Staff & Student Work
What is a Design Show?
Ongoing conversation continues to inform our course and philosophy, and prepared us positively to the changes of the COVID period for our practice and virtual graduate shows
Where do we start? Curiosity - in a changing world, we ask the same question and get different answers. Prescience. A good question, at the right time, with a well-considered answer can give a similar outcome to the effect of prescience. Our questions come from conversations. Ongoing collaborative conversations between students, staff, the public, industrial and institutional experts in product design and engineering. The conversations take many forms. Our annual guest lecture series, our live projects, our research, our cross-year visioning projects and our exhibitions that cohere all the thinking, and invite visitors to explore and contribute to that thinking.
programme of talks, co-design projects and events and exhibitions. ‘What is a product designer?’ formed. Ideas and discussions emerged.
We have and will always ask questions about Product Design and Engineering. In 2013 we formalised the exploration in a
The answer was, keep asking the question. We kept asking the question, and in 2016 the Government Digital Service
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PRODUCT DESIGN Middlesex University School of Science and Technology
Paul Edwards – now Head of Creative Design at Airbus – in an essay for the exhibition framed the discussion and the trajectory of the area for the following 7 years: “Trying to describe Product Design as a role is much like trying to hold onto a wet bar of soap, with a definition capable of sitting anywhere along a broad and ever increasing bandwidth. Not surprising, as our perception of the two words that make up the title continue to evolve and are in themselves equally difficult to pin down.”
team, led by Harry Trimble, joined us on a cross-year project in asking questions like, should the course stop, stay the same or change and what and how should the students be learning? Harry documents and reflect upon the outcomes here: https://designnotes.blog.gov.uk /2016/01/12/the-governmentschool-of-design/ https://medium.com/@HarryTrim ble/the-government-school-ofdesign-5de4704d6c73/
The key points for design and engineering education were: What do people need from designers? I spoke to a lot people. Inside and outside government. These are the characteristics I heard mentioned most: + Thinking skills not just
