Press Release
Openwear Wearable Prototype Toolkit by Leijing Zhou Is Granted the A' Design Award in Product Engineering and Technical Design
Leijing Zhou acknowledged for product engineering and technical design by the international grand jury of the 2023 - 2024 A' Design Award & Competition
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 14, 2024 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Openwear Wearable Prototype Toolkit by Leijing Zhou, designed for Zhejiang University, has been granted the A' Design Award in the Product Engineering and Technical Design category. The result belongs to the 2023 - 2024 A' Design Award & Competition and was reached through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who assessed anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
About the A' Design Award
The Iron A' Design Award is awarded to good designs that meet the rigorous professional and industrial standards set by the A' Design Awards. This recognition is reserved for works that demonstrate a solid understanding of design principles and show creativity within their execution. Recipients of the Iron A' Design Award are acknowledged for their practical innovations and contributions to their respective fields, providing solutions that improve quality of life and foster positive change. These designs are a testament to the skill and dedication of their creators, showcasing their ability to address real-world challenges through thoughtful design.
About Openwear Wearable Prototype Toolkit
Openwear is a toolkit for building wearable electronic prototypes quickly. The toolkit includes a modified Lilypad USB development board, eleven newly designed modules and quick connecting cables. Each module carries an input or output chip and six pins of 3 mm diameter. Magnets of 10 mm diameter are fixed to the back of the boards, so the parts hold onto clothes through magnetic pads instead of sewing. O-connectors and bolts join the pins. Prototypes can be built, tested and rearranged directly on fabric.
About Leijing Zhou
She has studied in the UK, the Netherlands and Singapore for many years. Her research direction is human-computer interaction and intelligent design. She has won more than 10 Red dot design awards, IF design awards etc. and published nearly 10 international journals and papers. She has participated in organizing the world industrial design conference, the world ecological design conference and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization ecological design leading class as the core personnel.
Award Record
This recognition makes Leijing Zhou a winner of 4 A' Design Awards. The awards were granted between the 2022 - 2023 and the 2023 - 2024 editions of the A' Design Award & Competition.
About the A' Product Engineering and Technical Design Award
The A' Engineering Design Award is an international competition recognizing outstanding engineering projects by top engineers and consulting firms worldwide. It is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to product engineers, technical designers, industrial designers and industrial design studios from all countries. Typical entries include blueprints, prototypes, schematics, CAD models, technical drawings and machine designs. The awarded engineering designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/engineering
About A' Design Award & Competition
Organized annually since 2008, A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The philanthropic mission of the A' Design Award is to advance society through good design, by recognizing and promoting superior products, projects and services that benefit society, and by creating a global awareness and appreciation for good design practices and principles. Nominations are peer reviewed and evaluated anonymously by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members against predetermined criteria such as functionality, ergonomics, engineering, presentation, innovation, usability, sustainability and technology, with score normalization applied to remove biases. Awards are conferred at Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze and Iron levels. Eligible laureates receive the A' Design Prize, which includes the award trophy, the certificate of design excellence, the hardcover yearbook, a lifetime license to use the A' Design Award winner logo, exhibition of awarded works, an invitation to the gala night and award ceremony in Italy, inclusion in the World Design Rankings and Designer Rankings, and public relations and publicity services. Registration, uploading a work and receiving a preliminary score are free of charge, and Professional and Digital Edition laureates are not contractually obliged to pay further fees to claim the A' Design Prize. More information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/159003
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/159003
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!159003
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/112694
Media Contact
Giulia Ferrari, Press Office
Designers.Org
Via Leone Leoni 32, 22100 Como, Italy
press@designers.org
+39 031 4491953
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Fact Sheet
The Work
- Project
- Openwear Wearable Prototype Toolkit
- Function
- Wearable Prototype Toolkit
- Category
- Product Engineering and Technical Design
- Discipline
- Industrial Design
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Colors
- Black, Dark Slate Gray, Midnight Blue, Dim Gray and Rosy Brown
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Zhejiang University
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Leijing Zhou
- Country
- China
- Recognition
- A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2023 - 2024
- Design ID
- #159003
Credits
- Team
- Xin An, Yiqing Zhang and Yang Mao
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Openwear is a toolkit for building rapid wearable prototypes. It includes a modified Lilypad USB development board, 11 newly designed modules, and quick connecting cables. This kit facilitates rapid prototyping by enabling quick attachment and connection and allows users to directly build and test prototypes on the intended substrate like clothes.
- Inspiration
- Common wearable circuits often need to be fixed using sewing, which is very cumbersome. To solve this problem, we took inspiration from magnetic buttons. We have embedded magnets in the back of the PCB to fix it using magnetic force.
- Research
- The success of the LilyPad has resulted in the creation of various development boards, such as the more compact TinyLily and the Circuit Playground with many sensors. However, these variations only modify the dimensions or integrate sensors, without modifying the Lilypad's method for constructing wearable circuits. This method presents a challenge in prototyping wearable circuits: sewing processes are time-consuming and set a high threshold for beginners. Furthermore, the troubleshooting process in wearable circuit prototyping often requires resetting and resewing. Once the development board is integrated into the fabric, the complexity of the debugging code also increases proportionally.
- Challenge
- The biggest challenge in the whole research was to achieve a rapid fixing and connection of the PCB. We tried a variety of methods including pins, buttons, velcro, and finally we chose to use magnets with O-connectors, which had not been used before.
- Realization and Technology
- For the modules, we have designed 11 different modules with input or output chips contained on each module. Each module has six 3mm diameter pins. For quick fixing, we fixed a 10mm diameter magnet on the bottom of the development board and modules, which works with the magnetic fixing pads to attach to clothes. For quick connects, we used O-connectors and bolts, which work well with the 3mm pin sizes on the PCB.
- Operation and Interaction
- 1. Building the First Circuit Prototype: Select modules based on design requirements and assemble them on a flat surface for initial circuit testing and debugging. 2. Continuous Testing and Adjustment of the Circuit: Reconfigure module positions on the body for testing purposes. 3. Building the Final Circuit: Sew components directly onto fabric using conductive yarn or utilize sewing magnet fixing pads as an alternative method. This ensures flexibility and ease of removal.
- Project Duration and Location
- The project started in August 2023 in Ningbo and finished in January 2024
- Specifications
- Development board size is ϕ50*1mm, module size is ϕ25*1mm.
- Keywords
- Hardware, Electronic, Toolkit, Wearable, E-textile
