Collaboration with local industries is extremely important and essential for students if they are to gain a true appreciation of what the working environment will ask of them once qualified.  

New thinking from young aspiring designers often produces radical innovation.  When Mike Veveris, Senior Lecturer at the University of Derby’s Faculty of Arts, Design & Technology challenged his students to design products to alert Deaf people to emergency warnings, with sponsorship from local company Deaf Alerter plc, they rose to the challenge producing high quality designs with imaginative concepts.

Mark Lawday, Deaf Alerter’s Technical Manager commented: “As a company focused on developing innovative solutions we fully understand the issues faced by the engineers and designers.  I discussed the brief with students and impressively they took it to the next level.  Many students went on to have meetings with the students from Royal School for the Deaf on Ashbourne Road, Derby to develop their understanding of Deaf people’s requirements and views. This research was reflected in the high quality and standard of designs produced.”

Mark went on to say: “We have been impressed by the designs produced and some may well influence future developments at Deaf Alerter.  We feel it is important to support the local community and are looking at ways we can work with the University in the future to help shape the young designers of tomorrow.”

Deaf Alerter plc, the market leaders in fire alarm warning and messaging system for deaf and hard of hearing people, awarded prize money to two students, who showed outstanding individual ability. They were Sergej Kuckir, an exchange student from the Czech Republic on the University’s BA (Hons) Product Design course, and Nathan Parkin, on the BSc (Hons) Product Design, Innovation and Marketing course, the winning team also received a group award.