Sussex is a joke, I went there and made a huge complaint about the course, during and after my time there. I do not know of any grad from my year actually getting a job in Product Design, there was a big complaint about the quality of placements for sandwich students, so some just continued into their final year. (Every Product Designer will tell you that a good sandwich placement is worth gold on a CV).
Ended up in situations where modules were cancelled and replaced with different topics and some of the lecturers completely miss out the content of some of the modules.
To top things off one of the lecturers who was a recent graduate from another uni, so had little work experience and no lecturing experience, was marking final year dissertations, modules and projects.
I understand some changes have been made there, but it is a "cash cow" for the Engineering Department which has seen its research funding cut and some of the best Profs leave, taking their funding.
Brighton Uni is very close, I dont know if the course is better, but Brighton has a lot of Art & Design courses so you get student/staff from lot of creative backgrounds. Personally I think that is a better environment, than an Engineering Deprt with most Eng staff/students, the Brighton PDES course has also been running longer and possibly has better industry connections. There was even a point at Sussex when the Eng student were wearing t-shirt saying their course was "a real degree" to try and annoy us PDESer.
I would also say this, PDES is very difficult to get a job in, unless you are a good blagger and even then you need a portfolio. Do as many personal projects as you learn new skills to build up your portfolio also try and get work/placements/internships every holiday to add to your CV, otherwise you will really struggle. Also consider being entrepreneurial, design it, make it, sell it.