Make a difference, right here, right now
If someone said you could change the world, you might not believe them. Especially if they said you might do it before you even finished uni. Read some of our students’ stories and you might just change your mind.
That’s because the best design outcomes make a difference to people’s lives, they meet real human and social needs. It could be a device that will make workplaces safer or collaborating with a vulnerable community on designing their neighbourhood. Making the world a better place is a concern that cuts across all of our degrees. How will you make your mark?
Design for good in rural Africa
Imagine taking a step toward breaking the cycle of sickness and poverty in a Ugandan Village. For a uni project. UTS student Mitch Horrocks did just that: after visiting and living in Uganda he worked with the local community to develop a stovetop extension that will reduce water-borne illness in rural African communities. It’s an inspiring example of how human-centred product design can make a real difference.
I guess honours gives you the opportunity to express what you want to make so in some ways I chose to do it and target this sort of community and the third world country because i think it could make such a big difference. You know a very small product and change a lot of people's lives and I think it's more important than something that you think in our context could change your life here. So the cycle of sickness was something that I established last year and I noticed that ladies were giving their children onboard water so once they drink that onboard water the child gets sick mother would have to take time out of her next day or the day after to take the child to the hospital maybe walk three hours spent six hours in the hospital waiting for treatment so that's maybe a day or two days when they're not working and not being in the field they don't get that money. That's when I started to think about what kind of products i could come up with to boil the water because if you can allow them to boil the water the next day the child doesn't get sick they can then save a bit of money and you alleviate not just the problem of the child getting sick but you leave the problem of the family not having enough money to buy anything. So understanding the user i think is the most important part. So my product is basically, it's a method to boil water but using something that doesn't require any more time doesn't require any more fuel source such as firewood so you've got your part on the bottom which is cooking the food you put my product on top and then you put on top of that a part of water so within half an hour we did a few tests in the village within half an hour the water was 95 degrees so by the time that these people have finished cooking the food and you know that you've got clean drinking water. It's very important that it can also be made in Uganda but more importantly be made in the villages because if they make it themselves understand how it's made they feel a strong connection to it. You know if they I just given a product and they told this boils water that will definitely not feel as strongly as they would as if they actually got to make it themselves. I'm Mitch and i'm a product design student.
Transforming an indigenous community
A small NSW rural community, a UTS connection, an Interior Architecture design studio. When these three elements combined it led to a group of UTS students working with the local indigenous community of Murrin Bridge to create a dual plan to revitalise their home by transforming and reimagining neglected buildings and public spaces.
Karl Vaupel
If you injure your back it may just mean you lose your livelihood. It’s especially the case for workers in the timber industry. Karl Vaupel tackled this problem after visiting timber mills in China as part of his Bachelor Design of Industrial Design (now Product Design). The result is Stack-Lift, a lightweight, aluminium dolly that can be rolled between the various stations in a mill. It won a 3P business plan award and is on its way to being commercialised.
Karl Vaupel: 1.4 million Australians work in manufacturing logistics, 8,000 of which are injured every year costing $79 million just in compensation. We've developed a smarter way to move stock in factories and warehouses. It's safer. It's faster. It's more versatile and it's cheaper than any other system.
Most factories and warehouses rely on forklifts and manual lifting which is slow and expensive. Stack-Lift learns from workers to automatically lift stock to the right height. It can work in any manual or computerised business and is the size of a single pallet. This unique system named Stack-Lift is very efficient to use but also to make and sell with a whole line of potential automation and integration add-ons. We've successfully trialled in New South Wales and Queensland but need financing to partner with a distributor and manufacturer for the first production run.
A St. George Kick Start will allow Stack-Lift to protect hundreds of thousands of people. We're the backbone of Australian industry.
Speaker 2: I know, that is quite good. It's quite clever actually.
