As many of you will already know, particularly if you’ve been following our Twitter feed, last Friday was the final judging of the Blackwood Student Design Award 2014. We assembled a crack team of judges to join us in our head office where the contestants joined us one by one from across the world via Skype to give their short Dragon’s Den style pitch.

We spoke to Dan, a member of Team Bruise which was the runner up. Team Bruise’s design, the Bruise Suit, made quite an impact on all the judges as did the entrants with the quality of their pitch.

It all started quite a while back for Team Bruise when a chance email flagged up design competition; “someone in the department put the word out and we just reacted to that email” says Dan who enjoyed taking part in the competition. “It was good to see what Blackwood does, and it was a lot of fun pitching to the judges”. The Bruise Suit was already well developed when they saw the email; it was now a case of preparing to make their case for the judges.

On the day Team Bruise gave a really great and professional pitch which was well received by the judges. And save for a minor technical glitch with the communication, which we were able to sort promptly, their segment of the competition ran smoothly and sparked a lively discussion.

Looking ahead

And this competition is just the start for Team Bruise who are powering ahead with several other exciting projects. “We’ve got an exhibition coming up in the Design Museum in London, that’s due to being shortlisted in another competition (AXA PPP Health Tech). And we were also the runner up in the James Dyson Award”.

Besides this, Team Bruise hope to spend the next while perfecting their design, getting to place where it can be bought and sold for wheelchair athletes around the world.  Dan said “We want to carry out some functional tests to get feedback, so that we can look at selling it commercially”.

But looking back on the competition Dan feels it was a great opportunity to present the Bruise Suit to a panel of judges who clearly appreciated it. “It was fun to pitch to people who really knew what they were talking about. It was really fun doing it, and great to see how seriously it was taken”.

-----------------------

Like what you just read? Find more discussions on bespoken...

-----------------------

Enjoy the accessible great outdoors

Maggie and the stair climbing wheelchair

Smart Glasses make massive difference to visually impaired people

Sign up to comment and receive our weekly news bulletin!