Student Design Awards winners 2015-16

View the full gallery of winning and commended work on our Facebook page.

Africa Pack

Sponsored by GSK

Improve the way medicines are protected, dispensed, distributed and/or taken in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Megan Sands and Sarah Twaddell, National College of Art & Design (Dublin)

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

Winner: Jonathan Stannard, Blackpool & the Flyde College

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

Commended project

Daisy Handley and Beth Dobson, Kingston University

Project: Edu-kanga
Award: Commended

Creative Conditions

Sponsored by RBS

Design and develop a compelling vision and business case for an environment or situation that prompts and fosters creative thinking.

Winner: Raluca Babau, University of Northampton

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

Winner: Alan MacFarlane and Mirna Maye, The National College of Art & Design, Dublin

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

Commended projects

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

Fair Share

Sponsored by Airbnb

Design a way to keep the sharing economy fair so more people will participate in it.

Winner: Daniel Hands, University of Lincoln

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

Winner: Leah Witton, Tom Williams, and Ella Taylor, University of the West of England

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

Commended project

James Washington, Buckinghamshire New University

Project: Intershare 
Award: Commended

Inclusive Cities

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.

Winner: Deborah Abidakun, De Montfort University

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

Winner: Maryia Virshych, Centro Universitario de Diseno de Barcelona

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

Making it Inclusive

Sponsored by an anonymous donor

Design a way to enable more people to enjoy the benefits of making.

Winner: Sam Hemming, Loughborough University

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

Winner:  Gabrielle Leighton, Nottingham Trent University

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

Commended project

Jack Waghorn and Tess Sieling, University of the West of England

Project: Instrumental
Award: Highly Commended

Mind Your Money

Sponsored by RBS

Design a way for people to improve their financial capability and manage their money better.

Winner: Jan Rosicky, Prague College

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

Johnny Jiang, Ji Hae Kim, Leopoldo Tacchini and Sungjin Hong, Royal College of Art

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

Commended project

Max Pyuman, University of Nottingham

Project: ‘inControl’
Awards: Highly Commended

Moving Pictures

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.

Winner: Patrick Horan, Limerick School of Art & Design

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

Winner: Sharon Ross, Ulster University, Belfast

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

One Man's Waste

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.

Winner: Hoda Khoja, Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton

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

Winner: Elena Dieckmann and Ryan Robinson, Royal College of Art and Imperial College London

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

Winner: Simon Van Pottelbergh, LUCA School of Arts, Belgium

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

Winner: Iqra Arshid & Julie Mapes, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design, University of Dundee

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

Project Rural

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.

Winner: Kenneth Lee, Hong Kong Design Institute

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

Winner: Sam Troop, Loughborough University

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

Commended projects

Costas Hadjipateras, University of Nottingham

Project: Saber
Award: Highly Commended

Will Dover, Buckinghamshire New University

Project: Insitor
Award: Commended

Sustainably Clean

Sponsored by Unilever

Design a product or system that allows people to wash and clean themselves using less water and/or lower water temperatures. 

Winner: Ahmed Salah, University of East London

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

Commended projects

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

The Good Life

Sponsored by Philips

Empower people who live with long term, lifestyle-related health conditions to take a greater role in managing their own care. 

Winner: Callum Smith, Northumbria University

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

Winner: Melissa Casey, University of Lincoln

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

Commended projects

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

Waste Not Want Not

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.

Winner: Anthony Brown, University of Nottingham

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

Winner: Poppy Crow, Northumbria University

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

Commended projects

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