Courses - Faculty of Creative Arts And Industries
Design
Stage I
Design Methods and Processes 1
Introduces students to human-centred design methods and tools that range from problem framing to prototyping, modelling, and validating solution ideas. Students will address a variety of briefs based on real-world problems and contexts, exploring their personal creative potential through a series of hands-on projects supported by presentations.
Design Theory and Fundamentals
Introduces historical and contemporary drivers of design as a maker of socio-cultural meaning. Students will learn fundamental design principles used for communication and sense-making, applied across a variety of mediums and technologies. Students will be introduced to tikanga Māori and to the main ethical, socio-cultural, economic and environmental propellants of design.
Design for Sustainable Futures
New opportunities are continually emerging in the field of design. This course introduces design as strategy, demonstrating how contemporary design practices have evolved, responded to, and influenced change. By developing a design project that responds to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, students will learn how design thinking complements current practice and expands career prospects.
Stage II
Design Methods and Processes 2
A studio-based course in which students learn new design methods and technologies. Students also develop customised design strategies in response to real-world challenges. By working on a detailed case study, students learn to address issues that affect local communities. Students present their design solutions, learn to pitch design concepts, and evaluate potential outcomes.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Creative Communities
Introduces how the digital revolution has empowered people to organise themselves, collaborate and co-operate in non-hierarchical, creative ways. Students will explore the role of designers as catalysts for bottom-up, self-determined and distributed creativity within this scenario. They will learn to design for purpose and positive impact, co-creating open and resilient systems within their local communities.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Identity, Indigeneity and Place
Encourages students to identify their own positionality within Aotearoa and the wider Pacific. Using decolonising methods to critically analyse design solutions, students will explore their own identity and position themselves as cultural practitioners with obligations towards local communities.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Aotearoa New Zealand Narratives
An introduction to cultural narratives of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the role that contemporary design is playing as a participatory method for community-led change, both from bottom-up and institutional perspectives. Students will explore design as a practice for facilitating self-determination, and learn ways to enable genuine, respectful partnerships in order to tackle complex local and global challenges.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Local Making
Examines historic and contemporary making techniques, materials, and networks to understand the scope, scale and value of local traditions, with an emphasis on Māori and Pacific practices. Students will collate a personalised database of local inspirations and resources for continued development and professional reference. This will form the inspiration for the students’ own made outcomes.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Design Innovation
Introduces students to entrepreneurship within creative industries, focusing on the role of strategic design as a driver for purpose-led, sustainable innovation. Students will learn trends, methods and tools for organisational innovation, whether funding, launching, and managing new start-up companies, or dealing with change within existing organisations (intrepreneurship).
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Professional Design Practice
Examines personal career paths, design team and project operations and responsibilities in small studios through to large organisations, the role of professional networks, and resources for designers to present themselves and their work to future collaborators.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Business Tools for Designers
Examines the most relevant tools that designers use for project management and business development. This includes services and technologies involved in strategic planning, content management, scheduling, communicating, collaborating, costing, client relations, impact planning, and product and market research.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Design, Wellbeing and Communities
Students will identify and analyse how selected design interventions contribute to the health and wellbeing of communities in a range of contexts. Using service and experience design methods students will present ethical and feasible design strategies that examine notions of wellbeing, health, happiness and freedom, from individual to community level perspectives.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
The Future of Work and Play
Students will analyse how global techno-social changes such as automation and climate change could impact the way we work and play, now and in the future. Students will critically speculate about possible and probable futures by developing fictional scenarios which test a range of design concepts for transition into preferable futures.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Smart Homes and Cities
Introduces the main drivers, strategies, and technologies that make smart cities efficient and sustainable. Students will analyse case studies to understand how these cities work from a systems-level perspective to a human-scale, experiential level. They will propose concept solutions to identified problems and opportunities, demonstrating how future homes and cities may operate synergistically through a connected system of interfaces and services.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Design for the Natural Environment
An overview of the ways that design can promote and actualise the regeneration of our natural environment through collaborative, systemic, and circular innovation. Students will learn fundamental theory, frameworks and methods to create positive impact using design strategy within the fields of environmental sustainability and conservation.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Designing with Data
Introduces students to the impact data representation has on public perception of global issues. Students will engage and experiment with computational methodologies to interpret, visualise and interact with data sources corresponding to a specific Sustainable Development Goal. Students will produce provocative data-driven visualisations that promote a call-to-action related to a foreseeable local or global crisis.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Designing Mixed Realities
Introduces an overview of new materials, products and processes connecting virtual and physical worlds. Students will explore these alternative realities as catalysts for positive impact. Students will experiment with technologies to design projects that augment human experiences in hybrid environments.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Design and Autonomous Technology
Introduces the major social, ethical, and technical trends driving the adoption of autonomous technologies and artificial intelligence. Students will explore the expanding role design can play within this field, through a purpose-led, human-centred perspective. Students will produce a prototypical device designed to have autonomous capabilities to affect human or ecological advancement.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Design and Assistive Technologies
Students will investigate design interventions that have successfully employed assistive strategies to improve or extend human movement, sensation or mental capacity for a range of individuals and communities. Students will experiment with a range of technologies, experiences and services to design an assistive or rehabilitative intervention that reduces inequalities amongst individuals.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101
Stage III
Design Research Methodologies
Introduction to a range of key design methodologies that inform contemporary design thinking, research and practice within Aotearoa New Zealand, with reference to Mana Moana philosophies of making and community. Drawing on methodological principles, students learn how to develop design strategies, apply design processes and test their design concepts. Consideration will be given to the phasing and planning of design investigations from data analytics to design concepts to practical methods and proposed solutions.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 100, 101 and 90 points from DESIGN 200-243
Advanced Design Methods Capstone
Students will complete a major design project in collaboration with local stakeholders. Students will develop a design strategy in response to a real-world issue. They will engage in research and practical studio work, select appropriate methods, and use multiple tools and technologies to produce a prototype. Outcomes will be presented to and critiqued by design professionals.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 200, 201, 300 and 90 points from DESIGN 210-243
Corequisite: DESIGN 302
Critical-Technical Positioning
Students will produce a written account of their capstone project (DESIGN 301). The account will take the form of an essay or technical report supported by visual evidence. It will provide a critical contextualization of the capstone project in relation to global challenges, and use design theory to describe the project from problem framing through to execution.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 200, 201, 300
Corequisite: DESIGN 301
Postgraduate 700 Level Courses
Design Research Methodologies
A study of how to adopt and adapt different methodologies for context analysis, concept development, design iteration, deployment and evaluation.
Design Practices
A survey of current contexts, resources and networks to be applied in advanced design practice.
Design Technologies
A studio-based study of process and production technologies for advanced design outcomes.
Project Design
The application of design methods, models and technologies to formulate a design specification for prototype development.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 700-702
Design Impacts
A studio-based investigation that considers design as a catalyst for change and the models for measuring the impacts of design interventions.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 700-702
Design Futures
Applying speculative design methods to develop future scenarios and solutions for emerging societal and environmental challenges.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 700-702
Design Enterprise
A studio-based study of enterprise practices for the stable deployment and viable adoption of design products and services.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 700-702
Internship
An approved internship in design with a commercial or community organisation.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 700-702
Capstone Project
An independent studio-based project that critically investigates a specific contemporary issue in design or an issue that would benefit from an advanced design-based solution. Students will develop a project and document the process and impact of their solution to the underlying issue.
Prerequisite: DESIGN 703
To complete this course students must enrol in DESIGN 708 A and B, or DESIGN 708
Thesis - Level 9
Prerequisite: DESIGN 700-702
To complete this course students must enrol in DESIGN 794 A and B
