Press Release
Vega Connect Interaction System by Xueyun Tang and Xiaomeng Tang Receives the Silver A' Design Award in Smart Living and Home Automation Design
The international grand jury of the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition recognizes Xueyun Tang and Xiaomeng Tang for smart living and home automation design
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
COMO, Italy, April 18, 2025 /DesignNewswire/ A' Design Award & Competition has announced that Vega Connect Interaction System by Xueyun Tang and Xiaomeng Tang, designed for Dexmate Inc., has been granted the Silver A' Design Award in the Smart Living and Home Automation Design category. The result belongs to the 2024 - 2025 A' Design Award & Competition and was determined through blind peer review by an international grand jury panel of established academics, design professionals and press members, who scored anonymized entries against predetermined criteria.
The Silver A' Design Award Explained
The Silver A' Design Award celebrates top-tier designs that embody excellence and innovation. This award acknowledges creations that are not only aesthetically pleasing but also highly functional, reflecting the designer's deep understanding and skill. Silver A' Design Award recipients are recognized for their contribution to raising industry standards and advancing the practice of design. Their work often incorporates original innovations and elicits a strong emotional response, making a notable impact on the improvement of everyday life.
More About Vega Connect Interaction System
Vega Connect is a robot control interface designed for home users. The system combines a mobile application and a web portal. The mobile application lets people request household tasks with everyday language, and each request is translated into precise robotic actions with progress shown in real time. A three-dimensional digital twin displays the robot and its surroundings for remote monitoring. The web portal allows custom routines to be created for each home. The aim is to make advanced robots usable without technical training.
About Xueyun Tang and Xiaomeng Tang
Xiaomeng Tang is a UX designer with 7 years of experience in full-cycle product design. She is passionate about crafting delightful, user-centered experiences and takes adaptive, creative approaches to bring ideas to life through close collaboration with cross-functional teams. Her professional journey includes several successful zero-to-one product launches. Xiaomeng thrives at the intersection of thoughtful design and meaningful impact. She is deeply committed to authentic design processes and is driven by the goal of delivering intuitive, engaging experiences to users’ fingertips.
Award Record
This recognition makes Xueyun Tang and Xiaomeng Tang a winner of 1 A' Design Award.
About the A' Smart Living and Home Automation Design Award
The A' Smart Living Design Award is an international design competition recognizing good designs for smart living by leading brands and manufacturers worldwide. The competition is organized within the A' Design Award & Competition and is open to smart living designers, home automation experts, industrial design studios and smart home brands from all countries. Entries typically include smart thermostats, automated lighting systems, intelligent security cameras, robotic vacuum cleaners, smart door locks and voice-activated assistants. Awarded smart living solution designs are published at https://designers.org/design-category/smart-living
About A' Design Award & Competition
A' Design Award & Competition is an international, juried design accolade organized annually since 2008. The competition is open to entries from all countries. The A' Design Award has a philanthropic mission 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. Entries are peer reviewed and anonymously evaluated 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. The A' Design Prize granted to eligible laureates 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, the upload of a work and the 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. Further information is available at https://competition.adesignaward.com
Press Resources
- Winner Page: https://designers.org/171910
- A' Design Award Page: https://competition.adesignaward.com/171910
- Media Showcase: https://www.designnewsroom.com/!171910
- Laureate Profile: https://designers.org/d/367539
- Further Information from the Laureate: https://www.dexmate.ai/
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
- Vega Connect Interaction System
- Function
- Interaction System
- Category
- Smart Living and Home Automation Design
- Discipline
- Product Design
- Industry
- Electronics & Appliances and Furniture & Home
- Colors
- Lavender, Light Gray, Black, Dark Slate Gray and Dim Gray
- Images
- 5
- Client
- Dexmate Inc.
The Recognition
- Laureate
- Xueyun Tang and Xiaomeng Tang
- Country
- United States of America
- Recognition
- Silver A' Design Award
- Edition
- 2024 - 2025
- Design ID
- #171910
Credits
- Team
- Xueyun Tang, Xiaomeng Tang, Xi Pang, Yuzhe Qin and Tao Chen
- Image Credits
- Dexmate Inc.
Design Details
- Unique Properties
- Vega Connect redefines human-robot interaction through its pioneering dual-interface system that bridges advanced robotics with an intuitive user experience. Unlike conventional systems requiring technical expertise, our solution transforms complex robotic programming into natural interactions accessible to all users regardless of technical background. The mobile interface enables effortless task delegation through conversational commands, while the complementary web portal offers sophisticated customization capabilities.
- Inspiration
- The Vega Connect project addresses a fundamental disparity in robotics: while AI-powered robots grow increasingly capable, their interfaces remain engineered for specialists rather than everyday users. Recognizing that these advanced robots will soon enter domestic settings, Dexmate developed an intuitive interaction system that bridges this accessibility gap. Our solution enables non-technical users to communicate naturally with sophisticated robotic systems, democratizing access to this transformative technology.
- Research
- Our user-centered research combined ethnographic observation and usability testing with 35 households across three generations. We identified critical barriers in robotics adoption through 250+ hours of in-home studies using eye-tracking and think-aloud protocols. Testing revealed traditional interfaces achieved only 27% task completion rates versus 89% with natural language commands. This directly shaped Vega Connect's dual-interface approach, adapting to human behavior rather than forcing humans to adapt to technology.
- Challenge
- The fundamental challenge was reconceptualizing robot interaction for non-technical users while maintaining advanced functionality. Historically, robotics interfaces prioritized engineering precision over usability, creating significant adoption barriers. Our team struggled to develop a system that satisfied both the accessibility needs of everyday users and the precision requirements of complex robotic operations. The breakthrough came through extensive user testing revealing distinct interaction patterns across demographics, leading to our dual-interface architecture.
- Realization and Technology
- Vega Connect bridges the gap in robotics: industrial robots need expertise, while consumer robots are single-purpose. As AI general-purpose robots tackle diverse tasks, seamless human-robot interaction is essential. Dexmate team has developed a multimodal interaction framework utilizing natural language processing, gesture recognition, and intuitive web interfaces. The system employs real-time 3D visualization with digital twin technology, implementing semantic mapping between human commands and robotic execution paths.
- Operation and Interaction
- Vega Connect transforms robot control from complex programming to natural conversation. Users simply open the mobile app and request tasks using everyday language or intuitive taps—"clean the kitchen" or "fold laundry"—eliminating technical barriers. The system translates these simple requests into precise robotic actions while providing real-time progress updates. For personalization, the complementary web portal allows users to easily create custom routines specific to their home environment.
- Project Duration and Location
- The Vega Connect robot-control interactive system design and its user testing began in November 2024 in California, USA, and concluded in March 2025. Technical implementation for both web and mobile platforms commenced in January 2025 and is currently ongoing in preparation for a wide market release.
- Specifications
- The Vega Connect system integrates multimodal interaction capabilities enabling humans to control robots via natural language, hand gestures, and facial expressions through advanced LLM/VLM models. The 3D digital twin technology provides immersive visualization of robot operations and surroundings, facilitating seamless remote monitoring and control across unlimited distances. The middleware abstracts complex robotics commands into intuitive interactions, allowing users to automate routine tasks through conversational interfaces and scheduling functionality.
- Keywords
- Human-robot interaction, robot interaction system, home robot interface, AI-driven automation, personal robotics, dual-interface system, intuitive robot control, natural language interaction, general-purpose robot
