Product Design undergraduate Tim Spears is currently interning as an online design editor at designboom in Milan. Reading (and contributing to) digital design journals/forums is fast becoming a daily activity for most creative professionals, but what happens behind the scenes?
Tim kindly paused to write us a ‘day in the life’:
Mowing / Digging / Dr Paul Alexander (left) of the RHS and Dr James Shippen
The design of gardening tools and their effect on the physical health of gardeners are being explored by Coventry University and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) as part of a joint study.
Product Design student Zahari-Petar Radev has recently won second prize in the Rapid.Tech Student Design and Engineering Awards (out of 1800 entries), winning €1000. He entered the competition during his Erasmus Work Placement in Bayreuth, Germany.
Zahari at the Awards (3rd from Left)
He said: “It is a very prestigious competition. Rapid prototyping and 3D printing is the future and to have a prize in this arena shows that I am proactively seeking out solutions for the future. The judges liked my idea because it was innovative. The prize money will come in very useful but the networking I have experienced through the placement and the competition are more valuable than anything.”
TN
MSc Industrial Design student Selin Koşağan has been shortlisted for this year’s prestigious Electrolux Design Lab competition with her concept Fabric Assistances. We wish her the best of luck.
“Each year, Electrolux Design Lab inspires design students all over the world, by painting a picture of the future as a starting point for their creative process.”
MSc Design and Transport students were treated to a look at Travel De Courcey’s battery electric powered Optare Versa buses on Monday morning this week. Travel company boss Mike De Courcey explained it had been his ambition to be the first UK operator to use the buses fitted with the fast charging technology at the War Memorial Park bus stop. The three buses are being exclusively used for the Park & Ride South to city-centre route. With a maximum range of approx 70 miles on a full charge, these first generation buses manage 9 or more round trips before needing a top-up charge from the fast charging points. The buses are recharged at the end of the day’s operations at the bus depot at Rowley Drive, near Coventry Airport using a trickle charger on-board the vehicles from a 3-phase mains supply.
Design Workshop from Marieke de Vogel with students from Product Design: 10th February 2014
Marieke de Vogel with the third year Product Design students
Marieke de Vogel, Senior Lecturer in Multimedia Design from The HAN University in Holland delivered a ‘pressure cooker’ workshop to our third year Product Design students during a recent trip to the UK. At the moment she is researching adult play with smart designer toys in modern ludic times. The aim of this workshop was to create a playful interactive collaborative experience with the emphasis of developing toy designs. The workshop used padlet (an interactive message wall) and Facebook to support the research, development and evaluation stages of the design process. The students had to design a ‘blank canvas’ toy with a background story and posted the results to a specially opened Facebook page for this occasion. ‘Bob’ the alien from Daniel Frances had the most likes and vas taken forward for development by the entire group.