Mid-term @ Aarau for Punkt.

Students at Industrial Design Faculty of University of Art and Design Basel, HGK have been beavering away since late September to create some product mock-ups for Punkt. before Christmas.

Punkt.'s engineering design director, Ivan Drake, took a trip to Basel to meet with the students and see how they're getting on designing for Punkt..

Ivan Drake was deeply impressed to see how positively the students had embraced the challenge and how committed they were to integrating the brand philosophy into their concepts.

The product proposals of the 18 students for Punkt. are: DAB Radio, Bluetooth speakers, photo camera, calculator, extension cord, data storage device, headphones, mini-beamer. With radio and speakers being the favourite choices.

Course instructor, Sven Adolph, explained that the biggest challenges for students tackling an electronic product were human-centred ones: How does it engage effectively with people? How will people interact with it? How do we make it meaningful? How can we overcome alienation and frustration?

Adolph's advice to the students was to make simplicity their goal. He says simple products will explain themselves and therefore be intuitive. He warned them to resist the temptation of making feature driven design which complicates interaction and encouraged them to find an emotional connection between their design and the user.

We're are looking forward to seeing the outcome at the closing session on January 14 2014, which will be hosted in our offices in Lugano. Stay tuned to find out more.

images © Damian Schneider

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