DGN2540 · Practice-based design methods

Overview

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.

Offerings

Assessment

The Handbook does not list a final examination among the assessment items. That is not a guarantee there is none.

100% in-semester assessment

Assessment details may change. Please refer to the assessment information in Moodle closer to the start of the teaching period.

Requisites

Learning outcomes

1. Demonstrate understanding of a range of design methods and their relevance across different phases of the design process;
2. Adapt and apply selected methods through hands-on experimentation to develop your own practice-based repertoire;
3. Select, integrate, and communicate appropriate methods in response to varied project contexts, drawing connections across disciplinary approaches;
4. Critically reflect on the use and implications of design methods, considering ethical, cultural, and situational factors;
5. Collaborate meaningfully within an interdisciplinary studio environment, contributing to collective inquiry and responding constructively to feedback;
6. Evaluate your learning through reflective practice, identifying strategies for continued skill development and self-directed growth as a designer.

Workload

12 hours per week including 3 contact hours plus 9 hours of independent study.

Student experience, not official rules. Nothing here changes what the Handbook says.