Tag Archive for 'australian product design'

World’s smallest ultrasound machine on display

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Signos pocket-sized ultrasound system by Design+Industry and Signostics. Image courtesy of Signostics.

The world’s smallest ultrasound machine is now on display in the Australian International Design Awards exhibition. The Signos Pocket Sized ultrasound system uses high frequency sound waves to look at organs and structures inside the body. It weighs in at only 300 grams and is the size of a mobile phone.

Doctors in emergency care or remote locations can use it to examine patients quickly and easily. The high resolution screen shows images instantly, and the inbuilt microphone allows doctors to record notes.

Signos pocket-sized ultrasound system by Design+Industry and Signostics. Image courtesy of Signostics.

The Signos is of particular benefit in emergency medicine. It can be worn around the neck like a stethoscope and provides quick scanning and triaging of patients. It can detect internal fluids or trauma or the presence of a heartbeat. The device has potential for use in rural and remote areas where larger, more expensive machines are not available. It is also being used in veterinary applications.

Developed by Adelaide-based Signostics and Sydney/Melbourne-based Design+Industry, the device has been approved for use in the USA, Australia and Europe. Signostics has its global sales and marketing in Silicon Valley, California.

The Signos Pocket Sized ultrasound received the Powerhouse Museum Design Award at the Australian International Design Awards ceremony for its potential to make a significant improvement to the quality of the environment, health or wellbeing. It also received an Australian International Design Award in 2010.

Australians were instrumental in developing ultrasound technology in the 1970s, and the Museum holds one of the orignal UI Octoson machines  in the collection.

Award-winning surfboard design

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Meyerhoffer surfboard by Modern Longboards, Thomas Meyerhoffer and Global Surf Industries. Courtesy Australian International Design Awards, part of Standards Australia.

One of the products featured in this year’s Australian International Design Awards exhibition is the Meyerhoffer Surfboard. It is a distinct hybrid surfboard design, and behaves like both a longboard and a shortboard. You can stand on the back and turn the board easily like a shortboard, and you can also nose ride on the front like a longboard. Designed by California-based Thomas Meyerhoffer, it was developed in partnership with Australian-based company Global Surf Industries. The combination of the shape of the board and a lightweight SLX epoxy material make for a truly unique product. The board received an Australian International Design Award in 2010.

This board is the latest of several Australian innovations in surfing technology that have been displayed and collected by the Museum. In 1980 the development of the three fin surfboard by Simon Anderson was considered the most significant change in the 80 year history of surfboard design. The development of the FCS removable fin system was a second major innovation in surfboard design.

Another unusual Australian approach to surfboard design and manufacture was the Bambu surfboard designed and made by Mei Yap Gordon and Shale Gordon in Byron Bay. This bamboo surfboard received an Australian Design Award for Industrial Design in 2002 and was displayed at Powerhouse Museum. With a core of polystyrene foam with a covering of bamboo veneer embedded in epoxy resin, it has its primary strength stored in the outer skin resulting in a more flexible board. The weight of the board is distributed away from the centre of the board and it is lighter, faster and more durable than conventional boards. The use of natural bamboo on the exterior reduced the need for extensive use of resin and fibre glass. It also gives the board a natural ‘eco-friendly’ aesthetic.  

FCS H-2 surfboard fins designed and made by Surf Hardware International, Talon Technologies and Metro Solutions, 2004.

In 2005 the FCS H-2 surfboard fins received the Australian Design Award of the Year and were also displayed at the Museum. These fins represented the introduction of a hi-tech approach in what had traditionally been a handcrafted industry. They were a result of a unique collaboration between hydrodynamic and materials experts, manufacturing consultants, world champion surfers and fin makers. The fin has a different geometry than previous fins and is made from a lightweight aluminium and fibreglass composite material. The design was developed using scientific tank flow testing and refined by use in the ocean. This was a new approach to improving surfboard performance by focusing on the design of the fins themselves rather than the shape of the board.

Latest Australian product design on show

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The Museum’s annual selection from the 2010 Australian International Design Awards is now on show as part of Sydney Design 2010.

Emotiv EPOC by 4design and Emotiv Systems. Courtesy Australian International Design Awards, part of Standards Australia

This year’s exhibition includes a gaming headset that reads brain signals and facial expressions and a pocket-sized ultrasound system. Student concepts including a device that stores a heart during transit before heart transplant surgery and a light tanker used as a fire reconnaissance vehicle in bushfires are also displayed. Ten industry products and six student design concepts from this year’s awards are on display. The Museum’s selection is made from the finalists and is based on good design, innovation and the potential of products to improve our environment, health or wellbeing.

Since 1992 the Powerhouse Museum has been building the country’s first collection of contemporary product design selected from the prestigious Australian International Design Awards. The winning products have been displayed in the Museum and some have been added to the permanent collection of Australian industrial design. Products are selected because they show potential to become important in the life of Australians, be significant to Australian industry or provide an opportunity for Australian design to be recognised in the global marketplace.

The products selected by the Museum reflect the diverse range of entries in the Awards. The first Powerhouse Museum Selection in 1992 included the HPM Fanlight and Surgeguard power surge protector, products that are still in the marketplace eighteen years later. Since then the selection has ranged from simple everyday items such as the Clark sink plug to specialised technologies such as the Mine Site Integrated Communications Cap Lamp. Design for sustainability has been of constant interest throughout the selection, represented by products such as the Kambrook Axis kettle, Rainbank pump controller and Caroma Smartflush toilet. Medical technologies have also featured strongly, from the Bionica ambulatory drug infusion pump to the Cochlear implant.

Baby capsule – 1980s Australian product design pt1

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Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Visiting The 80s Are Back exhibition I wondered: if I had to pick the best in Australian product design from the 1980s, what would it be? A Sunbeam kettle or the décor wine cask cooler? The Stackhat or a Caroma toilet? Perhaps a mop bucket or an early ResMed CPAP machine? The 1980s was a productive decade for Australian industrial designers, and the Museum holds many examples of Australian products from the era. So I’ve decided to bring out a series of my favourite Australian-designed products from the 1980s.

Beginning with an innovation that has without doubt saved many lives – the baby safety capsule. Developed 26 years ago, this product is still one of the safest child restraints on the market. In Australia, babies up to six months of age must use rear facing restraints and new child restraint laws introduced this month recommend that children face the rear of the car until age four. All child restraints sold in Australia must meet strict standards, considered to be some of the most stringent in the world.

Of course safety standards haven’t always been this strict. Wearing car seat belts has only been compulsory in Australia since the 1970s and this is when restraints for children began to come onto the market. Babies were either held in arms or travelled in a traditional bassinet that lay across the back seat, secured by the seatbelt with a protective net over the top. There was no really secure way to protect babies in a smash until the baby capsule was developed in 1984.

Rainsfords (later called Britax Childcare), the makers of the Safe-n-Sound child seat restraint, came up with the idea of the capsule. It consists of a bassinet inside a base that can be secured by a seat belt. A release mechanism allows the bassinet to rotate in a crash, keeping the baby more upright and distributing forces uniformly over its body; at the same time, the bassinet pushes against an impact-absorbing bubble in the base. The capsule was designed to fit in an adult seat space. The bassinet can be removed from the base to carry the baby around outside the car.

The capsule was designed by PA Design (later known as Invetech) with Rainsfords Safe-n-Sound and took five years of research and development. It won an Australian Design Award and Design Council Selection in 1985 and the Prince Philip Prize for Australian Design in 1986. The design was improved by the introduction of a harness in 1991 to replace the Velcro body band on the capsule in our collection.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of 1980s Australian-designed products. In the meantime I’d be interested to know – what is your favourite Australian-designed product of the 1980s?