Student Design Awards winners
See the winning submissions from past Student Design Awards.
Sponsored by GSK
Improve the way medicines are protected, dispensed, distributed and/or taken in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Project: Positive Future, a packaging design, awareness campaign and mobile network support system for patients taking Triumeq anti-retroviral medicine in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Award: Winner of the GSK internship award
Project: Medical Symbol Language Kit, a kit for pharmacies and/or individuals that includes posters, stickers, and instruction sheets to help people in areas with low-literacy to understand when, how and how much medicine to take.
Award: Winner of the RSA Fellows’ Award
Daisy Handley and Beth Dobson, Kingston University
Project: Edu-kanga
Award: Commended
Sponsored by RBS
Design and develop a compelling vision and business case for an environment or situation that prompts and fosters creative thinking.
Project: The Creative Satchel, a personalised flexible satchel that folds out to create an individualised workspace complete with technology to promote creativity and provide a sense of personal space in hot-desking workspaces.
Award: Winner of the RBS Award for the Best Design Project
Project: Watercooler, a community-based service designed to get people in Dublin into a creative mind-set and thinking more clearly. Through playful furniture, installations, workshops and ‘daily topics’, Watercooler helps to defocus your mind from the mundane every day, and spark the creative flow that exists within us all.
Awards: Winner of the RBS Award for the Best Business Case
George Archer, Northumbria University
Project: Thought Atlas
Award: Highly Commended
Ayshah Aziz, Edinburgh College of Art
Project: Same Difference
Award: Commended
Flavia Yoshitake and Andre Ishimoto, University of the Arts London
Project: Laboratory
Award: Commended
Dree Velicaria, Loughborough University
Project: Swop!
Award: Commended
Fatma Al Mansoury, Middlesex University
Project: The Box
Award: Highly Commended
Sponsored by Airbnb
Design a way to keep the sharing economy fair so more people will participate in it.
Project: The Sharing Club, the Union for people who don’t have a Union: a service design proposal for a new ‘union’ for people who participate in the sharing economy where they have more power to address issues; the aim is the participants in the sharing economy are valued more as employees rather than disposable assets.
Award: Joint winner of Air B&B cash prize
Project: Dare to Share: A book that aids teenagers and those aged 18-30 in their sharing mentality; the books aims to increase awareness of how, when and where people share or don’t share and further aims to propel interest in the sharing economy.
Award: Joint winners of Air B&B cash prize
James Washington, Buckinghamshire New University
Project: Intershare
Award: Commended
Sponsored by the Office for Disability Issues (ODI)
Design an inclusive building, place, or space so that it is easily and comfortably accessed and used by everyone.
Project: A More Inclusive Pedestrian Wayfinding System: a wayfinding system building on the existing ‘Legible London’ system that uses universal design principles and simple way-finding techniques to create an enhanced and more user-friendly pedestrian navigation system for all users.
Award: Winner of ODI cash prize
Project: Sign Out Loud, an online and sticker campaign that highlights the communication needs of people who are deaf, deafened or hard-of-hearing by encouraging the identification and registration of places that are – or are not – accessible and comfortable, evaluating how the facilities and the people who work in them demonstrate awareness of need, attitude and general hospitality to the deaf community.
Award: Winner of the Burohappold Internship Award
Sponsored by an anonymous donor
Design a way to enable more people to enjoy the benefits of making.
Project: Maker Blocks: an innovative and challenging play experience that transports physical toy creations into the virtual world. Targeted at 7 – 12 year olds, Maker Blocks is a virtual city building game played on a tablet device, but requiring players to use physical making skills to construct things that then feed back into the virtual game.
Award: Winner of RSA Fellows’ Award
Project: Playmake: a custom tablet app for 7 – 12 year old children on the autistic spectrum, who also suffer from sensory integration difficulties. The Playmake system generates tailored crafts and activities, specifically based on the individuals’ sensory needs, which help the child become more expressive, independent, adaptable and sociable.
Award: Winner of RSA Award
Jack Waghorn and Tess Sieling, University of the West of England
Project: Instrumental
Award: Highly Commended
Sponsored by RBS
Design a way for people to improve their financial capability and manage their money better.
Project: ‘M’, a wearable gadget and an app that autonomously tracks all expenses and segments them into spending categories without the user having to input the data, which is a major hurdle for young people using existing budget management apps.
Award: Winner of the RBS Award
Project: The Compass, a chargeable banking service that helps family-owned SMEs work toward a more sustainable future, with both online and offline interactions to address key barriers to SME-bank interaction, namely trust, financing options, and strategic goals.
Awards: Winner of the RSA Fellows’ Award
Max Pyuman, University of Nottingham
Project: ‘inControl’
Awards: Highly Commended
Sponsored by The Bryan Foster Legacy to the RSA
Conceive and produce an animation to accompany one of the two selected audio files that will clarify, energise and illuminate the content.
Project: A Brighter Future, an animation bringing together various styles – hand drawing, stop motion and more – that revolves around the naivety of childlike drawings and how it plays an important factor for building bigger and brighter futures.
Award: Winner of the Foster Award
Project: Painterly Flow - a painterly animation based on principles of minimalism, reduction and transition that aims to inspire people to think further about issues to do with climate change and modern society.
Award: Winner of the Foster Award
Sponsored by the Patricia Tindale Legacy & the Eddie Squires Legacy, in partnership with the Materials Council and with additional support from Springetts and Natracare
Design a way to help eliminate the concept of waste within developed societies by promoting it as a valuable material resource.
Project: Iro, a new material developed from reprocessed paint and ink waste that is used to make furniture, jewellery, interior finishes and covers.
Award: Winner of the Springetts Internship Award
Project: Aeropowder, a novel insulation material made from feather waste material. It is has the same performance as synthetic insulation products but is more eco-friendly as it uses a waste product. A range of different products and materials made from feather waste material are currently in development.
Award: Winner of the Natracare Award
Project: Plyjeans, a new material made from waste denim that utilizes its existing fabric structure. Plyjeans comprises stacked layers of denim from old jeans that can be cut, milled, and bent to make furniture and other objects – at the end of their life, these can be shredded and the fibres reused.
Award: Winner of the Eddie Squires Award
Project: New Life Knits, a knitwear range made from recycled yarn combined with stronger fabrics, and strengthened in high-wear areas (such as the elbows) to make it more durable. The knit products retain desirable aesthetics whilst having a higher quality and longer life than mainstream attire.
Award: Winner of the Eddie Squires Award
Sponsored by PriestmanGoode & The Eden Project
Design a product, system or campaign that is specifically intended to help people and communities in rural areas to flourish.
Project: 50/50, a biodegradable container designed to help amateur farmers to carry their crops by hand. The conical container is made from areca leaf which is durable, environmentally friendly, and absorbs moisture to keep produce fresh for longer.
Award: Winner of the Eden Project Award
Project: Eco-Grill, a safe, efficient and sustainable portable cooker that responds to problems arising from barbequing in the New Forest. Developed using circular design principles, Eco-Grill uses locally produced charcoal and has a flameless ignition.
Award: Winner of the Priestmangoode Internship Award
Costas Hadjipateras, University of Nottingham
Project: Saber
Award: Highly Commended
Will Dover, Buckinghamshire New University
Project: Insitor
Award: Commended
Sponsored by Unilever
Design a product or system that allows people to wash and clean themselves using less water and/or lower water temperatures.
Project: WUDU Water Saver, a product that allows Muslims to practice the obligatory cleansing ritual of Wudu, while also reducing personal water consumption but still allowing enough water to wash the face, arms and feet during the ritual.
Award: Winner of Unilever Award
Claudia Brewster, Northumbria University
Project: Bath Boat
Award: Highly Commended
Tom Nethercott-Garabet, University of Nottingham
Project: Wateur
Award: Commended
Claire Langer, Kingston University
Project: Singalong
Award: Commended
Sponsored by Philips
Empower people who live with long term, lifestyle-related health conditions to take a greater role in managing their own care.
Project: FrailTea, a system for collecting and analyzing grip data via daily kettle usage, which provides caregivers with an accurate daily picture of their elderly patients’ frailty statistics. Early identification of frailty allows for tailored care planning that enables elderly sufferers to live more independently, avoid potentially devastating trips and falls, and stay out of hospital.
Award: Winner of the Philips Internship Award
Project: Dharavi Diabetes Care, a campaign in India’s largest slum, Dharavi, that aims to raise awareness around foot care and empowers diabetes sufferers to identify the symptoms that can lead to gangrene and amputations (85% of which are preventable). The campaign is designed to run by the Mithi River, the sole source of water through the city that the majority of the population uses daily, and it uses pictograms alongside text to overcome low levels of literacy in the area.
Award: Winner of the RSA Fellows’ Award
Joseph Friend, Loughborough University
Project: ‘Pulse’ Hypertension Companion
Award: Highly Commended
Aaron Ringel & Madeline Mason, University of Cincinnati
Project: Sequence
Award: Commended
Vinnay Chhabildas, Loughborough University
Project: Pulsus
Award: Commended
Sponsored by Fazer with additional support from Waitrose
Design a way to encourage and support individuals, households, businesses and/or communities to reduce food waste.
Project: SI-LOW, a low-cost household grain storage unit designed to stop the post-harvest loss of grain commonly found in smallholder farming in Africa.
Award: Winner of the Fazer Award
Project: It’s great to hydrate, a three-step behaviour change campaign and practice aiming to inform the public about how hydrating vegetables can help them keep for longer and will encourage waste reduction in the process; the three steps are: 1. Poster campaign to raise awareness, 2. Hydration bags to change behaviour, 3. Sticker identification for suitable vegetables.
Award: Winner of the Waitrose Internship Award
Jenny Liu, Brunel University
Project: Everyday Frozen
Award: Highly Commended
Rebecca Hollingsworth, Leeds College of Art
Project: Taste It, Don’t Waste It
Award: Commended
Adam Cheung, Ulster University
Project: Lök Fruit Bowl
Award: Commended
See the winning submissions from past Student Design Awards.
Our competition for emerging designers who want to make a difference.