What you will study
This Sustainable Design MA is directed towards the goal of creating a more sustainable and equitable society. You will explore innovative and practical ways to help realise those visions, emphasising design, creativity, empathy, innovation and activism.
You'll be encouraged to think critically about the social and ecological agendas it addresses. The course is design-based, but not confined to design practice - it includes a significant amount of theoretical and contextual studies. You can choose to write a dissertation for the final major project.
This course is part of the Design School's Postgraduate Framework. The structure, shared with postgraduate students from other design courses, enables you to explore your individual specialist interests within an integrative learning environment.
Throughout the course, you'll understand the value and role of interdisciplinary methods and ways of working. The impact of thinking from related design subjects, on your own specialist study, is an important aspect of the identity and community of interdisciplinary practice at master's level in the Design School.
Design for Social Innovation can also be taken as a stand-alone module.
Modules
Core modules
Design for Social Innovation
30 credits
Design for social innovation is the emerging mode of design practice and theory in which design thinking is applied to social and societal challenges. This module focuses on the development of design-based research skills and capabilities useful for responding to real-world challenges or so-called 'wicked problems'. Emphasis is placed on problem-finding and problem-setting, rather than simply seeking solutions to problems as they are currently expressed.
Designing Research
30 credits
The aim of the module is to give you an understanding of the design research tools and methods that are available to you, to inform and support the development of your practical study, and to provide the basis of your further study on your course. Practical research methods are explored, with an emphasis on the development of creative and evidence-based approaches to experimentation, and critical reflection on practical design work.
Sustainable Design Principles, Perspectives and Practices
30 credits
This module explores key principles and perspectives that inform various practices of sustainability, sustainable development and sustainable design, in developed and developing world contexts. It examines the ways in which contemporary and emerging modes of design practice and theory relate to the sustainability agenda.
Creative Futures
30 credits
This module is based on the assumption that the best jobs/careers in the creative industries do not exist – they are invented from individual creative ambitions. The module explores how this can be approached in practical terms. The programme of study encourages you to develop a personal and critical approach to your future career, and how this can inform the development of your individual major project for the Major Project.
The Major Project
60 credits
The Major Project – the capstone project – consolidates the knowledge gained in earlier modules, and is informed by your prior learning within the Design School's postgraduate interdisciplinary framework and course-specific specialist study.
You will extend your work on the course thus far in the form of a practical design proposal, defining and developing a substantive solution to an individually defined design-related problem. In so doing, you will demonstrate advanced understanding and application of contemporary design practice as it can be brought to bear on a specific challenge of sustainability.
Optional placement year
Many postgraduate courses at Kingston University allow students to do a 12-month work placement as part of their course. The responsibility for finding the work placement is with the student; we cannot guarantee the work placement, just the opportunity to undertake it. As the work placement is an assessed part of the course, it is covered by a student's Student Route visa.
Optional modules
Professional Placement
120 credits
The Professional Placement module is a core module for those students following a masters programme that incorporates professional placement learning, following completion of 120 credits. It provides you with the opportunity to apply your knowledge and skills to an appropriate working environment, and to develop and enhance key employability skills and subject-specific professional skills in your chosen subject. You may wish to use the placement experience as a platform for your subsequent major project module, and would be expected to use it to help inform your decisions about future careers.
Stand-alone module: Design for Social Innovation
Design for Social Innovation
Design for social innovation is an emerging mode of design practice gaining popularity and interest within the design professions and more widely, for example in the public sector. Local authorities are increasingly looking to employ designers to redesign public services and to deliver their programmes more effectively.
There is therefore demand for training in design for social innovation. This is a distinguishing feature of the Sustainable Design MA, but there are designers and other practitioners who do not yet wish to embark on a full MA course. This module is for them.
The module will be based around a 'live' project brief, and include sessions with leading practitioners in the field.
"This module will be useful to designers and those who come from the world of frontline social impact services, who want to learn more about innovation and design - and to gain practical experience with which to develop." Mat Hunter (Chief design officer, Design Council)
About the stand-alone module
This is currently a course-specific module within the Sustainable Design MA. It is also available as a credit-bearing stand-alone module, whereby it can be taken without enrolling on the Sustainable Design MA (although the credits could be used subsequently for entry to the course). Students enrolled on the MA and stand-alone modules are part of the same module cohort, participate equally, and have the same module experience.
Sessions
Please note that this is an indicative list of sessions and is not intended as a definitive list.
- The role for design in social innovation
- Design process models (including the Double Diamond framework)
- User-centred design research methods (such as personas, journey mapping, role playing, user diaries)
- Designing your design brief
- Physical prototyping of your concepts
- Research ethics in social innovation
- Design studio visit(s)
Dates
This is a 12-week module, beginning in the week of Monday 27 September 2021 (specific day to be confirmed).
- Ten full teaching days (10.30am–1pm, 2–4.30pm), one day per week (specific day to be confirmed)
- One self-directed project day (Week Six, the University's Enrichment Activity Week)
- Some teaching days include individual and group tutorials to support development of your work for submission for assessment. This means you will not attend for the whole day on those days.
- Project hand-in date: the week of Monday 13 December 2021 (Week 12)
