Course units
We are committed to ensuring that your skills are set within an ethical framework, and we have worked to embed UAL’s Principles for Climate, Racial and Social Justice Principles into the curriculum and in everything we do.
As part of this initiative, we’ve shaped our courses around social and environmental sustainability principles that ensure learning outcomes reflect the urgent need to equip you with the understanding, skills, and values to foster a more sustainable planet. Our aim is to change the way our students think, and to empower you to work towards a sustainable future.
In common with all courses at the University of the Arts London, this course is credit rated. The course is 3 years, levels 4-6. Each year requires you to achieve 120 credit points. To be awarded the BA (Hons) Interaction Design plus pathway title qualification, you need to accumulate a total of 360 credits.
Year 1
Introduction to Interaction Design (20 Credits)
Through academic reflection, writing and practical workshops, this unit will equip you with essential skills that will give you the confidence to navigate through the course and College and to help you begin to develop a personal approach to your work.
Exploration and Play (40 Credits)
Focuses on learning and discovery through practical activities and projects. It introduces core design principles and explores play as a method of research, experimentation and design.
Creative Technologies, Experience, and Service Design (40 Credits)
This unit will present the 3 pathways for the BA (Hons) Interaction Design course, giving you an opportunity to explore which of 3 types of practice are most suitable to your goals as a designer and vision for your future career.
Responsible Design (20 Credits)
The unit introduces core principles in responsible design where you'll explore the role of environmental and social responsibility across multiple design subject specialisms to inform and further develop your own creative practice.
Year 2
Desire Lines and Affordance (40 Credits)
This unit is intensive and designed to introduce you to subject specific processes and techniques involved in interaction and design. It deals with design in the lived environment; how people and users interact with the world around them and encourages you to reach beyond the studio for research and inspiration.
Professional Practices (20 Credits)
This unit seeks to extend your knowledge of the creative, cultural and design industries, providing you with opportunities to work on live project as you continue to develop your design practice in mixed-discipline and collaborative teams.
Creative Technologies Pathway: Expanded Cinema and Physical Computing (40 credits)
This unit is designed to further aid and develop the work and concepts introduced in previous units. The unit encourages you to experiment with traditional and new media technologies. The unit is also highly spatial and technical, looking at programming, sensors and computing in a real-world context.
User Experience Pathway: Making as Enquiry - Experimenting and Iterating (40 credits)
Guided by previous practices and the resulting user insights, this unit will help you focus ideas and develop solutions through experimentation and iterative prototyping processes. You will engage in ’making as enquiry’ to discover the unexpected as you test and refine ideas through digital fabrication and rapid prototype methods of digital products and experiences.
Systems and Services Pathway: Delivering Services (40 credits)
In this unit, you’ll explore project management and innovation strategies for service design and collaborate with partners from local communities and organisations to develop a service before testing and evaluating its impact and effectiveness for identified users.
Design Cultures (20 Credits)
This unit examines design as a manifestation of wider social, cultural, political, economic, historical or environmental phenomena. You’ll interpret design in its broadest sense as a key aspect of contemporary society encompassing a range of approaches and practices.
Year 3
Minor Studio Project (20 credits)
The Minor Studio Project is self-initiated; emphasising research and the identification of appropriate intellectual and practical methodologies to support your outcomes.
Self-Initiated Research Project (40 credits)
This unit gives you an opportunity to engage with an in-depth research project on a topic of your choice. You’ll bring together the skills, knowledge and experience you have developed during your study to carry out an extended research project that connects theory and practice.
Major Studio Project (60 credits)
All third-year students complete the Major Studio Project, which includes 3 individual briefs that you choose. This final project gives you the opportunity to apply your practical, critical and analytical skills to develop work that shapes your individual portfolio.
Optional Diploma between Years 2 and 3
Between Years 2 and 3 of your course, you will also have the opportunity to undertake one of the following qualifications:
Diploma in Professional Studies (DPS) (Optional)
An optional, year-long learning opportunity which enables you to develop your professional skills by undertaking time out for industry experience. Supported throughout the year by academics, you’ll build on the knowledge gained on your course in a range of national or international locations, and graduate with an additional qualification of Diploma in Professional Studies.
Diploma in Creative Computing (Optional)
Between Years 2 and 3, you can undertake the year-long Diploma in Creative Computing. This will develop your skills in creative computing alongside your degree. After successfully completing the diploma and your undergraduate degree, you’ll graduate with an enhanced degree: BA (Hons) Interaction Design plus pathway title (with Creative Computing).
UAL Diploma in Apple Development
This optional diploma can be taken between years 2 and 3. Over the extra year you’ll become an Apple developer, undertaking a learning programme which includes content from Apple’s official ‘Develop in Swift’ curriculum. After successfully completing the diploma and your undergraduate degree, you’ll graduate with an enhanced degree: BA (Hons) Interaction Design plus pathway title (with Apple Development).
