Want to be involved in a design project?
We are running design projects with weekly support and guidance sessions throughout Michaelmas to develop your design skills, suitable for both beginners and experienced designers. This includes three internal design prompts and three design competitions!
Internal design projects
During these projects, you will:
- Work in teams to design a solution to one of our three prompts
- Develop research and design skills
- Gain meaningful experience perfect for your CV
- Experience what it is like to work in a passionate, collaborative and technical environment
Our three prompts are:
- In-Home Guardian: As populations age across the world, the rate of home injuries for the elderly have also increased globally. Design something to reduce in-home injury for the elderly.
- Invisible Waste: We live in a digital world, we live and breathe the internet. However, wastage of our digital resources is often not visible to us. Design an interface that makes the environmental impact of digital behaviour visible and engaging.
- Catching rays: Consider how natural light changes through the day and year. Design a system, product or surface that dynamically reacts to sunlight – to power, inspire, protect, or inform.
The project is designed to work around your schedule, but we will be providing weekly guidance and design sessions at Sunday 10am-12pm in the Engineering Department DPO. The project aims to finish in week 7 of Michaelmas Term.
Design competitions
- Design Innovation in Plastics (DIP) Award
- This is a product design competition for undergraduate students in the UK & Ireland.
- This year’s prompt is to design an original game made primarily from plastics, suitable for any specified age group. It could be designed for learning, for activity or plain old-fashioned fun.
- You may join this competition as an individual only.
- Link to contest: https://www.designinnovationplastics.org/2026award
- Model Young Package 2026 Packaging Design Contest
- Model Young Package is a global design competition connecting emerging talents with experienced packaging professionals.
- This year’s theme, Unpacking Taboo, invites you to challenge conventions and explore what’s often left unspoken.
- You may join this competition in groups of up to 5 people.
- Link to contest: https://www.modelgroup.com/ch/en/model-young-package.html
- Human Computer Interaction (HCI) International 2026 Student Design Competition
- HCI 2026 addresses challenging and innovative topics in theory, methodology and practice of how we interact with computers.
- Topics may include novel user interface concepts / technologies / interaction devices, UI development methods, multimodal user interfaces, emotions in HCI, HCI and children, and evaluation methods and tools.
- Students submit a 5-minute video detailing their design.
- Link to contest: https://2026.hci.international/studentdesign.html
The society’s role in design competitions:
Our job is to facilitate you in your process of designing for these competitions. This includes funding any prototyping / manufacturing work you may undertake, giving support and guidance during our weekly drop-in sessions or just lending a second set of eyes.
Sign up here today, deadline is the first session (10am on Sunday the 19th of October): https://forms.gle/Q4LbYTK7CLX6n2M57