The sky’s the limit in the field of design. With more than 30 years in practice, Designworks is a team of designers who have made a big name in the product designing industry with its compelling and innovative design solutions. It is a creative design consultancy firm founded by Peter Rickett and Jeremy Gardner in 1991. Designworks does not offer its service to just one market sector. They are expanded across diverse market sectors from retail and medical to experiential and digital technologies.
The company aims not just to create a great design but to remain focused and committed to delivering first-class solutions every time. With products becoming embedded in technology, technological and electronic integration forms an important core to the product development process at Designworks.
Below are some exciting and revolutionary projects handled by the firm.
1. Miura Systems – ITP | Designworks
Miura Systems are leading providers of secure electronic hardware. In correspondence to Miura systems, Designworks has successfully developed all in one tablet Point of Sale terminal (POS terminal) with ease to make the payment landscape flexible for users.
The product, ITP, delivers a seamless in-store experience to users. Rather than just being a tablet payment POS, ITP also functions as a cash drawer and a printer. The design serves as a compact and affordable mobile future of retail payments in stores. The team at Designworks has integrated ITP with Fuse Smart Hub connects and powers everything that’s docked, and is also equipped for the future with a range of physical ports that support a broad range of 3rd party peripherals.
2. Dell- TBOT
TBOT is a vinyl figure developed by Designworks for Dell. It was part of a marketing giveaway, and to avoid it being discarded or gathering dust, the team worked on its functionality. The product holds a phone and charging cable at a perfect viewing angle, portrait, and landscape.
3. Delta Coffee- Alqimia
Delta is a Portugal-based coffee roasting and coffee manufacturing company. The rise of café culture and the capsule-based coffee machine had pressured Delta to re-establish itself, giving way to Designworks to develop a unique, fully automated product that used patented capsule technology.
With a blend of mechanical and electrical engineering expertise, Designworks successfully developed a flagship coffee machine for Delta. They addressed the needs of consumers and gave a stylized form to the machine that stands out from other competitors in the retail environment.
This product has changed the identity of Delta as a coffee brand that delivers the complete process and not just the consumable. Delta has now created the foundation for future designs and development, with a wide range of key features developed by Designworks.
4. Atlantic Therapeutic – Innovo
Innovo is a product developed by Designworks in the medical sector. It is in collaboration with Atlantic Therapeutic. Atlantic Therapeutic is an Irish medical technology company that develops products that help pelvic floor muscle strengthening and nerve stimulation. The target group for the product is females who have some form of bladder weakness. Innovo is an innovative non-invasive solution to treat urinary self-resistance.
Innovo is developed with their Multipath Technology into a commercially viable solution. Multipath Technology is proven to optimally strengthen the pelvic floor and re-educate the muscles that control bladder function. The product is controlled with a hand-held controller that connects to the shorts and allows the user to change the intensity of the stimulations. The technology uses electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) to deliver pelvic floor contractions to the entire network of pelvic floor muscles every 30-minute session.
5. Clarks- Baby Walker | Designworks
For this product, Designworks worked with Clarks, a British company, for designing walkers. The key concept was for the product to be adjustable to suit the growing child. The product focuses on the stage from walking and into the early stages of mobility. It is designed using premium materials and has created a strong design identity. Designworks themed it to be a walker that grows with the child.
6. Clarks- Findits
In another collaboration with Clarks, Designworks teamed up to deliver a campaign in the form of toys in shoes. This final product intended to design shoes with a ‘Back to Nature’ theme and a cavity core out of both the soles of children’s pairs of shoes.
The team took the challenge and expanded the main theme of shoes that encourages children’s curiosity and discovery of nature and the outdoors. Four characters were developed for the shoes which have a story and an apparatus.
The main body is split from the legs which contain a LED PCB and holds any of the four tools offered- magnifying glass, compass, pair of tweezers, and a mini kaleidoscope. The bug body fits in one shoe cavity and the legs on the other.
More than 200,000 Findits have been manufactured at Designworks Hong Kong through our partners.
7. Kidtellect- Tiggly Shapes
Tiggly Shapes is a toy with an interactive iPad screen and app technologies that increases a child’s spatial reasoning, motor skills, and language skills. As a part of this product, Designworks created a series of bright, colorful soft shapes that interacts well with the iPad and creates a unique engaging toy for toddlers.
Tiggly shapes provide children with 4 colorful interactive blocks and combine the best of physical toy’s tangible play value with digital learning. Tiggly has won numerous awards for innovation including the 2014 KAPi Award at CES and Tillywig Brain Child Award for toys.
8. Ford- Emoji Jacket
Designworks was approached by Ford to develop a unique Emoji jacket as a part of their ‘Share the Road’ safety campaign for road users. The technology innovated is capable of visualizing rider emotions and intentions that allows cyclists to communicate with other drivers, improving their safety.
To achieve this, a display and visualization system was developed able to take inputs from the rider through the handlebar-mounted control system. This system translates emotion into simple emojis displayed across 720 individually addressable LEDs on the rear jacket.
It is the first of its kind jacket that works in easing road tensions and improving drivers’ and riders’ relationships.
9. Puttshack
Puttshack is a ‘World’s First’ cutting edge social entertaining concept, with a patented technology to catapult the traditional game of mini-golf into a game phenomenon.
Designworks have collaborated with the team at Puttshack and their technological partners. They lead the research, design, and manufacturing to create a unique experience with the ability to blend digital and physical aspects that creates inclusive social play.
To ensure results were according to initial aspiration, the technologies from laser cutting machines to 3D printers were used to test the prototypes. The result came through two years of design and engineering, giving a multi-sensory mini-golf gaming experience like no other.
10. Hasbro- Monopoly | Designworks
Everyone is familiar with the world-famous game, Monopoly. Despite its popularity, it faced a challenge in maintaining its relevance with customers. To keep its forefront in-game market, Designworks worked with Hasbro, the owner company of Monopoly, in coming up with relevant movers and buildings to represent each region on the globe.
The team at Designworks worked on the project through conceptual design stages onto 3D data generation and finally handed over the production information to Hasbro’s manufacturing partners to create high-volume elements of the games.
Reference:
- Designworks | Award-winning rapid product design and manufacturing business. (n.d.). Designworks | Award-winning rapid product design and manufacturing business. [online] Available at: https://www.designworks.studio [Accessed 24 Apr. 2022].
