Bayerischer Staatspreis für Nachwuchsdesigner

Appreciation of the winners
by Rido Busse

Two years ago, Dr. h.c. August R. Lang, Bavarian Minister for the Economy and Traffic at the time, requested my opinion on the works that had been submitted. What I said back then was critical and holds true today: we need fewer entries but of higher quality. Implementing suggestions on how to achieve that has made it possible to do away with the highly controversial and cumbersome process of preselection based on photos. However, I was astonished by the results.

Few companies in the manufacturing or service industries appreciate team concepts being presented by job applicants because of the difficulty identifying the contribution of each individual on the team. However, the jury members were so impressed by team submissions this year that their decisions were unanimous.
Supervised by Prof. R. Knauer, the members of the first winning team were, in alphabetical order, Tom Allemeier and Rainer Weckenmann. The team’s task was to design a tent. Since the designers had no basic knowledge in this area, they were forced to adopt a systematic method to make sure they did not disregard any potential approaches in their search for a solution. The result – they designed a tent for use in disaster operations. During their research, Allemeier and Weckenmann found that even the best tents of this type are deficient either because of their heaviness or the effort it takes to set them up.

The result of extensive research was a tent for disaster operations which can be set up easily by one person. The design is coherent and all of the elements are stored together. To set up or dismantle the tent, two elements need to be brought into position correctly – a lever and a longitudinal brace. Up to a certain point these elements move independently, with little support required. To reduce the tent’s weight and keep the size of the entire package to a minimum, the designers chose a lightweight construction with only a few static elements. The pull and pressure required to set up the tent lead to the desired rigidity. A prototype has not yet been tested as a whole but due to the team’s intelligent approach the work has been awarded the Bavarian State Prize.

Appreciation of the winners
by Rido Busse

Also among the winners are Burkhard and Udo Fritz who, supervised by Prof. George Burden, developed a solution to a problem many ophthalmologists and opticians face. Their task: to design a device for measuring the front sections of the eye. Their motivation was the fact that they found current methods used for fitting contact lenses leave much room for improvement. Imprecise and only approximately correct measurements of the front section of the eyes lead to uncomfortable and cumbersome adjustments of contact lenses that may result in disruptions in the metabolism of the eye and, thus, to stress for the wearer. Selection and adjustment of the first test lenses currently are accomplished through a trial and error process based on tradition and experience. The new device provides opticians and ophthalmologists with a tool that allows them to measure and map the exact topography of the front section of the eye and use this to fit contact lenses. Thus, contact lenses can be selected in a targeted manner or, in the future, can be developed to meet the needs of the individual by means of computer integrated manufacturing processes.

The interactive expert system ensures that even relatively less experienced eyecare professionals will have more confidence in their work and the system offers more convenience to customers. The user interface is based on a pentop interface, which means that control commands can be marked on the monitor directly using a special pen. The commands then can be visualized in the form of pictograms and selected with the pen. Alternatively, the pen can be used to identify the characters interactively.

The advantage of this system is that the interface can be adapted to the user. This work is exemplary all the way up to the construction of the model.