A desk-top medical instrument steriliser, an engaging device to help children cope with medical procedures, a small nuclear diamond battery-powered GPS beacon, and a saliva test for medical cannabis patients before driving, have netted four QUT Industrial Design 2022 graduating students wins in the Australian Good Design Award.
(Image: Main photo: Isaac Bonora. Inset from top: Christina Chan, Ethan Brown, Liam Lusky)
The four QUT students who took out awards for designs produced for their final-year projects in Industrial Design are:
Isaac Bonora received a Gold Good Design Award in the NextGen category for his final year honours project, modClave, a modular sterilisation appliance designed to eliminate the waste of single use metalware instruments in small-to-medium sized medical practices.
The modClave is a compact, elegant device that can replace the prohibitively expensive, energy-heavy, traditional autoclaves and sterilise instruments for reuse in three steps – a pressure wash to remove debris, an ultrasonic clean and lastly a 132-degree steam wash.
Mr Bonora said that for him the most challenging part of design was the unknown.
“That 'aha' moment is what I enjoy most about design, the realisation that you're onto something and applying it to tangible solutions is incredibly gratifying,” Mr Bonora said.
“By eliminating the need to discard metal medical instruments, we save an enormous amount of waste, not just the instruments, but their plastic packaging and the transport costs and emissions required to get them to the practice.”
Organised through the BMW Group + QUT Design Academy, Mr Bonora is currently based in Germany where he is applying human-centred design techniques to enhance customer satisfaction as an intern at Idealworks, a BMW company.
The Good Design Awards Jury commented: “This is a fantastic project that has delivered a neat and convenient solution to metal-ware waste in the medical industry. We found the real world applications to be particularly impressive.”
Christina Chan’s project, Tokeventure, is an engaging, colourful, electronic game using education, distraction, and rewards to improve the mental health of children aged 3 to 7 with long-term illnesses.
To fulfil her design brief to develop a product that helps reduce the procedural anxiety of children, Ms Chan interviewed paediatricians, GPs, and play therapists.
Tokeventure prepares the child before the procedure with tokens and a phone application, distracts during the procedure with interactive games, and rewards with a collection of tokens when the procedure is over.
Ethan Brown’s Geo-Light project was developed to overcome the limited power capacity and dim lights of emergency beacon devices.
He explored the use of nuclear diamond batteries to self-generate power by storing beta radiation released by nuclear isotopes for their potential in mining, military and medical applications.
Mr Brown interviewed participants from all three industries who recommended emergency lighting beacons as an ideal product to explore. The Geo-Light is designed with a strap and buckle so it could be attached to life vests, backpacks and strapped round a limb for water sports such as surfing and ocean diving.
Liam Lusky designed an electrochemical saliva tester, Delta Sens, that allows medicinal cannabis patients to measure the concentration of Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) the psychoactive component of cannabis. 
It is illegal to drive with any amount of THC in your system, including medicinal cannabis patients who may test positive even if they do not feel impaired. Delta Sens incorporates a reusable device with single-use testing strips to capture and analyse a saliva sample. It connects to the user’s mobile for power, and data transfer through the Data Sens App for real-time THC salivary concentration. After several results Delta Sens can map the user’s metabolism of THC and predict the time it would be eliminated from saliva to allow patients to plan their dosing schedule so they can drive when needed.
Some QUT Industrial Design alumni were part of design teams which took out Good Design Awards including:
- BruderX EXP-8 - Gold Winner in the Automotive & Transportation category for an all-terrain caravan
- Worm Mod - a large-scale, modular worm farm by Worms Downunder in the Product – in the Commercial and Industrial category.
- Sea to Summit had three wins with designs by Design + Industry: Frontier Ultralight Series, an innovative, minimalist, lightweight range of cookware, utensils, and dinnerware was the gold winner in the Sport and Lifestyle category; and two Good Design Awards – Product Sport and Lifestyle category for the Detour Kitchen Collection and Passage (The Traveller) range.
- SYSTM Furniture won Best in Class award for Furniture and Lighting with their seating for aged care by LifeCare Furniture and Clandestine Design Group. QUT design researchers Professor Thea Blackler, Professor Marianella Chamorro-Koc and Dr Claire Brophy worked with industry partner LifeCare Furniture, who funded the study, to understand the environments of aged-care residents and enhance their quality of life. This research informed the design of this award-winning furniture.
QUT Industrial Design lecturer Dr Shayne Beaver said the course goes beyond merely imparting skills to foster a holistic design mindset that values creativity, empathy, critical thinking, and adaptability.
“We are incredibly proud of all our NextGen and our Alumni Good Design Award winners. All these designs have the potential to enhance the lives of not only their users, but those around them and the environment,” Dr Beaver said.
“You can see evidence of our teaching practices in the breadth and relevance of these fantastic award winners.”
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Niki Widdowson, 07 3138 2999 or n.widdowson@qut.edu.au
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