Product Design and Manufacture including an Industrial Year

Product design and manufacture is concerned with how objects come into being, from the earliest sketches of a concept through to the engineering decisions that determine how something is made, how it performs, and how it is experienced by the people who use it. It is a discipline that sits deliberately between creative design thinking and manufacturing engineering, asking practitioners to be fluent in both. The designer who understands manufacture can make better creative decisions; the engineer who understands design can build products that genuinely serve people.

This four-year full-time programme at the University of Nottingham includes a foundation year and a year abroad, giving you a supported entry into degree-level study and an international dimension to your education. The industrial year built into the title means you will spend a substantial period working in a professional product development environment, gaining experience that makes your graduate profile significantly stronger. You will develop skills in computer-aided design, prototyping, materials selection, and manufacturing processes, alongside design methods, user-centred thinking, and the business context in which product development takes place.

With a typical entry tariff of 152 points, the programme suits students who want a technically rigorous degree with genuine creative breadth.

Product design and manufacture graduates are equipped for careers across a wide range of industries. Consumer electronics, automotive design, medical devices, furniture, packaging, and capital equipment are all sectors that depend on designers who can work fluently across the full development process. Roles include product designer, design engineer, manufacturing process engineer, and project manager in development teams.

The industrial year experience often leads directly to graduate employment with placement companies. Many graduates also move into industrial design consultancy, where the combination of creative and technical skills is particularly valued. For those who want to go deeper into a specialism, postgraduate study in product design, engineering design, or human factors provides a natural next step.