Design and Innovation

Design and innovation has never been more important to society and our everyday lives.

The Open University is at the forefront of teaching in the field of design and innovation. We have a strong reputation for our ground-breaking approach to this subject area. Our teaching addresses design in terms of design thinking and process, exploring how design and innovation can be applied in real world context.

Our Design and Innovation degree allows you to study these areas and also an additional subject such as business, design engineering or environment

BA or BSc (Hons) Design and Innovation
Other design and innovation related qualifications can be found in our online prospectus

Meet some of our Academics

Claudia Eckert, Professor of Design talks about her research into design practice over such wide ranging themes from knitwear to helicopter design. She outlines surprising similarities between both. Fitting a sleeve into a jumper is remarkably similar to changing components on a helicopter.

Teaching underpinned by research

The Open University doesn't just teach: it's a global leader in research and innovation too, with OU research and development ranking in the top third of UK universities. The Faculty of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics has a long and distinguished record of conducting high quality, internationally leading research. These researchers contribute to our state of the art curriculum material ensuring our teaching is up to date, informed by scientific research.

You can get a flavour of our published research in Design and Innovation through our Open Research Online (ORO) website