Creativity isn’t just about making art and designing products, it’s an approach that can be tuned into business. Strategy (e.g. the planning and execution of a business idea) is the scaffolding that supports an outcome. Students that apply to join a design management course learn a lot about the cultures that surround a wide number of businesses, from fashion to architecture, graphic design to sustainability, banking and finance.
Students undertake creative practice, learning the craft of design principles and how to apply them while they make use of the amazing print and digital facilities at universities to assist them in communicating the strategy and research that surround their ideas. Their communication of final ideas will often introduce you to the ‘artefacts’ (the design you can see) ‘behaviours’ (the way we communicate and understand the world around us) and ‘concepts’ (the reason why we’re creating something and the mission we’re on).
Take a look at some of our recent graduates to see the range of issues our students have focused on in order to create culturally aware proposals fit for today’s world.
Marta De Prisco: The regeneration of listed buildings
Urban Rewilding
Video: Marta De Prisco. Project in partnership with Zachary MacPherson and Joshua MacPherson
Daisy Preston: Looking at the wellbeing needs of fashion models
Daisy’s experience as a model provided the background for her to explore setting up an investigation into current cultural, political and ethical considerations for models within the fashion industry. Daisy says, “As I became increasingly more in tune with the importance of wellbeing and mindfulness, I realised my line of work contradicts all that I stand for. I have been able to reflect from an outside perspective, on the issues faced in the industry today.” Daisy ran prototyping sessions to brainstorm ideas for what services or products the project would provide. The final proposal was to develop website/podcast series to promote wellbeing within the industry.
Aseel Bokai: Helping a new generation of art collectors
Isabel Lim: Helping the families, friends and carers of medical patients to communicate more effectively
Can technology improve communication amongst the medical staff, friends and family of patients with chronic conditions? Isabel says, “Families of patients with chronic conditions often feel lonely and unsupported in their journey due to a difficulty for others to empathise and stay updated. What do you say, what can you do? It seems as though there is nothing we could offer to carry their burden and lighten the load. How can we genuinely provide the support that they evidently need?” Isabel’s primary influence for this project was her own father, who is a chronic patient recovering from a stroke. She worked with a team to investigate the possibility of using technology to help in difficult times. Her final outcome included a business proposal and initial design ideas for an app that would ease communication between patient and caregivers.
Beatrice Bekar: Sustainable fashion
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Sonja Doupnik: Helping online users to take ownership of social media
Sonja is interested in how we could better design data transparency for online communities in an era of ‘fake news’ and general distrust of Facebook and many other social media platforms when it comes to influencing users. In order to do this Sonya did some in-depth research to understand how online communities form, transform and function on social media platforms. Sonja then looked at user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design to see what could be altered to create a social media platform that works with more transparency and gives ownership back to users. Her final outcome included a business proposal and visualisations for a social media app.
