The Department of Design Innovation are excited to announce that three of our Product Design Erasmus Students were announced as Joint Winners of the highly prestigious Student RSA Design Awards 2018. The competition saw entries from 27 countries across 4 continents and from over 130 different courses. Jon Schwarzmann, Tino Duralija, Academy of Fine Arts and Design, University of Ljubljana, and Franziska Schranz, FH Oberösterreich undertook this project during their Erasmus programme at the Department of Design Innovation, Maynooth University.
Under the Hygenic Home category – sponsored by Eureka, the brief was to design or re-design a floor cleaning product that will make cleaning easier and more effective, enabling older people to maintain their independence for longer. With their design ‘The Smartbot’ robot vacuum cleaner, a laser directed robot vacuum cleaner, which eliminates bending and muscle load, they were awarded Joint winner of the Eureka Award of £3000. Anthony Cleary, the module lecturer commented “I am delighted to hear that Jon, Franziska and Tino are joint winners of an RSA design award 2018. We had a number of very innovative solutions for the project which we focussed on in our Universal Design module, but the way this team came together with such an incredible work ethic, attention to detail and clearly impressive results. They thoroughly deserve to win. Well done guys”.
The RSA Student Design Awards is a global curriculum and annual competition for higher education students and recent graduates run by the RSA. Each year the Awards challenge emerging designers to tackle a range of design briefs focused on pressing social, environmental and economic issues. The competition has helped identify solutions and talent that have had a huge impact in the world.