Design Thinking Project Became Winner of James Dyson Award in Hong Kong Region
An innovative project developed in the four-week Design Thinking course collaborated by the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) and the China Academy of Art (CAA) received recognition outside the classroom as it was named the National Winner of the James Dyson Award 2017 in the Hong Kong region.
The awardees were Karen Shuk Kwan Yau (BEng in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management) and Lilian Ka Lai Tsang (BSc in Environmental Management and Technology), who created WOLO, a health detecting system for children, with two CAA teammates in June 2017. The project was supervised by a joint teaching team which was composed of Profs Ravindra Goonetilleke (Industrial Engineering and Logistics Management), Huamin Qu, Xiaojuan Ma (both Computer Science and Engineering) from HKUST and three instructors from CAA.
WOLO caters to the medical needs of children and informs parents of their children’s health status so as to ease their worries. It includes a pair of temperature rings for parents to feel their children’s body temperature, a wearable health detecting band that measures the body temperature and pulse of children, and an app that enables parents to monitor their children’s health status remotely.
In addition to performing the health monitoring function of existing products on the market, WOLO fulfills the emotional needs of both parents and children. Its temperature ring connects children’s temperature to parents and the “animal hug” health detecting band, which is designed in the shape of an animal’s arm, enables children to feel the warmth and care from their parents.
The James Dyson Award is an international design award that aims to inspire the next generation of design engineers. It is open to university students and recent graduates in the fields of product design, industrial design, and engineering in 23 regions worldwide. Outstanding entries in each region are selected to compete for the international honor. The award is run by the James Dyson Foundation, James Dyson’s charitable trust, as part of its mission to get young people excited about design engineering.
Related Link(s)
About The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) (www.ust.hk) is a world-class research university that focuses on science, technology and business as well as humanities and social science. HKUST offers an international campus, and a holistic and interdisciplinary pedagogy to nurture well-rounded graduates with global vision, a strong entrepreneurial spirit and innovative thinking. HKUST attained the highest proportion of internationally excellent research work in the Research Assessment Exercise 2014 of Hong Kong’s University Grants Committee, and is ranked as the world’s best young university in Times Higher Education’s Young University Rankings 2019. Its graduates were ranked 16th worldwide and top in Greater China in Global University Employability Survey 2018.
