Image courtesy of the Design Council copyright 2009
The Design Council is part of the Design & Technology Alliance Against Crime – aimed at developing technology solutions to stop the baddies from beating us up and nicking our stuff. As part of this they are running a competition to find a way to make mobile phones “non-nickable”. This is great idea, and the best thing is they are throwing some proper money behind it with a total of £400,000 worth of funding for the four winning teams. The requirements are also very clear that each team must consist of technology experts and designers, with a proper design plan for how they are going to develop and implement the idea.
Design Out Crime: Hot Products
Apart from being a good way to solve phone theft, I think this is a fantastic way to bring industry and design closer together. Industry (including many of our clients) find it really hard to understand what designers do. We so often get asked to just “make it look pretty” or “do some drawings so we can get it made”… This sort of competition is a good way to showcase how product design is a force for strategic innovation, rather than just being a sticking plaster at the end of a project. I just hope it does come up with some proper solutions and then gets the airplay it deserves.
The interesting thing for us is that this is an area we have been working in for a year or so with a concept that solves all these problems… But stay tuned folks that’s for another post when we’re able to talk about it more openly! In the meantime… we’ll decide if we’ve got time to join in the competition.
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Tags: Crime, Design, Mobile Phone, Security
