We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands the UTS campuses now stand. We would also like to pay respect to Elders past, present and emerging, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.

These final projects represent a very important opportunity for our students to demonstrate their technical skills, design processes and design values at a high standard, for future employment or further advanced study. I am very proud of the projects presented here. Our students have worked through their research and design work with superior agility and absolute professionalism to produce excellent results. I congratulate them all on this significant and outstanding achievement.

The Product Design Major Studio subject integrates research practice and design practice in the development of new product design outcomes. Students must demonstrate competency in communicating visually with sophisticated design renderings and models, as well as through a structured and carefully articulated written report. The subject encourages students to think carefully about the role of products in society and to consider the potential of their wider impact on human experience, environmental and technological challenges. The projects presented here require the ability to methodically conduct research and argue for an innovative step forward in connection with a strategic approach to concept development and design refinement of a new product outcome.

The Product Design Honours Degree, since its introduction in 2016, has required students to think deeply about the role and responsibility of the product design professional. Honours is a one-year degree built from the three-year bachelor program yet extending beyond its confines to openly and critically challenge conventions typically associated with the classical model of industrial design practice. Each Honours student must identify, through research enquiry, a rational and meaningful opportunity for design intervention – one that is focused on improving the health and well-being of society in some way, through a new product innovation. Aligning these factors is a rigorous process both knowledge directed and practice-led simultaneously, that innovates design methodology itself. This intensive, self-driven program requires students to produce a comprehensive research dissertation and a design outcome that is, in most cases, represented as an appearance prototype with an appropriate level of functionality. Honours graduates demonstrate the confidence to engage with difficult topics and complicated information, the agility to responsibly adjust their perspective based on well-conducted research, the aptitude to synthesise knowledge-directed enquiry with practice-led exploration and the tenacity to stay focused on a long-term project that is emotionally challenging because the outcome cannot be easily defined.

I believe that completion of the Product Design Degree at UTS demonstrates a unique combination of technical design and innovation development skills necessary for the socio-ecological and technological challenges of the future. I am very proud of the way our students managed the restrictions of the pandemic during their Degree and I sincerely wish them all the very best on their career path.