Trend: New topics and integration through design

The category "Medicine and Rehabilitation" is very rich in structure this year – and there are many innovations in ergonomics and function as well as in the interpretation of the target group. This category proves how specific design can be: Sophisticated solutions and sympathetic design help to alleviate problems in areas that were once taboo; medical issues encounter innovative solutions.

“Very positive” this year was design for handicapped people, it was consistent and very convincing, the jury members Francesco Milani, Max Ottenwälder and Gianfranco Zaccai observed. By using friendly colours and sophisticated shapes in design, aid equipment such as wheelchairs had lost their discriminatory look. Such design succeeds in integrating people into society by giving the products a less "handicapped" image. Furthermore, handicapped people also have the possibility to choose among different sellers and they can, thus, attain a higher degree of individuality.

Taken as a whole, medical and rehabilitation products offer design that is tactile and aesthetically pleasing. The jury agreed unanimously that the products they had examined in this year’s “red dot award product design” featured a strong “element of humanity” and that they would therefore meet the psychological requirements of patients – "Integration through design!"

Jurors: Francesco Milani, Max Ottenwälder, Gianfranco Zaccai

You can find the winners of "red dot: best of the best" 2004 here.