Graduate Diploma in Digital Product Design

This course introduces you to digital products. You will gain an understanding of how they are conceived and designed for local and international markets. Using design thinking frameworks, you will experience the process of new product development (NPD), problem definition, opportunity scoping, and ethical design research. You will be introduced to the various team and stakeholder roles and capabilities that are required to successfully bring new digital products to market, including the importance of persuasive storytelling and a sound business case.

Learning outcomes

• Interpret and evaluate market opportunities to develop new digital products.
• Synthesise ethical design research and market research and apply to new product development.
• Assess and communicate the risks associated with a future product’s market size or impact opportunity for potential customers.
• Review and propose various operational scenarios of an interdisciplinary team at key stages during product development.
• Propose and present product research and development to stakeholders using appropriate protocols to ensure and maintain transparency.

In this course, you will explore the fundamentals of leadership within a design context. You will determine your leadership capabilities as a designer, not only as an individual, but as a crucial part of a team, an organisation, and society.

This is the designated Work Integrated Learning (WIL) course for the Graduate Certificate of Digital Product Design. In the role of course facilitator, industry partners will support and review your work, as well as provide industry relevant case studies and real-world scenarios. This ensures ongoing industry best-practice in both accessing and gaining feedback from the course content. By developing a deeper understanding of the ways in which design shapes the world, you will be aware of the prevailing conversations, trends and future directions of the roles and impact of design on the economy, society, culture and the planet.

You will examine how ethics, skills of team members and culture all contribute to and constrain current and emerging design practice. You will also critically define your viewpoints, rationales and biases as you grow as a design leader.

Learning outcomes

• Design project plans which incorporate aspects related to diverse teams and disparate contexts.
• Critically appraise and communicate design theory and practice for application within professional contexts.
• Critically reflect on the needs of diverse communities, both locally and globally, as considerations for inclusive design.
• Maintain an ongoing reflective and ethical practice to support your career development.

In this course, you will design a new digital product using an existing client’s brief. Using industry standard tools and ethical best practice, you will gain hands-on experience of framing a client’s problem.

You will then apply design research to explore the client’s brief and the possibilities for the digital product and move into conceptualising, prototyping and designing a product solution.

You will gain a working understanding of digital product lifecycles and explore how products grow and change through industry and user feedback.

By understanding and enacting the roles of various team members, you will have a broad understanding of the responsibilities and expertise required to build a successful digital product, including different interface modalities, user contexts, business constraints, accessibility considerations, and market forces.

Learning outcomes

• Critically apply a user-centred method to interpret a client brief and propose an approach to design a digital product.
• Research, prototype and deliver products using industry standard digital tools.
• Evaluate and iterate existing digital products to improve their user experience, ethical integrity, technical constraints and business value.
• Strategically review product maturity phases for the role they have in managing the business of digital product design.
• Critically reflect on the operational aspects of a digital product design project within a team.

In this course, you will be introduced to the role research plays within the user experience domain. You will learn how to evaluate and implement research tools and activities to effectively articulate and interpret the ‘problem space’ and shape findings and insights for your client. You will develop an understanding of how research is used in competitor analysis, user interviews, observations, surveys, testing, and analytics in order to deliver a suitable user experience.

Project scoping protocols (including privacy, ethics, and data management) are reviewed to look at how to support your organisation to deliver evaluative and generative modes of research to enhance the user experience.

Learning outcomes

• Develop and refine research briefs based on stakeholder requirements and best practice.
• Account for ethical data collection and privacy concerns when performing user experience data research.
• Critically analyse and determine the most suitable user research approach.
• Conduct usability surveys, testing and ethnographic research within structured frameworks to generate findings and improved outcomes.
• Communicate and present in-progress and final findings clearly to a client/stakeholder.

This course covers the fundamentals of product and business strategy, and how this applies to the development of products that meet customer and market needs. You will analyse the success factors for different product types and commercial and risk impacts and learn how to develop and deliver a compelling business case to stakeholders. You will apply your new skills projects based on real-world examples, including problem statements, product metrics, commercial models and market analysis.

Learning outcomes

• Develop innovative product strategies by analysing markets and competitors and defining commercial and customer drivers
• Assess the commercial and risk impacts of different products types by analysing their key success factors and metrics
• Communicate the vision, rationale and business benefits of a product strategy

Once you've completed the five core program courses, you will complete THREE of the following courses to make up the remaining courses in your Graduate Diploma: 

• Product Design and Customer Experience
• Product Development and Operations
• Digital Leadership and Digital Marketing Strategy
• Digital Leadership and Digital Delivery with Agile
• Service Design in Practice
• Design Strategy Practice and Principles
• Service Design Research
• Service Futures
• Programming Fundamentals
• Data and Privacy in the Digital Age
• User Experience Practice and Principles
• User Experience Design & Prototyping
• User Interface Design and Business Analyst Fundamentals
• User Interface Design and Product Management Fundamentals

For further detail on the course overview and learning outcomes for each of these courses, please refer to the Program brochure. 

An Australian Bachelor’s degree (or equivalent overseas qualification).

If you don’t have these academic qualifications, you may be eligible for entrance into this program if you have a minimum of five years’ professional experience in innovation and start-ups, creative practice, digital design studios, human resources, business analysis, management consultancy, process analysis or other similar roles. To have your professional experience considered, you must include in your application a CV and a statement that details your experience.

You must meet the University's minimum English language requirements to be eligible for a place in this program.

If you are a local student, refer to the English requirements for postgraduate coursework programs.

If you are an international student, refer to the English requirements and equivalency information. The program requires a minimum overall score of 6.5 with no band less than 6.0 in IELTS (Academic).

RMIT’s Online Graduate Diploma in Digital Product Design does not meet Australian student visa requirements. For an Australian student visa, you must have an on-campus place in a program of study. For more details on RMIT’s on-campus programs visit https://rmit.edu.au.

You may be eligible for entrance into this program if you have successfully graduated from one of the following Graduate Certificates:

• Graduate Certificate in User Experience Design
• Graduate Certificate in Service Design
• Graduate Certificate in Digital Product Design
• Graduate Certificate of Product Management