Course units
Year 1
Unit 1: Global and collaborative practices (led by UAL)
This unit introduces key tools and design frameworks while building community within the cohort. It provides a foundation of research, fieldwork, critical thinking, problem articulation, and prototyping that underpins future units. Throughout this unit, you will engage with intercultural and collaborative practices and explore intersections in complex challenges, responding to these through a speculative design project.
Unit 2: Designing for transitions (led by UAL)
This unit introduces the design for transitions approach and its systems-oriented practices. Using mapping, visualisation, and design prototyping, you will develop ideas and dialogues between design practitioners, project rights-holders, and beneficiaries. Working with external partners, you will co-create local design responses to global-scale challenges.
Unit 3: Temporality, science, technology and design (led by KIT)
This unit introduces key theoretical and methodological approaches situated at the intersection of temporality, science, technology and design, with particular attention to their interrelated perspectives. You will examine how creative practices and their contexts inform and influence one another, while cultivating the capacity to think critically and act responsibly in relation to technological advancements and ethically grounded design.
Unit 4: People, materials, tools and making (led by KIT)
In this unit, you will be introduced to the emergence of craft and making as an empirical approach, exploring iterative artisanship, experience workflows with analogue and digital tools, and observing materials and processes applied not just as collaborative agents, but also as precious environmental resources.
Unit 5: Society, economy and culture in collaborative design (led by KIT)
In this unit, you will undertake a project proposed by a public, private, or non-profit organisation. Using contextual dialogue and research to explore issues identified by the partner organisation, mixed teams develop innovative design proposals that consider ethical, sustainable, and culturally specific dimensions.
Year 2
Unit 6: Major design project (led by UAL and KIT)
This unit requires you to develop and direct a major design project that addresses a complex challenge of your choice. You will design and iterate your framework of enquiry through 3 complementary parts: your brief, practice-led research and a design prototype. You will co-design learning opportunities within and beyond the course, collaborating with your peers and external partners who hold subject expertise and lived experiences (e.g., industry representatives, government officials, local organisations, and/or communities).
Unit 7: Show (led by UAL)
This unit is focused on the final show and the dissemination of your work. You will consider how to communicate your major design project’s findings and 2-year learning journey in a public-facing showcase — delivered as physical, virtual or hybrid events at various points during the academic year. These events will be designed and staged to engage external communities, practitioners, and networks that are central to collaborative practices.
Unit 8: Academic dissemination (led by KIT)
This unit is focused on academic writing and the dissemination of your work. You will consider how to communicate your Major Design Project’s findings for Shinsa — a Japanese national exam — and strategically disseminate this to relevant audiences and contexts. Through critical reflection and guided action, you will articulate the value of your work and explore pathways for its continued impact beyond the course—whether through publication, collaboration, or professional engagement.
Note: All Year 1 units must be passed for students to progress to Year 2. The award classification will be calculated using the average of both second year UAL units - Unit 6: Major design project unit (40 UAL credits) and Unit 7: Show (20 UAL credits).
Mode of study
MA Global Collaborative Design Practice is offered in full-time mode and runs for 72 weeks over 2 years. You will be expected to commit an average of 40 hours per week to your course, including teaching hours and independent study. You will be expected to attend all classes in person on campus.
