Winners of the Helen Hamlyn Design Awards 2020 announced
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Shir, Neloufar Taheri
Shir, Neloufar Taheri
Five RCA graduate projects have been selected as winners of the 2020 Helen Hamlyn Design Awards. Each project applies design to improve people’s lives and demonstrates the impact people-centred approaches can have across disciplines at the RCA.
From a wearable device that aids urban navigation to the application of socially inclusive design to assist nursing mothers in refugee camps, the winning projects propose solutions to specific challenges. They also raise pressing issues and reveal possibilities emerging in our increasingly technologically mediated lives. From highlighting the importance of inclusive thinking in a digital-first world, to proposing ways technology can be used to integrate traditional and western medicines to provide healthcare in South Africa, and applying service design to improve the flow of digital information between public services, practitioners and local authorities in the UK.
Fourteen projects were shortlisted in the 2020 Awards with the five winners chosen from across the themes of disability, diversity, inclusion, technology and creativity, with a total prize money of £8,000.
TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) Award for Digital Inclusion
Winning project awarded a prize of £2,000
Finlay Duncan, MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering
StaticType

‘Communicating with others is at the core of what it means to be human, and Finlay’s work opens up that ability to everyone.’ – Robert Grant, Lead UX Consultant, TCS and Awards Judge
Snowdon Award
Due to this year’s exceptional circumstances, the Snowdon Trust have generously chosen to award two Snowdon Awards, both with a prize of £1,500.
Neloufar Taheri, MA/MSc Innovation Design Engineering
Shir

‘This socially inclusive design is full of humanity, for women struggling in extremely stressful circumstances, a design focused on offering an idea for a solution to both mothers and babies in physically and mentally challenging environments.’ – Frances von Hofmannsthal, Trustee of the Snowdon Trust and Awards Judge
Lwanga Mayola Tikaka, MA Architecture
Democratising Healthcare

Through the use of augmented reality (AR), the project posits traditional practitioners who have been excluded in South Africa’s healthcare system to contribute to Universal Healthcare. The architecture aims to manage their production and build knowledge regarding their inventory - which in turn is shared amongst patients and western and traditional practitioners.
‘A fascinating proposal to include and support traditional medicines within a mainstream healthcare system, while using spaces to bring communities and generations together… an inspiring idea and an incredible inclusive, positive design proposal.’ – Frances von Hofmannsthal, Trustee of the Snowdon Trust and Awards Judge
Helen Hamlyn Award for Creativity
This award is chosen personally by Lady Hamlyn from across the shortlisted projects. This year, Lady Hamlyn and the Trust chose two outstanding projects, each receiving a £1,500 prize.
Sophie Horrocks, MA/MSc Global Innovation Design
Sensaura

‘Sensaura is a very beautiful and brilliant solution for the visually impaired. It brings together hi-tech with human-centred design in a really sensitive way. I would imagine [Sensaura] will give people great confidence when using it to find their way, improving their quality of life and independence. A very promising design.’ – Lucy O’Rorke, Director of Projects, Helen Hamlyn Trust
Emilia D’Orazio and Saumya Singhal, MA Service Design
AcrosSilos

‘AcrosSilos, a brilliant name, proposes clear timely information sharing between agencies in the area of child safeguarding is crucial, complex and highly sensitive. We were thrilled with this simple-to-use system which was piloted with the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. We felt this really has the potential to be used in any local authority area.’ – Lucy O’Rorke, Director of Projects, Helen Hamlyn Trust
Fixperts Award
The Fixperts learning programme – which has taken place in 45 Universities and Higher Education Institutes across 23 countries since 2013 – sees student teams work on extraordinary design projects that positively impact the daily life of a real person.
Each year, the Helen Hamlyn Design Awards presents a Fixperts Award for the best of these Fixperts student projects from the global network. This year there were two winning teams: one from Brunel University, England and a team from Holon Institute of Technology, Israel.
The Helen Hamlyn Design Awards is an annual event that recognises the best RCA postgraduate student projects and rewards creativity that addresses pressing and emergent needs around the globe.
We would like to thank the sponsors of the 2020 Helen Hamlyn Design Awards: Helen Hamlyn Trust, Snowdon Trust and TATA Consultancy Services (TCS) for their generous support.
Helen Hamlyn TrustThe Helen Hamlyn Trust is an independent grant-making Trust. The trust initiates medium and long-term major projects linked to the shared interests of Lady Hamlyn and her late husband Lord Hamlyn. Its core ethos is to develop innovative projects, which aim to effect lasting change, improve quality of life and create opportunity for the benefit of the public.
Snowdon Trust
The Snowdon Trust is a charity that assists physically and sensory disabled people to access vocational and academic courses in the UK by awarding grants. Since 1981 the Trust has given grants of over £3.5 million to help more than 2,500 people achieve qualifications and futures that might otherwise not have been possible.
TATA Consultancy Services (TCS)
TCS helps its clients create the future by combining tech expertise and business intelligence to catalyse change and deliver results. It works with a whole range of industries, ranging from manufacturing and retail to banking, financial services, travel, transportation and hospitality.