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A studio-based course in which students learn new design methods and technologies. Students also develop customised design strategies in response to real-world challenges. By working on a detailed case study, students learn to address issues that affect local communities. Students present their design solutions, learn to pitch design concepts, and evaluate potential outcomes.

Introduces how the digital revolution has empowered people to organise themselves, collaborate and co-operate in non-hierarchical, creative ways. Students will explore the role of designers as catalysts for bottom-up, self-determined and distributed creativity within this scenario. They will learn to design for purpose and positive impact, co-creating open and resilient systems within their local communities.

Encourages students to identify their own positionality within Aotearoa and the wider Pacific. Using decolonising methods to critically analyse design solutions, students will explore their own identity and position themselves as cultural practitioners with obligations towards local communities.

An introduction to cultural narratives of Aotearoa New Zealand, and the role that contemporary design is playing as a participatory method for community-led change, both from bottom-up and institutional perspectives. Students will explore design as a practice for facilitating self-determination, and learn ways to enable genuine, respectful partnerships in order to tackle complex local and global challenges.

Examines historic and contemporary making techniques, materials, and networks to understand the scope, scale and value of local traditions, with an emphasis on Māori and Pacific practices. Students will collate a personalised database of local inspirations and resources for continued development and professional reference. This will form the inspiration for the students’ own made outcomes.

Introduces students to entrepreneurship within creative industries, focusing on the role of strategic design as a driver for purpose-led, sustainable innovation. Students will learn trends, methods and tools for organisational innovation, whether funding, launching, and managing new start-up companies, or dealing with change within existing organisations (intrepreneurship).

Examines personal career paths, design team and project operations and responsibilities in small studios through to large organisations, the role of professional networks, and resources for designers to present themselves and their work to future collaborators.

Students will identify and analyse how selected design interventions contribute to the health and wellbeing of communities in a range of contexts. Using service and experience design methods students will present ethical and feasible design strategies that examine notions of wellbeing, health, happiness and freedom, from individual to community level perspectives.

Students will analyse how global techno-social changes such as automation and climate change could impact the way we work and play, now and in the future. Students will critically speculate about possible and probable futures by developing fictional scenarios which test a range of design concepts for transition into preferable futures.

Introduces the main drivers, strategies, and technologies that make smart cities efficient and sustainable. Students will analyse case studies to understand how these cities work from a systems-level perspective to a human-scale, experiential level. They will propose concept solutions to identified problems and opportunities, demonstrating how future homes and cities may operate synergistically through a connected system of interfaces and services.

An overview of the ways that design can promote and actualise the regeneration of our natural environment through collaborative, systemic, and circular innovation. Students will learn fundamental theory, frameworks and methods to create positive impact using design strategy within the fields of environmental sustainability and conservation.

Introduces students to the impact data representation has on public perception of global issues. Students will engage and experiment with computational methodologies to interpret, visualise and interact with data sources corresponding to a specific Sustainable Development Goal. Students will produce provocative data-driven visualisations that promote a call-to-action related to a foreseeable local or global crisis.

Introduces an overview of new materials, products and processes connecting virtual and physical worlds. Students will explore these alternative realities as catalysts for positive impact. Students will experiment with technologies to design projects that augment human experiences in hybrid environments.

Introduces the major social, ethical, and technical trends driving the adoption of autonomous technologies and artificial intelligence. Students will explore the expanding role design can play within this field, through a purpose-led, human-centred perspective. Students will produce a prototypical device designed to have autonomous capabilities to affect human or ecological advancement.

Students will investigate design interventions that have successfully employed assistive strategies to improve or extend human movement, sensation or mental capacity for a range of individuals and communities. Students will experiment with a range of technologies, experiences and services to design an assistive or rehabilitative intervention that reduces inequalities amongst individuals.