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A Coupar Angus student's design for an after dinner mint that helps fight plaque has won her an internship worth £7,500 with GlaxoSmithKline in the RSA Design Directions 2004.
Katy Buchan (21), a BDes (Hons) Consumer Product Design student at Napier University's School of Design and Media Arts, won the prize in the medical products category of the competition, which attracted 1,500 students from all over Europe.
Her brief was to design an oral healthcare product that would re-engage consumers.
Katy said: "The aim of the concept was to alter the perception of oral healthcare and make a product less clinical than the options already on the market. I wanted to bring dental hygiene to the dinner table.
"My product has a digestible, transparent gum to fight plaque, mint particles to freshen breath and a toothpick. It also combats the social stigma of chewing gum as the user does not need to find a means of disposal."
Rupert Sherwood, lecturer at the School of Design and Media Arts, said: "This is a superb achievement of Katy and I'm sure the travel award will prove invaluable. Napier students won £18,500 worth of prizes overall which demonstrates the quality of the courses and the students at the university."
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Among the major mistakes made by local small and medium enterprises today is the tendency to overlook the inherent importance of a product's design.
In fact, according to a Universiti Teknologi Mara lecturer, young creative minds can contribute to the branding of products.
"The problem with SMEs today is a lack of awareness of the benefits that can be reaped from research and development, which can improve the quality and branding of a product in the long run," says Mohd Shaleh Mujir, lecturer and industry correspondent for UiTM's Faculty of Art & Design in Shah Alam.
He recommended that designers be given more prominent roles in company operations as an incentive for more people to enter the profession, and thus enhancing the quality of designs for local products.
However, a company's attitude is not the only element in need of change. Designers themselves must adapt their designs to satisfy the innovation-hungry, convenience-seekin g consumers of today.
"Designers must understand the concept of universality. This means that their products can be adopted by the widest possible range of people.
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thestar... (38)
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WRENCH PLM has helped BHEL reduce design document movement time by 35 percent and cut advice processing time by 50 percent, a perfect example of how Indian product manufacturers can bring products faster to market by reducing the time spent in designing products, says Akhtar Pasha.
Bharat Heavy Electricals (BHEL), Hardwar, designs and manufactures a large number of products such as hydro, gas and steam turbines, turbo generators, condensers and motors. Products manufactured at BHEL's Hardwar unit are mostly engineered-to-orde r. Implementing WRENCH PLM from Cadd Solutions helped BHEL cut down product design cycle time, and in improving its change advice system, thereby bringing out products faster to market.
The Engineering Design department of BHEL prepares engineering drawings, which are then approved by its technology arm before releasing the same for manufacturing. It is a critical process as the technology cell first studies the feasibility of manufacturing the components in-house. The check-prints of a drawing are sent to the technology section as paper printouts. The technologists work on these paper drawings, adding comments and remarks. The process was complex and time-consuming and following up on these drawings was a tedious process. Some critical problems BHEL h
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www.exp... (44)
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Design is not a last-minute gloss after 'real product development,' writes Bruce Nussbaum in his foreword to Creating Breakthrough Products, by Jonathan Cagan and Craig M. Vogel, and published by Pearson Education. "Design is fast becoming a key corporate asset, essential to establishing and extending brands, transforming new technologies into usable products, and bridging company identities and customer loyalties," adds Nussbaum.
Don't fool yourself into thinking that consumers want more functionalities, because the opposite could be true. It is design that works like a filter to multiple options thrown by technology, "fitting them appropriately to what people actually want and need."
For the authors, both from Carnegie Mellon University, new product development is like rock climbing that needs the right tools, plan and team. It is "not a free fall" where magic hands would help you glide through to profit land. "Form follows function is no longer relevant. We are now in a period when form and function must fulfil fantasy." Your product should 'connect.' With what? "With the values of customers." Else, it fails. Remember: "The road from the patent office is strewn with good ideas that never made the leap from concept to market."
Product development is
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How much has technology really changed our daily lives? We asked a highly wired writer to spend 10 days in the big city living with the technology of 50 years ago. No Web, no cell, no laptop, no ATM card.
(by Larry Smith from PopSci & Illustration by Tavis Coburn).
Mornings are the worst.
The coffee is too weak. The windup alarm clock is too loud. The phone rings, and it might or might not be my mom. There are no new e-mails. There is no hope for a Krispy Kreme. And man, oh man, I miss my Ambien.
Why have I subjected myself to life without a PDA? Why did I agree to a plan that forced me to spend New Year's Day watching the Gators in black and white, while the rest of the civilized world rings in the new year with Hoppin' John and the Orange Bowl in glorious Technicolor (or better yet, on TiVo with full control over instant replay and super slo-mo)? Why, oh why, am I spending the first 10 days of 2004 attempting to work, play and party like it's 1954?
I was born in 1968. One of my mom's favorite photos is of her holding baby me in front of TV images of Buzz Aldrin's first Moon walk. I'm old enough to remember life before PCs and ATMs, but young enough to embrace NetFlix and Wi-Fi'ing at Starbucks. I have 10,000 songs on my hard drive, but I derive mor
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