Cyber-Duck were sponsors and attendees of the renowned New Designers show in Islington, London yesterday.

The event showcases the best in UK post-graduate and graduate talent encompassing product design, interactive media and graphic design.The show is attended by leading business decision makers, the national press and international delegates who come to see the very best in British design.

As an award winning digital agency and leaders in the field of UX, Cyber-Duck were nominated to award the “New Designers Cyber-Duck Associate Prize”. The buzz and tension around the prize giving ceremony was outstanding and the Cyber-Duck team had a hard time choosing the winner. The team had to review the best in UX (User Experience) Design and Interaction Design for the web, tablet and mobile (including web apps, native apps and gaming projects).

After reviewing multiple projects and looking at the various universities The Cyber-Duck team decided to award the number 1 prize to the project ‘Play your part’ by Rory Colsell from the University of Dundee who created a new business platform (with a mobile app and print base instruction manual as deliverable at the show) which “endeavours to strengthen the connection between designers and their audience to support and enhance the design process”.

'Play your part' was the winning entry.

The conceptual platform would potentially enable any user to become an ‘ethnographic participant’ by completing tasks set by the creators of a product, service or application. The data submitted would be uploaded into an interface where the designers, producers or ethnographers could easily use this data to learn about their product or service. The Cyber-Duck team were impressed with the app produced by Rory and felt that this concept has the potential to revolutionise how designers conduct ethnographic research by bringing such a powerful concept to the design community.

Danny Bluestone, Managing Director of Cyber-Duck said: “Cyber-Duck were very impressed with the high level strategic thinking and commercial opportunities of ‘Play Your Part’. The end-to-end delivery of the concept and commercial potential are very high. All the students from the University of Dundee demonstrated an exceptionally high level of work”.

Other students from the Digital Interaction Design course at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design at the University of Dundee left a very strong impression on Cyber-Duck. Sam Grosset’s project Ambient Alerts which presented an amazing way to visualise motoring information to the driver. Marty Dunlop with his project ‘Clash’ – a concept that builds on locative apps; provoking users to interact with friends that are present at local hangouts defined by the user. Michail Vanis’s project ‘Acoustic Poetry’ was particularly strong. The idea is that deaf people would have an electronic object which allows them to explore soundscapes in everyday situations. When the deaf person feels curious about a particular situation they use the object to broadcast an audio sample to a remote human interpreter who composes a short, poetic message to describe the soundscape. The Cyber-Duck team were impressed with the fact that Michail coupled this strong concept with a fully functional prototype.

The Cyber-Duck New Designers team with the winner of the Cyber-Duck Associate Prize.

All of the work from the team is summarised in an iOS app produced especially for New Designers 2011. If you want to check it out, it’s available free from the iTunes Store.

Due to the magnitude and quality of the projects this year Cyber-Duck will invite our favourite exhibitors to present their projects and collect certificates and prizes at the Cyber-Duck summer party in Elstree. Follow Cyber-Duck on Twitter to be the first to know and be invited.

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