Product Design

Product designers at Manchester Met explore why, examine how, and ask ‘what if?’ We are investigative and critically responsive to human and global needs, developing innovative design-led solutions that connect the consumer experience of products, systems and services. As a product design student, you will be creative with purpose, gaining critical understanding of the emergent issues affecting design across society and culture, learning how to be a designer of products that enhance functionality, interactions and relationships with people and the places we inhabit.

You will develop essential skills in creative methods, research, design thinking, prototyping and design strategy, applying design intelligence to the creation of new product opportunities and solutions. You will discover how to design products that embrace both traditional and contemporary approaches to production and manufacturing, generating value through the application of materials, processes, and technologies. This course will enable you to produce innovative crafted design solutions and develop the creative and professional skills required to support a sustainable career in product design.

Product Design at Manchester Met builds on the success of our previous programme, BA Three Dimensional Design, which has produced influential and award-winning graduates including designer and architect Thomas Heatherwick, jeweller Ruth Tomlinson and ceramicist Joe Hartley.

What’s the difference between Product Design, and the Product Design & Craft course?

The two courses run alongside each other and have been developed to look at the reasoning for objects that surround us, from the cherished personal possessions to the functional items that facilitate our daily life. In exploring the rich diversity of creative opportunities across the subject area, it is not the category of product that determines it as a piece of product design or a piece of product design craft, but how it has been arrived at through the creative process, underpinned by the factors that have informed and driven its creation.

The Product Design course provides a human-centered focus, designing products that respond to identified needs and new market-driven opportunities that aim to enhance user experience, utility and value.

The Product Design & Craft course provides a designer/maker focus, pursuing experimental approaches that are often driven by individual responses to social, political and environmental issues in the creation of the designed object.

Features and benefits

This course is supported by a comprehensive range of workshops for hand and machine making in ceramics, glass, metal, wood and plastics, digital making facilities for CNC routing, 3D printing and laser cutting.

You will be taught by a range of academic and technical experts across the School of Art who are practicing designers, makers and artists.