Tag Archives: Red Dot Concept 2020

All-natural sustainable washing machine uses river currents to to wash your clothes

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It doesn’t need extra water cycles, and it runs entirely without electricity. Meet the Bamboo Washing Machine, a cleverly low-tech appliance that washes your clothes efficiently with zero wastage and emissions. A winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award, the machine is made entirely from bamboo wood, and plugs right into a shallow riverbed, using river currents to turn the machine’s drum. The water flowing through the machine helps wash dirt off the clothes too, giving you an entirely automated device that runs entirely on its own, using the powers of nature and human ingenuity!

Designer: Dalian Minzu University along with Tangshan Shangjiu Industrial Design Center

“Bamboo Washing Machine is a simpler version of a traditional vortex or top-loading washing machine”, say the designers, students at the Dalian Minzu University in China. The analog machine was designed for rural communities to help automate a task and free up their time without needing the capital to buy a washing machine or requiring an electric grid to power it. There are two components to each machine, the outer body itself, which stays fixed in the ground, and the internal drum, which detaches and can be used as a basket to carry clothes from the home to the machine and back. Each family in the community possesses their own drum, which they use to carry the clothes around. Every part of the machine is made from bamboo, which is easy to grow, biodegradable, and can be repaired or replaced with zero plastic or metal waste (unlike your average washing machine). The machine can be used at any time of the day and all year round too, although water levels during the rain or drought may have an effect on usage.

The Bamboo Washing Machine is a Best Of Best Winner of the Red Dot Design Concept Award for the year 2020.

The Red Dot Awards: Design Concept is now accepting entries for its 2023 edition. Click here to participate or visit the Red Dot Awards website to learn more. Early Submission Phase ends on January 18th, 2023.

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This electric guitar accessory lets you wirelessly listen to your guitar through your TWS earbuds

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Bypassing the amplifier, effect pedal, and pretty much any other conceivable gear associated with electric guitars, the Jack is a tiny device that allows you to connect your electric guitar to other devices via Bluetooth. Touted as a ‘wireless guitar headphone amplifier’, all you have to do is plug Jack into your guitar and it suddenly interfaces with your phone as well as your TWS earbuds, allowing you to play directly into your own ear as you would with a pair of studio monitor headphones… except this hardware is entirely wireless, and compact enough to fit in the palm of your hand.

Designer: Studio Elk

The Jack managed to secure a Red Dot Design Concept Award in 2020 for its clever and compact design. Most smartphones have the ability to process signals from an electric guitar, and the Jack relies on this to bypass the traditional massive amplifier that you see most electric guitars connected to. The Jack’s main piece of hardware is this unit that plugs into the 3/4th-inch audio socket of an electric guitar, basically powering it and sending the electrical signals to the smartphone to interpret.

The smartphone app is where all the magic happens, essentially. Signals from the Jack are sent to the phone, where an app decodes them, turning them into music. You can edit the signal by adding virtual amps and filters to modulate the sound, doing basically what actual gear would do, but instead through software. Finally, the end product plays either on your phone or through TWS earbuds that you place in your ear. This way, you can jam in your own head without having everyone around you listening in on your music (or your neighbors getting perturbed). The Jack’s entirely wireless design means you can just about jam anywhere you want, at home, in a cafe, on the subway, heck… even in an airplane. Your co-passengers may not appreciate having the guitar invading their personal space, though!

The post This electric guitar accessory lets you wirelessly listen to your guitar through your TWS earbuds first appeared on Yanko Design.

This drone + carrier monitors, protects, and restores reefs by planting 100 corals per day sustainably!

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Climate change is not leaving any sphere of life untouched and a lot of that damage is irreversible. Coral reefs are one such natural treasure that is facing the harsh effects of global warming and they are dying at an alarming rate. If things continue at this speed, 90% of coral reefs will vanish by 2050. While they only occupy 0.1% of the total area of the ocean, they actually support 25% of all marine species on earth! Nemo is an award-winning device designed to assist with coral restoration in an efficient, sustainable way, with large-scale capacity. It can plant 100 corals a day and only requires 2-3 people to complete the operation.

Coral reefs help us breathe, protect us from storms, provide us with food and support the economy of coastal communities – and that is why we need to save them at all costs. Nemo consists of a digital platform, a specialized transport box, and a collaborative drone that works within its four-stage service program to help municipalities. The digital platform helps scientists to research and monitor coral reefs more accurately and at the same time, it spreads global awareness about coral reefs to citizens. The platform keeps a record of all the data gathered from monitoring the reefs. The specialized transport box protects corals during their relocation from the nursery site to the outplant site by regulating the temperature of the saltwater and pH value to give the young corals the best chance for survival during their journey. Meanwhile, the collaborative drone helps scientists monitor by 3D scanning and mapping the coral reefs. This information is uploaded to a digital platform for the benefit of coral restoration agencies. The main parts of Nemo are made from recycled plastic to reduce its environmental impact.

“We used a human-centered design approach to help solve an environment-centered design problem. We combined the best of both processes and implemented our findings from both approaches. The process behind Nemo was also highly iterative and involved multiple experts from different sectors. During our research, we got feedback from experts on our concepts and ideas to verify them and to make sure we were heading in the right direction. We also hosted creative workshops to get input from more designers across disciplines to make our product better which included digital prototyping and iterative sketching exercises,” said the team while describing their process of creating Nemo. The system uses a combination of growing corals on pre-manufactured locally recycled structures using bioadhesives and drilling holes into the ocean floor to optimize the process for 2-3 people instead of the traditional 10-15 team which saves the restoration agencies’ resources.

Nemo was created to rebuild and support healthy ecosystems which is crucial for a sustainable future, it was the answer to the question “How can the journey towards a more sustainable, efficient, and simple coral restoration process be designed?” While there are many coral restoration efforts and technology, none are as comprehensive as Nemo because it goes beyond just planting new corals and takes the entire lifecycle as well as education about the crisis into account. It allows coral restoration organizations to scale up their efforts and accelerate the positive impact. Nemo has been shortlisted for the James Dyson 2021 National Winner and has also been recognized at the Red Dot Concept Awards 2020, the Core77 Design for Social Impact Notable, and Core77 Transportation Notable.

Designer: Elias Thaddäus Pfuner and Mario Kapsalis