design is creates a culture independent of a particular style or dogma. Instead, it encourages diverse engagement, reflection, negotiation and prototyping of the discipline.
MA Industrial Design applies this intellectual development directly to design practice. It will teach you to take on strategic sustainably informed roles, identify and respond to trends, initiate design approaches and thrive in multidisciplinary teams. While the course honours the traditional legacy of the subject, we continue to reframe what industrial design is and means.
We are committed to developing ethical industrial design practices. To achieve this, we are working to embed UAL's Principles for Climate, Social and Racial Justice into the course.
We select applicants according to potential and current ability in the following areas:
You may be invited to an interview following our review of your application.
A typical graduate should have a thorough knowledge of contemporary product design and development, and be able to adopt a critical perspective on both their own work and that of their contemporaries. In addition, the emphasis on self-directed study should equip graduates with appropriate methods and strategies for successful project management both within teams and as individuals. The typical aspiration of graduates is to find work in the consulting field. Following significant shifts in this industry over the last 10-15 years, many graduates working in consultancy find themselves in roles that can be described as designer, design strategy, service innovation, forecasting, or management in addition to straightforward new product development.
The second largest area of graduate employment is through in-house design for manufacturing companies. Increasingly students establish their own studios and have moved to work in charitable organisations and the third sector. A number develop careers in commercial research and also progress to study at PhD. Graduates are now distinguished and respected designers and design managers in international companies.
Employers of recent MA Industrial Design graduates include: MAP, Virgin and Do&Co, Plan UK, Projects by If, Mother, Catapult Satellite Industries UK, Itsu, Arup, Microsoft, Open Desk, Fitch, Tangerine, Seymour Powell, Nokia, LG, Samsung, Herman Miller, The Future Laboratory, Tangerine, Lenovo, BenQ, Acer.
Find out how careers and employability helps our students and graduates start their careers.
The MA Industrial Design curriculum engages what we describe as emphases in practice. These locate forms of industrial design practice and allow you to challenge, question, and advance the discipline. Each emphasis promotes the view that people should be at the centre of the design process. The course develops innovative approaches to understanding users and their wants and needs. Recently, this has included the development of design methods informed by theatre and performance, storytelling and scenario building; used as research, ideation and communication strategies. You will explore relationships between people, design, emerging technologies and behaviours and the impact and consequences of design work in different contexts. These approaches are embedded in studio projects, allowing you to work with anthropological design methods and processes informed by principles of sustainable development.
This emphasis positions industrial design as a commercial practice. Here, innovation and entrepreneurial thinking provide solutions which meet the needs of real people. It is responsive to new commercial conditions – from start-ups to established multinational businesses. As part of this area of study, you will question existing industrial paradigms, professional roles, opportunities for manufacture and routes to market.
This emphasis applies industrial design processes to societal issues. It considers the dynamic challenges that require new ways of thinking and doing. Industrial design for publics applies co-design and participatory design methods. Problem stakeholders are engaged in the design process to jointly frame and tackle such challenges. It is a form of design-led social innovation. In this context, we encourage the development of links with social enterprises, government, local authorities, charities, and NGOs.
This emphasis explores the discipline from a strategic perspective. You will work with different disciplines and explore processes for the service and interaction design sectors. Taking a user-centred and systemic view, you will focus on the design and evaluation of multi-media, multi-modal and multi-platform interactions that support user experience through physical, digital, and hybridised products.
This emphasis explores design as a form of critique and speculation within disciplinary, scientific, and societal frames. In this context, designers reflect on the role of design in society. In doing this, designers challenge established discourse, presenting alternatives for the field. In this emphasis you will question the discipline itself and how it engages in processes of critique and world making.
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