“Following this I tried to think of a situation that everyone must do but not very many people enjoy doing. It was only when I went home shortly after the brief was set that, while helping out with the cleaning at home, I stopped to consider how many jobs the four of us were accomplishing.
“The only job we all did was dusting the house. It was then a small leap of logic to assume every household was the same, and that I only needed to conduct research to see if my theory was correct.”
Tom has ambitions to secure the funding that would enable him to complete a version of the device that could be sold to the public. “That is a long-term goal and something I might have to tinker with until I have the required funding,” he added.
The theme of the Product Design showcase was ‘single living’. Research from the Office for National Statistics that shows roughly 28% of households in the UK contain just one person, meaning the idea of the traditional home is changing. As a result, the products we use in the household are also in a state of flux.
Damon Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Architecture and Design, said: “It was very encouraging to see that the students had responded to their brief with intelligence and sensitivity.
“The prototypes they are exhibiting in this show demonstrate a depth of research and a real effort to innovate around an issue that is the mark of good design. They are also in many cases showing a real ability to engineer viable solutions to difficult problems while crafting functional and desirable products that people would really use.”