Interaction Design BA (Hons)

30 credits

Practice: Sensing and Storytelling focuses on researching, making, and communicating narrative by introducing the fundamentals of interaction design practice: sensing and experiencing, idea generation and problem solving, responding and communicating. This module focuses on human experience and considers the body as instrument to develop empathetic, interpersonal communication skills, and introduce sensing and inclusive design as core research methods.

By exploring relationships between content, form and meaning in relation to storytelling and narrative practice, you will learn how to engage and communicate with audiences in variety of contexts. You will recognise and appreciate the breadth and depth the discipline has to offer by engaging with a diverse range of interaction design methods. Criticality is introduced as a key skill, through the testing of ideas, discussion with peers and tutor-led reviews.

30 credits

Process: Thinking Through Making introduces the tools, processes and technologies used within interaction design practice. Through a series of workshops and projects you will embrace process and suspend-judgement by exploring making through a diverse and challenging range of media and technologies including physical and digital making, virtual production and extended realities, performance and sound design, creative computing and coding.

This module supports your confidence in making and the use of prototyping as a speculative and iterative process to generate ideas. Physical fabrication and digital making workshops, the immersive lab and virtual workspaces are presented as specialised working environments where you can practice skills and develop your craft as interaction designers.

30 credits

Presentation: Consult... Create... Collaborate! will introduce you to Future Skills through engagement with Navigate. It will enable you to begin to develop your professional identity and global citizenship, by promoting your understanding of ethical issues and values, design thinking, and commercial awareness. These concepts and associated activities will support you to plan your own personal and professional development, as a means of developing your creative practice. This will be supported through active engagement with the Navigate programme, and through personal development planning (supported by personal tutors), which will enable you to reflect upon your Future Skills graduate attributes. It will also enable you to reflect on and begin to evidence your understanding of the skills you are developing holistically; through all the work you are creating as part of your course.

30 credits

This module introduces how we think critically about the history of illustration animation and interaction design, and how the knowledge produced can inform practice. This module addresses the categories and concepts, frameworks and tools used to understand illustration animation and interaction design, how they have evolved, and how these histories interweave with those of film, graphic design, product design, fine art and other disciplines. As part of this, we ask fundamental questions about how history is told and taught and what kinds of knowledge are valued and centred.

The first part of the module examines the dominant ways histories of illustration animation and interaction design have been constructed, and how we might challenge Euro/Western-centric perspectives. The second part considers how we can look at the diverse themes, platforms, and media of illustration animation and interaction design through different theoretical frames that speak to different ways of knowing.

30 credits

This module connects the contemporary practice of interaction design to wider critical issues and debates within the fields of art & design, as well as society, culture, politics, economics, philosophy, science and technology more broadly. By engaging with urgent critical questions, and experimenting with different theoretical frameworks and research methods, you will be able to identify the topics, lines of enquiry and modes of research that interest you, and which you want to pursue in independent research at Level 6.

The first part of the module explores a range of critical issues related to the production, dissemination and consumption of interaction design by applying different theoretical perspectives to contemporary case studies. The second part of the module focuses on the research methods through which interaction design can be investigated and understood.

30 credits

Practice: Instigation/Activation expands narrative and communication skills through human-environmental experience. It considers the body in space by engaging immersive storytelling and spatial narratives to situate action, invite agency and contextualise experience. Interaction design practice is developed and understood through user consultation, in defining audience needs and exploring inclusive design methods.

Criticality is developed as a key skill; you are asked to take an analytical approach to the resolution of briefs and question how form and content can be unified to resolve a project to a deadline. Projects are used to encourage and support both team and collaborative working, which are central to contemporary interaction design practice.

30 credits

Presentation: Agency in Context supports individual approaches to forming and nurturing relationships as part of a creative practice. It does this by developing your graduate attributes, and the Future Skills Explore Learning Outcomes delivered in this module. It builds on prior learning and engages with personal development activities aimed to strengthen professional identities, global citizenship, and provide opportunities to expand knowledge of the industrial and professional contexts for interaction design practice. This enables further development of professional skills, including interdisciplinary and collaboration, in preparation for future employment, which will require the ability to work with people from other disciplines.

30 credits

Process: Make... Test... Prototype! supports an individual approach to using tools, processes and technologies within an interaction design practice. Through a series of workshops and projects, you will embrace process and suspend judgement by exploring making through a diverse and challenging range of interconnected media and technologies. Physical and digital making, virtual production and extended realities, performance and sound design, creative computing and coding are presented as methods that can be selected and utilised.

This module develops the process of prototyping ideas from initial ideas to working blueprints through testing, iteration, and consultation. Physical fabrication and digital making workshops, immersive lab and virtual workspaces are presented as specialised working environments where you can practice skills and develop your craft as interaction designers.

60 credits

Practice: Connections with Purpose considers collective experience by understanding bodies as network. Trans-media storytelling and community engagement embrace individual and collective interaction design practices with awareness of context, audience needs, and a growing set of skills and methods. Autonomy, resilience, and self-reliance are nurtured through increasing levels of self-direction and independence, culminating in the proposal, negotiation, and delivery of an extended project.

A focus on research methods, ethics, inclusive practices and positioning enables you to formalise and apply you own specific methodologies with confidence. This module consolidates practical approaches to prototyping ideas, and form and content are synthesised fully to resolve projects to a deadline. Projects are used to define and establish a personal practice, engage in discipline specific critical dialogues, and foster long-lasting professional relationships with peers through group and collaborative working.

30 credits

Presentation: Critical and Cultural Positions supports independence and self-reliance in the forming and nurturing of relationships as part of a creative practice. Future Skills is developed through engagement with Apply. It encourages you to plan for your continuing personal and professional development, and to consolidate an individual approach to managing career aspirations and future learning, by further strengthening your professional skills and identity, and global citizenship.

You will critically evaluate your own personal development through reflection on your progress, as a means of developing your creative practice, and to explore complex problems beyond the University. Personal development planning will enable you to evidence your understanding of the skills you are developing, through all the work you are creating as part of your course, and to set goals and take actions which further your ambitions. Public presentation and engagement are recognised as core principles of interaction design practice and opportunities to showcase work is supported.

30 credits

Building on the links between research and practice embedded at Level 5, the Independent Research Project in Critical and Historical Studies module focuses on in-depth research, critical enquiry and reflection on questions and critical issues emerging in students' own practice, and pertinent to the practice of their own discipline.

Over the module, you will initiate and develop an individual research topic; identify and evaluate appropriate archives, bodies of critical literature, visual/material sources and research methods; manage your study time; engage with and respond to tutorial dialogue and peer feedback, and apply critical and analytical skills to produce an output of 5-6,000 word (or equivalent) representing the culmination of your research project. You will be supported by a series of lectures, seminars, and tutorials.