The Red Dot Award has a rich history spanning over half a century and is recognised as one of the three major design awards in the world. Their entries stood out among over 4,000 submissions from more than 50 countries and regions worldwide, earning them the 2024 "Red Dot Concept Award."

Xiaoxi and Zhiyi's "Memory" is an assistive device for elderly people with cognitive impairments. It consists of a necklace, a ring, and several tags. When the patient approaches a medication bottle with an NFC tag, the ring automatically reads the information and transmits it to the necklace via Bluetooth. The necklace then plays the reminder, helping to trigger the patient's memory. "I hope to help them live more independently and with greater dignity," explained Xiaoxi.

Hoilam also put her eye on the elderly with her "Grippy" VR game controller, specially designed for elderly grip strength practice while gaming. "Grippy" is paired with VR games to motivate grip exercises. The product incorporates various details, such as textured designs for improved grip stability, to enhance the experience and meet the needs of elderly users.

Over the past six months, Xiaoxi and Hoilam felt that their professional skills, design thinking and research exploration abilities had significantly improved." I have developed a complete design thinking framework during the process, and it continuously motivates me to seek the best solutions," recalled Xiaoxi. Hoilam hoped that in the future, she would continue to focus on human-centred design.

These two award-winning works both come from the FURP summer research project of the Design Competition at FoSE, UNNC. The Professors who participated in the guidance all come from the discipline of Product Design and Manufacture. The international professional guidance team has laid a solid foundation for the awards. As the person in charge of the project, Dr Wu Jiang shared, "The Design Competition Summer Research Project at FoSE is fully supported and funded by the UNNC Education Foundation. It aims to encourage students to pay attention to global social issues and explore creative solutions to complex problems using cutting-edge technology. Last year, when the project was launched, the award-winning students were still juniors and seniors. Today, being able to share the glory with top global designers fully affirms the boundless innovative potential of the younger generation in China."

Professor Xu Sun, Professor in Industrial Design and Manufacture and Associate Dean for Global Engagement and Partnerships, Dr Jiang Wu, Assistant Professor in PDM, and Loïc Faulon, Tutor in PDM, supervised the project and guided the students to refine the works. "We encourage students to actively engage with global social issues and use cutting-edge technology to solve problems," Dr Wu noted.