Interaction Design BA (Hons)

Why choose this course?

BA (Hons) Interaction Design focuses on human experience, employing a human-centred approach to interactive storytelling and immersive experience design. You will create and design interactions and experiences that address urgent issues and experimental ideas through innovative technologies, creative responses, and critical speculative practices. Emphasising creativity and adaptability, BA (Hons) Interaction Design promotes learning through making with access to world-class workshops and fabrication facilities, including digital making and immersive media labs.

The course is uniquely situated within the Department of Illustration Animation, renowned for nurturing graduates who become leading practitioners in their fields. As a student, you'll be an integral part of this dynamic community and collaborative atmosphere that encourages the exchange of ideas, processes, and methods, fostering new opportunities and growth within the discipline.

Attendance UCAS code Year of entry
3 years full time W280 2025
4 years full time including professional placement W281 2025

Please note: Teaching on this course may take place on more than one KU campus.

Main Location Kingston School of Art, Knights Park

Reasons to choose Kingston

  • Interaction Design is uniquely located within the highly regarded Department of Illustration Animation which has an excellent reputation for nurturing graduates who go on to be leading practitioners within their field.
  • We are currently ranked No.1 in London and Top 5 in the UK for Graphic Design* in the Guardian League Tables 2023
    (*covers Graphic Design and Illustration Animation).

The Art School Experience

As part of Kingston School of Art, students on this course benefit from joining a creative community where collaborative working and critical practice are encouraged.

Our workshops and studios are open to all disciplines, enabling students and staff to work together, share ideas and explore multi-disciplinary making.

Two students collaborate on a design project.

What you will study

The course nurtures your ability to develop innovative practices through digital and analogue methods. Exploring interactive narrative, game design, extended reality, and trans-media storytelling, you will integrate participation design and physical fabrication with creative computing and emerging technologies to create new ways to reach audiences and tell stories.

By engaging with pressing societal issues, you will deepen creative and critical thinking through contextual studies, contemporary philosophy and inclusive design practices. Set briefs, self-initiated projects, and collaborative assignments are developed to build confidence and self-awareness to showcase your strengths through critical discussions and peer interactions.

Interdisciplinary collaborations and real-world projects with creative industries provide practical experience, applying your skills in professional contexts. Access to staff practitioners and alumni networks offers further insights and opportunities through professional talks, studio visits, and work placements.

Content for this course includes:

  • Developing approaches to interpersonal and spatial storytelling.
  • Using sensing, information capture and feedback response to engage with our surroundings and the needs of others.
  • Understanding human action and behaviours through testing and contextualising ideas.
  • Applying content and meaning to appropriate platforms and engage audiences.
  • Critical thinking around digital and analogue technologies, craft, and methods of making.
  • Engaging with pressing societal issues through critical thinking in contextual studies and contemporary philosophy.

Year 1

Year 2

Year 3

The first year introduces principles of interaction design through its focus on human experience and the body as instrument. It asks primarily how we receive and understand information and how we communicate effectively with sensitivity to audience needs.

Modules

Practice: Sensing and Storytelling

30 credits

Practice: Sensing and Storytelling focuses on researching, making, and communicating narrative by introducing the fundamentals of interaction design practice: sensing and experiencing, idea generation and problem solving, responding and communicating. This module focuses on human experience and considers the body as instrument to develop empathetic, interpersonal communication skills, and introduce sensing and inclusive design as core research methods.

By exploring relationships between content, form and meaning in relation to storytelling and narrative practice, you will learn how to engage and communicate with audiences in variety of contexts. You will recognise and appreciate the breadth and depth the discipline has to offer by engaging with a diverse range of interaction design methods. Criticality is introduced as a key skill, through the testing of ideas, discussion with peers and tutor-led reviews.

Practice: Thinking Through Making

30 credits

Process: Thinking Through Making introduces the tools, processes and technologies used within interaction design practice. Through a series of workshops and projects you will embrace process and suspend-judgement by exploring making through a diverse and challenging range of media and technologies including physical and digital making, virtual production and extended realities, performance and sound design, creative computing and coding.

This module supports your confidence in making and the use of prototyping as a speculative and iterative process to generate ideas. Physical fabrication and digital making workshops, the immersive lab and virtual workspaces are presented as specialised working environments where you can practice skills and develop your craft as interaction designers.

Presentation: Consult...Create...Collaborate!

30 credits

Presentation: Consult... Create... Collaborate! will introduce you to Future Skills through engagement with Navigate. It will enable you to begin to develop your professional identity and global citizenship, by promoting your understanding of ethical issues and values, design thinking, and commercial awareness. These concepts and associated activities will support you to plan your own personal and professional development, as a means of developing your creative practice. This will be supported through active engagement with the Navigate programme, and through personal development planning (supported by personal tutors), which will enable you to reflect upon your Future Skills graduate attributes. It will also enable you to reflect on and begin to evidence your understanding of the skills you are developing holistically; through all the work you are creating as part of your course.

Communication Design History for Illustration Animation and Interaction Design

30 credits

This module introduces how we think critically about the history of illustration animation and interaction design, and how the knowledge produced can inform practice. This module addresses the categories and concepts, frameworks and tools used to understand illustration animation and interaction design, how they have evolved, and how these histories interweave with those of film, graphic design, product design, fine art and other disciplines. As part of this, we ask fundamental questions about how history is told and taught and what kinds of knowledge are valued and centred.

The first part of the module examines the dominant ways histories of illustration animation and interaction design have been constructed, and how we might challenge Euro/Western-centric perspectives. The second part considers how we can look at the diverse themes, platforms, and media of illustration animation and interaction design through different theoretical frames that speak to different ways of knowing.

The second year takes an expansive approach to interaction design practice. It explores our environmental experience and sees the body in space. Outward-facing and immersive activities are engaged to situate action, invite agency and contextualise experience.

Modules

Practice: Instigation/Activation

30 credits

Practice: Instigation/Activation expands narrative and communication skills through human-environmental experience. It considers the body in space by engaging immersive storytelling and spatial narratives to situate action, invite agency and contextualise experience. Interaction design practice is developed and understood through user consultation, in defining audience needs and exploring inclusive design methods.

Criticality is developed as a key skill; you are asked to take an analytical approach to the resolution of briefs and question how form and content can be unified to resolve a project to a deadline. Projects are used to encourage and support both team and collaborative working, which are central to contemporary interaction design practice.

Process: Make...Test...Prototype!

30 credits

Process: Make... Test... Prototype! supports an individual approach to using tools, processes and technologies within an interaction design practice. Through a series of workshops and projects, you will embrace process and suspend judgement by exploring making through a diverse and challenging range of interconnected media and technologies. Physical and digital making, virtual production and extended realities, performance and sound design, creative computing and coding are presented as methods that can be selected and utilised.

This module develops the process of prototyping ideas from initial ideas to working blueprints through testing, iteration, and consultation. Physical fabrication and digital making workshops, immersive lab and virtual workspaces are presented as specialised working environments where you can practice skills and develop your craft as interaction designers.

Presentation: Agency in Context

30 credits

Presentation: Agency in Context supports individual approaches to forming and nurturing relationships as part of a creative practice. It does this by developing your graduate attributes, and the Future Skills Explore Learning Outcomes delivered in this module. It builds on prior learning and engages with personal development activities aimed to strengthen professional identities, global citizenship, and provide opportunities to expand knowledge of the industrial and professional contexts for interaction design practice. This enables further development of professional skills, including interdisciplinary and collaboration, in preparation for future employment, which will require the ability to work with people from other disciplines.

Critical Issues in Innovation Design: Research & Practice

30 credits

This module connects the contemporary practice of interaction design to wider critical issues and debates within the fields of art & design, as well as society, culture, politics, economics, philosophy, science and technology more broadly. By engaging with urgent critical questions, and experimenting with different theoretical frameworks and research methods, you will be able to identify the topics, lines of enquiry and modes of research that interest you, and which you want to pursue in independent research at Level 6.

The first part of the module explores a range of critical issues related to the production, dissemination and consumption of interaction design by applying different theoretical perspectives to contemporary case studies. The second part of the module focuses on the research methods through which interaction design can be investigated and understood.

The third year addresses complexity and nuance across interaction design platforms. It considers collective experiences by understanding bodies as network. Autonomous approaches to learning, speculative outcomes and the development of individual creative practices are supported.

Modules

Practice: Connections with Purpose

60 credits

Practice: Connections with Purpose considers collective experience by understanding bodies as network. Trans-media storytelling and community engagement embrace individual and collective interaction design practices with awareness of context, audience needs, and a growing set of skills and methods. Autonomy, resilience, and self-reliance are nurtured through increasing levels of self-direction and independence, culminating in the proposal, negotiation, and delivery of an extended project.

A focus on research methods, ethics, inclusive practices and positioning enables you to formalise and apply you own specific methodologies with confidence. This module consolidates practical approaches to prototyping ideas, and form and content are synthesised fully to resolve projects to a deadline. Projects are used to define and establish a personal practice, engage in discipline specific critical dialogues, and foster long-lasting professional relationships with peers through group and collaborative working.

Presentation: Critical and Cultural Positions

30 credits

Presentation: Critical and Cultural Positions supports independence and self-reliance in the forming and nurturing of relationships as part of a creative practice. Future Skills is developed through engagement with Apply. It encourages you to plan for your continuing personal and professional development, and to consolidate an individual approach to managing career aspirations and future learning, by further strengthening your professional skills and identity, and global citizenship.

You will critically evaluate your own personal development through reflection on your progress, as a means of developing your creative practice, and to explore complex problems beyond the University. Personal development planning will enable you to evidence your understanding of the skills you are developing, through all the work you are creating as part of your course, and to set goals and take actions which further your ambitions. Public presentation and engagement are recognised as core principles of interaction design practice and opportunities to showcase work is supported.

Independent Research Project in Critical and Historical Studies

30 credits

Building on the links between research and practice embedded at Level 5, Independent Research Project in Critical and Historical Studies module focuses on in-depth research, critical enquiry and reflection on questions and critical issues emerging in you' own practice, and pertinent to the practice of their own discipline.

Over the module, you will initiate and develop an individual research topic; identify and evaluate appropriate archives, bodies of critical literature, visual/material sources and research methods; manage your study time; engage with and respond to tutorial dialogue and peer feedback, and apply critical and analytical skills to produce an output of 5-6,000 word (or equivalent) representing the culmination of your research project. You will be supported by a series of lectures, seminars, and tutorials.

Future Skills

Knowledge to give you the edge

Embedded within every course curriculum and throughout the whole Kingston experience, Future Skills will play a role in shaping you to become a future-proof graduate, providing you with the skills most valued by employers such as problem-solving, digital competency, and adaptability.

As you progress through your degree, you'll learn to navigate, explore and apply these graduate skills, learning to demonstrate and articulate to employers how future skills give you the edge.

At Kingston University, we're not just keeping up with change, we're creating it.

A female engineering student, in the engineering lab.

Entry requirements

Typical offer 2025

UCAS tariff points: 112–128

Level 3 qualifications, including Art and Design subjects (i.e. A-levels, BTEC Diploma, Access Diploma, IB Diploma, etc.). The preferred entry route is to first take a Foundation Diploma in Art and Design or recognised equivalent course.

Additional requirements

Entry onto this course will require submission of a digital portfolio as part of the application process. Further details about the portfolio will also be sent via email after submission of application.

See portfolio guidance below for more information about how to prepare your portfolio.

International

All non-UK applicants must meet our English Language requirements. For this course it is Academic IELTS of 6.0 overall, with no element below 5.5.

Make sure you read our full guidance about English language requirements, which includes details of other qualifications we consider.

Applicants who do not meet the English language requirements could be eligible to join our pre-sessional English language course.

Applicants from a recognised majority English speaking countries (MESCs) do not need to meet these requirements.

Country-specific information

You will find more information on country-specific entry requirements in the International section of our website.

Find your country:

Portfolio guidance

Applicants are required to send alongside the UCAS application and personal statement, a portfolio of 20 to 25 pages with an additional ten pages outlined below.

Digital portfolio format

Your portfolio will need to be in landscape orientation and saved/uploaded as a PDF file. Include a title for the project or image for each page of the PDF. A short description of project will help explain your intentions and response to a brief.

You may want to answer the following questions to structure your descriptions:

  • What was successful about your approach to the project?
  • What might you do differently next time?

You may have an animation or moving image/film which can be uploaded to Vimeo, Flickr or YouTube – please supply these links in your portfolio and make sure they are active and work on all platforms.

Even if you have expressed an interest in animation, it's not a requirement to include moving image to be offered a place.

Digital portfolio content

Please include the following in your digital portfolio:

  • Evidence of thinking about and testing ideas
    E.g. pages from sketchbooks, development pages, worksheets, notebooks.
  • Evidence of researching
    E.g. pages from sketchbooks, development pages, worksheets, notebooks. Whilst we want to see research and development work, make sure that the majority of the portfolio is your own work rather than the work of artists/designers that have inspired you.
  • Developmental work demonstrating how a project has progressed from brief through to outcome
    E.g. pages from sketchbooks, development pages, worksheets, notebooks.
  • Drawing from life
    E.g. observational drawing, life drawing or drawing on location.
  • Narrative, storytelling, or sequential work
    E.g. a series of images that are sequential, comic/graphic novel works, a story told in a single image, animation, moving image.
  • Experimentation with a range of different materials process and techniques
    E.g. drawing, printmaking, collage, 3D, digital works, photography, moving image.

Additional 10 pages to include in your portfolio

Please include five pages or images which show a project that has somehow been transformational in your development as a creative. This should be presented from the beginning (brief) to end (outcome), showing the process of how you got there. You may consider selecting a project where you tried out a new way of working and it was successful or you got great feedback from your peers and tutor or perhaps it was a real failure but you learnt a great deal in the process.

Use the last five pages or images to show us visually who you are, what you are interested in or what inspires you. Choose one thing that we should know about you. To make, take or find images that visually communicates this to us. E.g. drawings of a location you find inspiring, paintings of a hobby you enjoy, photos event or moment you find interesting, or make a model of a favourite possession.

How will your portfolio be reviewed?

Due to the possibility of travel restrictions relating to Covid-19 the Kingston School of Art (KSA) courses will not be able to undertake interviews. The Course staff team and student panel will undertake the selection process, considering the quality of your creative practice presented in your portfolio, your personal statement and your UCAS application with your supporting references.

Typical offer and UCAS points explained

Like most universities, we use the UCAS Tariff point system for our course entry requirements.

Find out more about UCAS Tariff points and see how A-level, AS level, BTEC Diploma and T-level qualifications translate to the points system.

Teaching and assessment

The course will be delivered though workshops, lectures, seminars, individual and group tutorials, project briefs, live briefs, demonstrations, study visits, peer learning, independent learning, and study skills.

Methods of assessment for the course are by practical and written coursework.

Facilities

The course is taught at Kingston School of Art, one of the leading art and design institutions in Europe.

Our teaching is guided by two principles: that our students learn by the process of making; and that students are critical practitioners who contribute to the development of the subject areas.

Many of the staff in Kingston School of Art are current practitioners and have extensive experience and professional links, helping you to develop your skills, networks and gain access to industry contacts.

Fees and funding

2025/26 fees for this course

The tuition fee you pay depends on whether you are assessed as a 'Home' (UK), 'Islands' or 'International' student. In 2025/26 the fees for this course are:

 Fee category Amount
Home (UK students) £9,250*
International Year 1 (2025/26): £19,500
Year 2 (2026/27): £20,300
Year 3 (2027/28): £21,100

For courses with Professional Placement, the fee for the placement year can be viewed on the undergraduate fees table. The placement fee published is for the relevant academic year stated in the table. This fee is subject to annual increases but will not increase by more than the fee caps as prescribed by the Office for Students or such other replacing body.

* For full time programmes of a duration of more than one academic year, the published fee is an annual fee, payable each year, for the duration of the programme. Your annual tuition fees cover your first attempt at all of the modules necessary to complete that academic year. A re-study of any modules will incur additional charges calculated by the number of credits. Home tuition fees may be subject to annual increases but will not increase by more than the fee caps as prescribed by the Office for Students or such other replacing body. Full time taught International fees are subject to an annual increase and are published in advance for the full duration of the programme.

Eligible UK students can apply to the Government for a tuition loan, which is paid direct to the University. This has a low interest rate which is charged from the time the first part of the loan is paid to the University until you have repaid it.

Need to know more?

Our undergraduate fees and funding section provides information and advice on money matters.

After you graduate

Students studying Interaction Design BA (Hons) can look forward to a broad range of professional opportunities and creative careers that include the following:

  • Interaction Designer
  • Exhibition Designer
  • Experience Designer
  • Production Designer
  • Design Researcher
  • Digital Designer
  • Producer
  • Project Manager
  • Art Director
  • Creative Director
  • Immersive Storyteller
  • Illustrator
  • Animator
  • Graphic Designer
  • Games Designer
  • Artist
  • Performer
  • Educator
  • Community Outreach Facilitator.

Key information set

The scrolling banner(s) below display some key factual data about this course (including different course combinations or delivery modes of this course where relevant).

Course changes and regulations

The information on this page reflects the currently intended course structure and module details. To improve your student experience and the quality of your degree, we may review and change the material information of this course. Course changes explained.

Programme Specifications for the course are published ahead of each academic year.

Regulations governing this course can be found on our website.