Yusuf Muhammad, was the winner of Living Room category and joint overall winner. His Yu Type design sits on the computer keyboard and allows ‘hunt and peck’ two fingered typists the opportunity to increase their speed and confidence. He is now thinking about developing the idea and hopes to include features like spell checking and predictive text to increase its appeal. Judges praised the way he addressed a social issue of an aging population within the urban context.

In response of this question “What next for your design?”, Yusuf says:

“I’m definitely going to set aside a fair chunk of the prize to develop it. There’s a lot of people who would benefit – 79% of people who use a keyboard hunt and peck, disproportionately older people and first time users, and even dyslexic users. I’m dyslexic and I would definitely benefit from a device like this.”

Dominic Hargreaves, was winner of the Garage category and a joint overall winner. His concept for a bike lock which sits at first storey level on the front of a building is designed to hoist bikes out of the reach of potential thieves. Along with Yusuf Muhammad, judges felt that Dominic’s design would benefit the most from money to develop the idea further.

In response of this question “How are you going to develop your design?”, Dominic says:

“The initial prototype was just for personal use. I would really like produce a public one, which would lead to a much better design. At a train station it would encourage commuting and free up the roads and the tube.”

Graeme Davies took the first prize in the Kitchen category. His Quicksnap icetray design solves the problem of dropping two ice cubes on the floor for every one you manage to get in the glass by creating an undercut to release individual ice cubes. Judge Lance Scott called it “An innovative solution to a very simple but annoying problem”. Graeme, who has a patent on the design, is looking to have it on sale by the summer.

In response of this question “Did you feel confident in your design?”, Graeme says:

“I think what’s really been good about it is that the design is really simple. People appreciate and get it straight away. That’s probably what made it stand out. The next stage will be tooling and hopefully we will get it in production by the summer.”

Source : Toyota iQ

Sergio says “Outside the car industry technologies have been developed in order to regenerate power, like kinetic watches, wind turbine, geothermic energy absorption even a sustainable dance floor is developed that regenerates the energy from the bouncing of the floor.

Around those ideas I designed a car with a central kinetic axis that generates the power of the movement as the vehicle turns like two attached motorbikes.

Second, I thought electrical cars should be designed aiming for sensations and not for speed in order to preserve the batteries longer. At high speed the battery range drop considerably, so this vehicle would provide sensations at lower speeds.

Drivers that have lived in a virtual computer game word that want to drive a vehicle closer to a spaceship, something that can provide them with different sensations.”

Designer : Sergio Loureiro

Designer text :
The Moonstream is the ultimate luxury space lounge, designed to change public perceptions of Nasa and entice people to be more interested in a future mission to the moon. The Moonstream enables true comfort for habitants of the vehicle and also provides an appealing setting for filming of the daily lives of people on the 1st ever moon road trip from the north to south pole.

Designer : Anthony Sims

Designer : Roozbeh Mousavi

Text from Adam about the background of this concept :

“In my research, I found that 97% of the iGeneration owns a computer and 75% are on Facebook or other social networking sites,” says the device’s creator, Adam Brodowski, a design student at Savannah College of Art and Design in the U.S. state of Georgia. “I also found that they are all hypertaskers who do multiple things all at once. Eating dinner, text messaging, doing homework and watching TV are all strung together.

“They are also very comfortable with technology and the Internet. They run personal blogs, surf the web all day long, email back and forth and so on. Most importantly, they enjoy creating content to fuel the web and be noticed.”

All Units: This shows the various units of the Sook off the dock and ready to be used.

Docked: Shows all of the Sooks parts docked together. In this form the Dock and Touch can still be used.

Sook Touch: The Sook Touch is used to display and drag ingredients to build custom recipes. Ingredients are added when the Dock or Cut understands food near it. This then gives the user a bank of items to incorporate into there meal.

Sook Cut: The Sook Cut a cutting board containing a moisture sensor, weight sensor, and electronic tongue. It uses these sensors to identify what food is bring cut on the board and how much is being used. It then transmits this information to the Sook Touch to begin generating a recipe.

Sook Dock: A picture of the Sook Dock. Along with charging the Sook Cut and Touch the Dock works as a RFID scanner to identify what foods are near it, be it new groceries it can use for meals later, or food that is being set out to cook something currently.

Designer : Adam Brodowski

Enigma concept by Paul Howse

Iomega concept by Joonas Vartola

Winner: Airflow concept by Pierre Sabas

Phoenix concept by Sergio Loureiro Da Silva

Concept car by Ilaria Sacco

Source : Royal College of Art via DesignBoom

Perch is the result of a two year research MA in Industrial Design with the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland by Simon Dennehy. The results show that it is impractical to design a chair for primary school students, without considering the desk as an item of equal importance. The main objective of the project is to encourage students to sit and work in a much higher position.

The seat and backrest benefit from ventilated slots throughout. This reduces weight, increases user comfort and creates a visually stimulating aesthetic for the students of today. The chair’s simple yet effective height mechanism prevents accidental release and requires the student to stand to adjust the height. The chair’s legs protrude from back, while incorporating a footrest. This allows the student complete freedom of leg movement. The front wings at either side of the seat are completely flexible. This patented design prevents build up of pressure under the student’s legs, while the resistive feedback encourage the students to continually move their legs playfully, increasing blood flow and muscle use.

The desk profile incorporates an elbow rest, where students can perch themselves during task work. This decreases load on their mid-sections. The profile, from co-extruded hollow-section polycarbonate, incorporates a soft rubberised working surface (in orange). This provides a warm tactile surface that can resist abuse, prevent books from slipping, and can be easily cleaned. A storage trough, at the rear of the desk, includes a book ledge for when students are copying from text books. An accessories tray hooks onto the desk edge and is replaceable with a Lego base, or arts and crafts palette. This “hot-swap” system is developable, and makes task change-over much faster, and tidier.

Schools furniture among the majority of schools, internationally, is severely damaging to students’ health and, as a direct result, they can expect to develop serious disorders and illnesses in later life. The research carried out shows conclusively that school children, in particular, sit inappropriately during their primary school years, as a result of the failings of the furniture’s design.

Schools are the offices for children. They spend a large amount of their youth attending both primary and secondary schools, and during that time, are likely to be sitting at a desk. A drastic change to the standards, which dictate measurements for furniture in schools, is required.

It is hoped that this project will encourage more researchers, designers and ergonomists to peruse the subject matter so that, in years to come, the quality and understanding of furniture requirements for students will radically improve, to the benefit of the students, teachers, education and health system.

Designer : Simon Dennehy

InTouch cell phone concept offers young professionals that seamless transition between work and play. This cell phone concept was greatly inspired by technology that NASA is currently developing for the purpose of improving communication among astronauts while in space. Sub vocal speech is a technology that senses and translates throat signals into words without the need for them to be audibly spoken by a person.

The user can mouth or lip words silently have them translated into text or a synthesized voice. This allows the user to have privacy in almost any environment that they are in for phone calls, text messages, and emails.

Designer : Christina Droira, Lindsey Pickett and Molly Vivian-Coburn