It’s time again for IIDA New York’s Design This! Challenge, one of the most exciting student design competitions of the year.
NYSID, Parsons The New School for Design, FIT and Pratt Institute – are presented with a design brief they must complete within one hour. After being divided into small teams at the beginning of the event, each student group must complete the design brief, receiving two “advice breaks” with industry professional mentors, and must then present its final design to a panel of judges.
Now in its sixth year, the Design This! Challenge is an extension of IIDA New York’s Speed Mentoring event, and was created to foster active design mentorship between students and industry professionals. This competition is so much fun because it zeroes in on speed, design agility and clarity, and close collaboration with people the participants have only just met. The competition places emphasis on the students sketching their designs with basic pencils, rather than relying on higher-tech tools. And it’s spicy – students find out what they’ll be designing no sooner than arriving at the event!
This year’s challenge was unique in the sense that it involved lighting design – a category of design work that operates within its own very exclusive set of complexities. Esteemed lighting company Luxo presented the following abstract to challenge participants:
“Design a single or dual arm desk top LED task light with features that will excite Millennials and Gen Z in the workplace and explain why. Remember to include your final and concept images and be prepared to speak about your process with the judges.
“While considering your design, please keep the following points in mind…
- Luxo is famous for timeless design from the mid-century L-1 to the contemporary 360.
- We’re looking for a design that includes features that will excite Millennials and Gen Z.
- A task light can be more than a light source. A smartphone is so much more than a phone.”
“Some of the students were undergrads in their first year, and many hadn’t even taken a full lighting course of study,” said Doug Benway, national sales manager for Luxo. “We wanted them to focus on their design catering to their own generation. We’re looking to these students for features and functions that their generation will want, and I wanted their minds completely unfettered by the thought that, ‘Oh, you can’t do it that way.’”
Maria Claudia Narvaez, a second year grad student working on her thesis at Parsons, participated in the challenge without knowing her teammates ahead of time, and without any prior studio focus in lighting.
“In that sense, that gives you a little freedom,” said Ms. Narvaez. “You don’t know the conventional rules.”
The challenge beckoned no shortage of fantastical, imaginative lighting concepts from the students. One team’s design even featured a lamp head that could be turned to project video onto the wall of a dorm room or other space.
Each group finalizes its design concepts after completing two 10-minute face-to-face mentoring sessions, much in the same vein as Project Runway’s famous Tim Gunn critiques. After that, the group must nail a five-minute presentation that not only discloses the design, but also reveals the story behind the concept and the group’s design process.
The judging panel – Mr. Benway of Luxo; Lance Amato, director at Vocon and past-president of IIDA New York Chapter; and Peter Jensen, design director at G3 – selected a design that combined the best of functional ingenuity, beauty and imagination.
While we’d love to show officeinsight readers the final lighting design concepts, IIDA New York is intent on protecting the students’ work in case future opportunities come about for their designs. Mr. Benway will take the winning task light concept back to Luxo for further research, and will find out within a few short months if the company will be able to produce it.
“The judges all agreed that the winning design was beautiful, but not so out of the realm of reality of being usable, and ultimately, manufacturable,” said Mr. Benway. “I’ve spent the past six years travelling all over and doing task lighting, and I was truly amazed at the work the students came up with.
“So many of the teams had a strong design concept, and I was so impressed by how they met the requirements, but then moved far beyond that in many ways.”
Congrats to the winning student team, which included Maria Claudia Narvaez, of Parsons; Yu-Hsiang Fu, of NYSID; and Sri Keerthi Rayala, of NYSID.
“I found it very inspiring that it was an event where we just got to hang out and design things together,” said Ms. Narvaez. “Coincidences like that happen – when you have great chemistry and can come up with an amazing idea. I think it’s beautiful that design can make that happen.”