Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Postgraduate Studentships - Search for funding opportunities.
Study Details: MA 2 years 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.
AP(E)L – Accreditation of Prior (Experiential) Learning
Exceptionally applicants who do not meet these course entry requirements may still be considered. The course team will consider each application that demonstrates additional strengths and alternative evidence. This might, for example, be demonstrated by:
Each application will be considered on its own merit but cannot guarantee an offer in each case.
For fees and funding information, please see website
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: 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.
Unit 1: Methodological and Critical Approaches to Design
This unit is made up of a series of projects which vary in length. These will introduce you to a variety of research methods and issues relevant to the discipline. These are implemented in the realisation of design work.
Unit 2: Collaborative practices for Common Good
The aims of this unit are to explore the potential of collaborative practice and to equip you with the ability to apply interdisciplinary approaches through collective agency. It supports you in building communities of practice across the College, drawing on interdisciplinary expertise and group working methods from a breadth of disciplines. The unit explores how relational and networked-based practices can create positive impact, based on a shared concern for a specific place, space or community of humans and non-humans, in order to create common and shared well-being (social, economic and environmental).
Unit 3: Positioning and Professional Practice
Unit 3 reviews professional design practice by engaging external agencies and expertise. You will reflect on this activity through design practice.
Unit 4: Self-Directed Design Research
This unit requires you to specify, manage, implement, and evaluate a self-directed design project informed by themes and issues identified in Unit 3.
Important note concerning academic progression through your course: If you are required to retake a unit you will need to cease further study on the course until you have passed the unit concerned. Once you have successfully passed this unit, you will be able to proceed onto the next unit. Retaking a unit might require you to take time out of study, which could affect other things such as student loans or the visa status for international students.
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