Innovant Design Competition in Partnership with the New York Institute of Technology

Shortly after launching an impressive new showroom at NeoCon 50 last year, Innovant put out an RFP to some of the design schools in the New York City area to sponsor a semester-long student design competition aimed at getting a fresh perspective on product design from young interior design students.

Left to right: Professor Charles Matz, Winner Jinal Patel, Carly Werner, Professor Anthony Caradonna and Devika Sati Ramdass. Photography courtesy of Innovant.

Although not the first company to do this, with Bernhardt, OFS and others having committed to on-going student design competitions, Innovant had a different notion in mind when they put their program together. Still a relatively young company with manufacturing facilities in Islandia, New York (Long Island), its roots are in the niche world oftrading desk design and installation, and it has been met with great success in the New York City financial services market. Since its founding in 1990, it has rapidly grown to be a nationally known and highly respected brand due to its knowledge and experience in benching and advanced trading desk programs. Their interest was partnering with a local school that could augment their expanding efforts with ‘fresh’ thinking.

Winners’ Trophies.

Innovant ended up deciding to work with the New York Institute of Technology, working with professor Robert Allen(designer of Geiger/Herman Miller “Tablet” and “Caucus”) who heads up the school’s furniture classes. Although the NYIT program is small, through the efforts of its dedicated faculty and successful alumni, its reputation for turning out well-qualified professionals has grown over the last 20 years, and it is now a well-respected program with a long list of accolades, including being recognized with over a half dozen $30K Angelo Donghia Scholarships, Decorator Club and other groups’ first prizes and whose furniture design efforts have been recognized and featured at ICFF as well as the Milan Salone Satellite and the Museum of Art & Design.

Bruce Wells, Director, Marketing & Design at Innovant with Winner Jinal Patel.

Bruce Wells, Director of Marketing & Development at Innovant, stated, ”NYIT was the perfect fit for us, because it’s local and we have several connections to the school through the local community. Did we have any huge expectations? Did we think we’d come up with a breakthrough product that would make us rich? No, but we were hopeful we’d get some unfiltered ideas from students who haven’t been jaded by having a client tell them they’d never pay that much forthat product
it was an experimental thing for us, and all said and done, I’d do it again. It was a very positive experience.”

Professor Allen likewise felt the two groups were a perfect fit: “What I appreciated about Innovant, and perhaps this reflected their new presence in the commercial contract marketplace, was their fresh attitude. They took a hands-off approach with the students and were disarmingly candid about some of the shortcomings and challenges faced in the open-office desking environments, especially benching. They were looking for an open-ended investigation of components that might augment their product and address some of these issues. This was a particularly great opportunity for our students, as they were able to approach a ‘real’ product, and as any interior design student would and should, ask the fundamental question, ‘why,’ instead of being encumbered by pressures exerted by the industry ‘blinders’ they would later face when they would graduate into the marketplace.”

Left to right: Winner, Jinal Patel, Middle, Honorable Mention Carly Werner, Honorable Mention Devika Sati Ramdass.

He observed, “We had all kinds of ideas emerge that re-imagined what these spaces could be and how these environments could not only be efficient, which benching inherently is; but more importantly, how the compromising factors could be mitigated and offset by introducing accessories and components that addressed some of the human factors that often manufacturers don’t concern themselves with.”

The program was structured as a semester-long, in-house competition, and similar to Bernhardt and OFS, Innovant committed to build the winning scheme in the spring. The competition goal would be to work with Innovant’s product line and investigate accessory solutions that would address the agile, unassigned workforce where people have issues with the personalization of where they work and with transporting their “stuff” when they don’t have an assigned home.

Jinal Patel, the winning student, imagined providing a fan-like collapsible table surface component that would be fashioned from P.E.T. felt material, providing not only much needed private desk-surface storage and sound-absorption, but also define the sense of an individual ‘station’ without compromising the ‘gestalt’ that open-office desking systems provide. Because of its fan-like design, it is self-standing with the binding, which has to gather the many sleeves of felt, made for the perfect opportunity to integrate a ‘binding spline’ light fixture. This not only provided much requested station task lighting, but also further gave the individual station a sense of individual autonomy. As it was collapsible, the component could be easily compressed at the end of the day and stored, freeing the desk for another user.

The full-scale prototype of the winning product, named “Portfolio.”
Portfolio opened with integrated lamp extended.

“We were very pleased with the level of work the students produced,” said Mr. Wells. “We prototyped the winning product we’re calling ‘Portfolio’ and showed it at NeoCon where we received some excellent feedback. As part of the prize, we hosted Ms. Patel in our space at NeoCon where she discussed her product with clients and the media and answered questions about the competition. From that standpoint we exceeded our expectations. We ended up with a solution that we had never thought of that we think can be made practical and potentially marketable, so we’ll see!”

I reached Ms. Patel at home in India for a comment about the process. Via email interview, she said, “I believe that everyone is born with a creative bone and muscle in their body and brain. However, to be successful in a creative career, a guided direction, knowledge, correct exposure and positive support are required. I am fortunate enough to have had NYIT and INNOVANT help me understand and envision the current issues of storage systems for open offices, which majorly influenced my design solution of ‘a flexible, portable and foldable storage system’ for the corporate world.” She added, “I also thank the INNOVANT family for letting me experience NeoCon right after graduation,” which she feels will have a lasting effect on her work the rest of her life.

Portfolio shown in various aspects of deployment.

Renderings of lockers designed to store the winning product.