Head of Department: Mathilde Aggebo

Department of Product Design performs research and teaching within three mutually profitable fields of expertise: fashion, textile, and industrial design. Jewellery design is in the process of becoming the fourth field of expertise. The research at Department of Product Design will focus on two main tracks:

• Overall, the Department wishes to explore the role of product design in a changing society; including e.g. changed framework conditions for product design, changes in the perception of product design, and product design's contribution to society's innovative dynamic.
• The Department wishes to explore and challenge the existing design practice. This can be done by creating new knowledge concerning the use and implementation of materials, technologies, and methods in the development of future-oriented design concepts

This research is often times conducted in close interaction with experimental art based design projects and in cooperation with companies and organisations with a special interest in design. 

The main tracks of the Department research is based on three research professional fields. The main subjects, which Department of Product Design wishes to develop, are summed up in the key words below:

• Product: Research in core concepts of product design deals with the aesthetic, sensuous, and functional interaction between design, production processes, the design product, the user, and the surroundings - including environmental aspects and challenges for established logics of mass production.
• Method: Research in design methods and processes within the Department's specific field of expertise - including new digital design principles.
• Context: Research in how the three professional fields, together and separately, are included in various contexts, e.g. in the welfare sector, learning environments, and in how we decode our age in fashion systems and the private sphere.

The Department strives to enhance a knowledge-generating synergy between the three design professional fields. This is achieved by initiating research projects and Ph.D. studies across the established fields.