Design Products MA

Royal College of Art

Designed products have purpose and meet needs. They enrich lives and improve the places that people inhabit by meeting objective and subjective criteria. There is a constant need for innovation as we live in an environment where things like technology and societal values are always evolving. In this landscape people are regularly impacted by new issues. These are both local and global in scope, ranging from climate or healthcare to work environments or performing daily activities. Solutions to many of these consequential challenges require applying knowledge from multiple domains. Whether from engineering, computing or technology to psychology, social sciences or art, no single area of expertise can fully address human needs. We’ve designed this programme to explore new terrain for designing products and evolve your design disciplines and practices. In it you will: challenge your existing practice and have opportunities to explore and deepen specialist knowledge learn research-based tools and methods that will equip you to explore, synthesise and apply cross-domain knowledge in creative, user-centred and evidence-based ways learn to ask the questions needed to define design opportunities. Together, the first two will help you to become more effective at creating impactful solutions. But the challenge for designers today is not just to find good solutions, it is in identifying what problems and opportunities that design should actually address. Innovation comes not just from creative solutions but in re-thinking what are the issues that should be addressed in the first place.