“The best we’ve seen” – finalists earn high praise from judges

Our fabulous final six have now presented their products to Design Innovation in Plastic’s panel of judges!

After a tense but fascinating morning in London on May 8, the panel had high praise for the standards set by this year’s finalists.   All six brought prototypes of their products to the final judging session and afterwards, chairman of judges, Richard Brown, said they were the strongest he had seen in the many years he had been judging the competition.

This year’s competition asked students to come up with a brand new game, made primarily from plastics, which can be played indoors or outdoors, be suitable for any specified age range, and be either for learning or activity, or good old-fashioned fun.

Richard Brown said: “We saw some highly innovative games, with impressive creativity and technical skill, and above all what stood out was their playability.  They offered engaging and intuitive gameplay experiences and the range of concepts and ideas was impressive, spanning strategic challenges to games designed with learning and skill-building in mind.”

We now eagerly await the results of their deliberations, which will be announced at our award ceremony on Friday, June 12, at IOM3’s headquarters in London, for which we are already deep into preparations.  Students are competing for a top prize of £1,000.  There are supporting cash prizes for all finalists, and work placements with our leading design and industry sponsors, who include Brightworks, Innovate Design, and PDD.

This year’s finalists and products:

·       Maya Pai – Aston University – Honeycomb Havoc, a fast-paced strategy board game for people of all ages, designed to build predictive skills

·       Daniel Brown – Brunel University -  Mad Dash Escalation, a tabletop board game involving forward thinking and strategy, involving two or four players.

·       Isaac Faruque – Brunel University - Cross Connect, a unique two-player strategy path game with wide age range appeal.

·       Yushu Diane Li – Coventry University – Munchie Monster, a physical learning game designed for children aged 4-6 to educate them about sugar awareness

·       Joanne Chartouni – Nottingham Trent University – Steady Stacks, an indoor or outdoor game tailored to children with ADHD to encourage social interaction and mental stimulation

·       Aidan Jones – Nottingham Trent University – Lollipop Lane, an indoor or outdoor board game which teaches children road safety rules.