Our Modules

At the University of Warwick, Design Studies offers modules that cover all spheres of design. This means that students have the opportunity to undertake an experiential learning journey exploring complex areas of design whilst defining their own specialism by testing various paradigms of scholarship and practice, and our modules are also a popular optional choice for students from other departments. You can find a full list of modules available on the joint honours Global Sustainable Development & Design Studies course here.

Year One

Our first year modules are designed to introduce students to a broad array of design disciplines. Taking these modules gives students an opportunity to experiment as they gain a broad understanding of design disciplines. This is why we refer to students at this stage of learning as the 'Pluralist Student' - these modules provide the foundation upon which innovation is built.

Design in Context

Design in Context provides an introduction to the conceptual and socio-political context of design through an exploration of tangible things such as objects and architecture, alongside immaterial assets like apps and organisational systems. Structured in a way that partners a chronological framework with a thematic approach, it takes examples from across the globe to investigate the twin legacies of both Modernism and Postmodernism. This module forms a useful foundation for those keen to develop an academic grounding in design theory.

You can read the full module outline here.

Introduction to Design Practice

Intro to Design Practice allows you to explore and investigate design from holistic and reductionist perspectives and the diverse forms of thinking and making in design. Design is introduced as an inter /trans/ multi-disciplinary endeavour through considerations of personal practice and methodologies, social, and life-centred design. Through a journey of unlearning, experimenting, play, and curiosity you will consider design practices from the artefact to the system level. You will explore how design has impacted the world, solved, and created problems.

You can read the full module outline here.

UX with Service Design

From education, health and social care, banking, or local government, the demand for ethical and considered design is at an all-time high. This module will introduce you to UX with the distinct yet overlapping disciplines of Service & UX Design through a live design brief. You will conceptually and visually explore the social paradigm of designing and how to navigate the needs of diverse groups who might have been at a mismatch in current systems. Delivered in a studio environment, you will be developing and proposing UX digital or hybrid solutions to a service problem.

You can read the full module outline here.

Visual Practice & Curiosity

Visual Practice & Curiosity blends theory and hands-on experimentation as students cultivate their own visual identities. This is a module of uninhibited exploration, which asks students to delve deep into the essence of their distinctive personal narrative. From design principles, to storytelling, and making practices, students will develop their understanding and capabilities in visual communication, research, and proposal. This studio-based module provides a base for future changemaking and is useful to those who want a space to reflect on their own positionality

You can read a full module description here.

Design Ecologies and Regenerative Practice

There is an enormous responsibility on designers to gain a better understanding and relationships with eco-system around us in order to engage with new design ecologies and regenerative practices which foster a culture of repair and replenishment. This module will take you on a journey of regeneration by exploring methods and approaches in sustainable architecture, life-centred product and UX design, visual communication for change, alongside other disciplines through intricate practice-led design briefs.

Year Two

Modules in the second year expose students to different areas of design. These modules provide the ideal testing ground for students to explore and reflect on the values that guide them, the topics that interest them, and the issues that they might want to tackle with their design practice. That is why students are referred to as 'Navigators' at this stage of learning.

Systemic Design

This module will engage students in the processes and methods of Systemic Design. From Systems Thinking to Practice, this module will prepare students for the processes of dealing with complexity as an aspiring designer. As a basis for sustainable innovation, this module will introduce students to systemic practice towards understanding how to research a system and its models, how to read and scope a system, how to map and synthesise it and scope design interventions in multiple areas of leverage towards systems change.

You can read the full module outline here.

Social Design

This module fosters students' development in becoming designerly agents for change through engagement with their local and regional communities. Social Design understands design as an ethically driven philosophy seeking to make improvements to the lived experiences of people, communities, and the environment.

Social Design is a joint module run between Warwick's Design Studies Department and the Warwick Institute of Engagement. The module is about working with and for a local community towards sustainable innovation.

You can read the full module outline here.

Living with Materials

Materials are foundational to our very existence, in how we exist, perceive ourselves and others, our environments, our histories and our futures.

This module explores approaches to materials through a transdisciplinary lens and an international perspective. It combines theoretical and practical approaches that call on both the sciences and the humanities to consider and interact with materials. Students will be able to pursue a diverse series of routes assessing the lives of materials through their qualities and transformations.

You can read the full module outline here.

Future Labs

This module is a deep dive into world building and a holistic practice-led enquiry into how society and its systems are designed. In this 10-week journey students will be researching, analysing and designing their own future city. From culture to political systems, to policies and regulation, to services and infrastructure, students will be developing their understanding of how the world around us is designed and constructed and how much of a role design plays in the totality of life in the social, natural and built environments.

You can read through the full module outline here.

Spatial Agency

Spatial Agency provides designers with new ways of looking at the production of space and acting with agency for social good. It seeks to shift the design of the built environment away from disciplinary siloes and the patronage of clients, towards a more communitarian paradigm, built on the development of generic design skills.

Weekly activities seek to engage students with the ways that spaces can be understood, building practical skills and thus how spatial agency can be enacted. The aim is to act with transformative intent in a collaborative manner with and on behalf of communities.

You can read through the full module outline here.

Year Three

The final year is all about students focusing on specialising their practice as versatile designers who can navigate and communicate across various disciplines. At this stage, students have become the 'Specialist.'

Design Research

Design Research provides students with the opportunity to explore processes of practice-based and academic research of, for, and through design. Students will inhabit a range of methodological approaches throughout this module, and will be encouraged to experiment with traditional and novel methods of design research to understand the importance of serious play. This will allow them to more fully understand and hone their own research methods, relevant to their own interests and project aspirations. Ethical issues will be embedded throughout the module, encouraging students to consider, address and critique their own standpoints and perspectives. The module will also work with students to explore and understand structures for research funding.

You can read through the full module outline here.

The Business of Design

This module explores how designers, in a variety of contexts, act entrepreneurially to negotiate a range of economic, social, and environmental factors that impact their practice. Students will explore, and compare, how different design businesses operate, the skills, mindset, and capabilities of those that lead them, the challenges that both leaders and businesses face, and how they address them. Students will then reflect on this knowledge, and how it can inform their own future careers, to formulate a plan for their own personal and professional development.

You can read through the full module outline here.

Major Project

This module is the culmination of students' journeys into becoming designerly change agents. Their major project will be a brief that students will be developing themselves and throughout the process will acquire skills in how to research, define and present a full problem statement which will justify a multi perspective enquiry through the micro, meso and macro sphere of innovation but captured on a meta level, equivalent to industry standards and practice. This problem definition will lead students into their full project process. This entails advanced design research and application of design and systems thinking to practice. The module will challenge students' ability to undertake high quality research whilst working towards an innovative design intervention towards sustainable systems change. This intensive learning journey will foster students' professional development and preparation for a chosen specialist path in industry or further study.

You can read through the full module outline here.

Please note: Module availability and staffing may change year on year depending on availability and other operational factors. The School for Cross-faculty Studies makes no guarantee that any modules will be offered in a particular year, or that they will necessarily be taught by the staff listed on these pages.