Practice-based design methods

This unit introduces you to a range of practical methods that underpin design practice and offer insight into how designers work. You’ll explore how to select and apply methods appropriate to different phases of the design process. You’ll experiment with selected methods through short, hands-on exercises to build a repertoire of design approaches that support creative ideation, ethnographic research, prototyping, testing, and communication. These methods can inform future design work across disciplines.

The unit encourages iterative exploration and critical reflection, helping you understand not just what a method does, but how, when, and why it might be used. Methods will be tested through playful, critical, or experimental applications, either linked to existing projects from other units or imagined design scenarios of your own choosing. You’ll learn in a studio environment through workshops, fieldwork, and collaborative activity in an interdisciplinary setting.

Project outcomes include documentation of design processes, along with digital and/or physical artefacts. The unit welcomes students from diverse disciplines and encourages inclusive, pluralistic approaches to learning and design.