Sustainable Product Design Online Short Course

Course overview

How do you create physical products and businesses that are more sustainable? How do you go beyond simply working with sustainable materials, to make more fundamental changes to your design processes and methodologies? How can you design products that fit into larger sustainable systems? These are some of the questions we will explore in this four-week online course.

The aim of this course is to give you new perspectives on sustainability and how to implement sustainable product development in a comprehensive way. You will review theories of sustainability in product design and examine case studies showing these theories in practice. You will explore these ideas through presentations from the tutor, in class discussions, and practical assignments where you can apply what you have learned. Each week you will get personalised feedback on your assignments, to help you create more sustainable products.

The course looks at issues around sustainability from a creative product design perspective. We will explore a number of tools and strategies for a more sustainable approach to design. These include redesigning an object utilising different [re]strategies, perspective taking exercises, speculative design scenarios and looking at potential. The approach is softer than a more materials analysis one, questioning the motivations for design and approaches to get more regenerative results.

We don't look at specific social aspects, but they are covered as part of a general approach and there is scope for students to explore these as they do some of the exercises throughout. The course is structured for you to explore different approaches for what sustainable design practice could mean for you.

Who this course is for

The course is suitable for anyone interested in sustainable product design who would like to learn more.