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  • Overview Report
     
  • Jury Members
     
  • Award Structure
     
  • Criteria
     
   
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  • Good Design Awards
     
  • ASEAN Design Selection
     

   

  • Good Design Award Best 15
     
  • Ecology Design Prize
     
  • Universal Design Prize
     
  • Interaction Design Prize
     
  • Small/Medium Enterprises Prize
     
  • Prize of Chairman of JCCI
     
  • Long-selling Good Design Prize
     
   
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  • Award Ceremony
     
   

2005 Outline

Jury members and comments

Hitomi Sago Vice-Chairman of the Jury, Good Design Award 2005

Not developments extending current products, but products that exhibit a completely new viewpoint, their creation enabled by high-level technology. This was the sort of inventive design I anticipated when I approached this year's judging. When the judging panel met to select the best 15 entries, I felt that a number of the products entered immediately leapt straight out. The 15 entries chosen reflect the way the concept of design has broadened in recent years, forming a diverse spectrum ranging from products to concepts and from systems to environments. All possess an inventiveness and social value that richly befits their worldwide dissemination from Japan.

"It looks as if it might be medicine's turn this year." That was what went through my mind as I looked over the winners the night before the judging for the Grand Prize. Not only do we live in an era of great interest in health, and one in which our society is aging rapidly, but also no less than three out of the 15 entries were medically related products. Medicine and design resemble each other in that both are an attempt to solve problems, as one of design's roles is to resolve the varying problems implicit in contemporary society. The NANOPASS 33 hypodermic needle for insulins succeeds in applying high-grade technological prowess to reducing the pain felt by patients without sacrificing its medically necessary injection function, and won the Grand Prize by a wide margin of votes. I did not find out until later that it is the result of a collaboration between a manufacturer familiar with the medical world and a small-scale workshop possessing specialist technology, a business model that should also be highly rated. The Large Bore Multislice CT Scanner not only alleviates patient's psychological stress while they are undergoing tests, but also allows them to assume a comfortable position. These two features are focused on the mental state of the patients who are the product's users, and offer a groundbreaking example of the shape medicine should take in future.

The Battery Size-Free Flash Light that literally embodies its concept, the campus notebook "paracuruno" with pages that are easily flipped from either side, and the Window View-Lite FSW double sash window with its flat construction, all solve functional problems by standing conventional product forms on their head. This has also resulted in their acquiring a visual beauty. The ±0 Humidifier lends a useful product a sensuous beauty that has hitherto been lacking, in a design whose depth depends on its origin in the consideration given to its very reason for existence. The Tangible Earth, a revolutionary interactive globe utilizing the latest technology, is an example of a product that is a totally new creation rather than a solution to an existing problem. The ecotonoha system, whereby messages written on the Internet lead to actual tree-planting activities, marks the design of a new mode of communication.

At present, the quality of design and its social value is greatly affected by the problem to be solved and the means chosen to solve it. The issue this tiny syringe is attempting to solve is that of human pain. Last year it was education that was awarded the accolade of the Good Design Awards Grand Prize, whereas this year's winner was a design to alleviate human pain. As the future possibilities of design expand in both breadth and depth, the day may not be far off when a design that solves the problem of human psychological and spiritual pain is entered for the competition. As the Good Design Awards mark their 50th anniversary this year, I look forward to encountering this sort of brilliant problem-solving expertise once more.