DE5032 - Designing Interactions

Through studio-based and workshop activities, your sessions, which simulate real-world design studios, allow you to apply product design skills advancing a deeper understanding of the discipline while also providing opportunities for critical debate and feedback in a supportive and respectful environment. You will progress through a structured design process, group tutorials and peer group discussions to help you develop and deliver your design output. 

 

Additional studio-based and workshop sessions will introduce you to foundational principles underpinning product interaction design and creative technology. These will cover key methods and skills for designing experiences with and for emerging digital technologies. Our primary goal is to provide you with the knowledge and skills needed to explore, experiment, prototype and get creative with technology. This approach enables you to effectively communicate, test and propose concepts to users and clients. You will be expected to expand upon the knowledge gained from these sessions through further self-directed learning tailored to your emerging response to the design brief. 

  

You will receive a design brief challenging you to apply knowledge gained from the taught sessions. This will see you crafting innovative responses to the evolving landscape of emerging technologies in everyday life, either present-day or future oriented. This brief will require you to develop a rich understanding of the context, and people who will be engaging with your product through desk research and/or user research methods. Using various methods including storyboarding and lo-fi prototyping you will respond to this user research to design creative responses to the use of technology. The outcome will be a prototype that effectively communicates user experience, therefore demonstrating a clear and empathetic response to both context and user requirements, while also showing creativity when designing with and for emerging digital technologies. 

Each project will begin with a comprehensive briefing that will outline and clarify the design project along with the expected learning outcomes, the module and project requirements / deliverables and a detailed schedule. Where a collaborative or live project is involved, professionals from the external partner will work with your tutors to agree a suitable project and any additional support they can offer. This may include in-person briefings, feedback and guidance throughout the project, site visits, access to proprietary research and specialist equipment.



You will have regular weekly sessions in a studio setting to structure your learning experience. In these, you’ll participate in group discussions to receive guidance and feedback from your peers and tutors. Tutors are aligned to each module that relates closely to their own design expertise and experience providing specialist support, whether that is through prior professional experience, through ongoing industrial collaborations or through current research work undertaken within the University.



The module has a specific virtual learning environment (eLearning Portal) which acts as a resource where you can access all the relevant documentation including module briefs and guides, presentations and assessment requirements. The digital submission of work, both formative and summative assessments, allow for expedient communication and the effective review of work whilst also utilising industry standard practices. During core working hours for the Design School but outside your timetabled sessions and project dependent, you will have access to a wide range of technician-supported workshop environments. Project and solution driven, these will support all your making requirements including specialist model making materials, laser-cutting, 3D printing, creating sewn soft-products, sensors and electronics, photography and videography. CAD workstations and industry-standard digital modelling software are accessible on campus 24/7 in certain buildings.

All modules at Northumbria include a range of reading materials that students are expected to engage with. The reading list for this module can be found at: http://readinglists.northumbria.ac.uk
(Reading List service online guide for academic staff this containing contact details for the Reading List team – http://library.northumbria.ac.uk/readinglists)

Knowledge & Understanding:

Demonstrate design understanding with the appropriate integrated selection and skilled use of applications, tools, methods and processes during design research and development.



Intellectual / Professional skills & abilities:

Appropriately select, articulate, justify and share design research and development using established methods and processes in the development of design concepts.



Create design concepts, proposals and solutions that appropriately respond to the brief, clearly identified needs or issues.



Personal Values Attributes

(Global / Cultural awareness, Ethics, Curiosity) (PVA):

Experiment and develop product design skills through the creation of sketching, prototyping and communication of design concepts.

You will be regularly assessed formatively and informally, using verbal feedback during timetabled sessions and at key stages of the design development process. Students may be asked to present their work verbally to an audience of peers, tutors and stakeholders to receive feedback and guidance. 



Students will be summatively assessed against one or more product design assignments over the course of the module submitted at the end of block 2. For each assignment, students will be assessed against the module outcomes and criteria set out in the briefs. The combined marks for the projects will form 100% of the overall mark.

 

Feedback is written and delivered via tutorial review and via eLearning portal (eLP) after the submission at the end of each block (module).

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In this module, you will learn the principles, tools and techniques of designing interactions. The module will be delivered through a project that links theory and practice in the creation of interactive product concepts. The knowledge and skills you learn will be focused on interactive products, with tangibility and embodied interactions a key component. Philosophically, the module celebrates the ongoing need and value of physical and embodied interactions as a vital counterpart to visual and screen-based digital interactions.