In the first year, students embark on a range of taught modules, workshops and master classes to develop skills and experience.

Each of these focuses on a particular aspect of IDE and involves practising design skills, as well as research activities both within product development itself, and in exploring user and broader social issues. In each module you will undertake a design project to a brief, sometimes set and sometimes of your own devising.

The work periods become progressively longer as they deal with more complex problems, and you practice the transferability of the core skills in different design settings.

Students joining the programme have a diverse range of existing skills, and the tutor input ensures that the modules allow students to be challenged and learn whatever their backgrounds. As students find their feet as innovation designers, the intensity of taught skills is reduced and by the third term students are working on longer project modules.

Emphasis is placed on generating imaginative ideas, and on testing prototypes through three-dimensional modelling and feedback from potential users, design and other experts.

During the first year students elect into one of two learning strands:

• Disruptive Market Innovations: DMI is core IDE territory and is about delivering innovative products to the market that work.
• Experimental Design: EXP is for design innovation at a fundamental level, which may incorporate the exploration of new technologies, new product categories or new contexts.

The learning strands are to allow students to excel at a particular approach to design or to expand their abilities through exploring a way of working unfamiliar to them. The strands are lightly embedded into the programme, especially in the first year, and there is plenty of collaboration between these strands over two years.

The second year programme of work sees you exploring topics of your own interest, resulting in two innovation modules: one that is team based (‘group project’), and one that is undertaken individually (a self-generated ‘solo project’). The thematic areas that students choose to explore are diverse and are supported by a broad range of expert tutors.

The solo project runs throughout the year, while the group project runs during the Autumn term and a brief period during the Spring term. The group project is assessed at the end of Autumn term, followed by exhibition at a Work in Progress Show. The solo project is assessed at the end of the academic year as part of the Final Examination, with work shown in the RCA and Imperial Design Engineering showcases.

Modules

• Group Project
• Solo Project

IDE students follow a weekly schedule of Critical and Historical Studies (CHS) during their first year, an RCA-wide initiative that provides you with the intellectual framework to build a coherent relationship between theory and practice.

CHS delivers exciting, thought-provoking and inspiring lectures by experts within the programme and high-profile visiting lecturers. You will have the opportunity to explore the theoretical background and aspects of your chosen discipline through a tutored dissertation process, as well as receiving individual support from our team of expert tutors.