University of Northampton Student scoops £500 Prize in the Young Mobile Phone Designer of the Year Award

A student from the University of Northampton won a £500 cash prize for coming second place in the Young Mobile Phone Designer of the Year Award.

Elizabeth Dodd, a Product Design student from the University, was amongst a number of students who entered the award, which aims to promote the talent of the UK’s young designers.

Elizabeth commented: “We did this as a university project, but only for a couple of weeks as an extra piece of work. So, it was down to us what we entered.”

The competition brief– to design a mobile phone of the future– was explored in a number of ways by applicants, with the five finalists generating a wide range of concepts.

Elizabeth’s entry came in just behind the winning design by a candidate from Nottingham Trent University. Entitled Baby Bond, Dodd’s design is a device aimed at keeping the connection between a mother and baby strong.

She said: “I’ve always loved children, I see parents struggling on the go and when I looked into research there was only just baby monitors which hadn’t really developed very far, so they aren’t really mobile or anything like that, so I thought, why not combine the two together and have it all in one to make it easier for everyone”.

The winner of the competition, along with the two runners up, was decided by an expert panel of judges in addition to an online public vote.

David Abrahamovitch, Award Judge and co-founder of Mobilephones.com, commented:  “It was amazing, I’ve been really impressed with the quality of the entries, the number of entries and it was really great to see people trying to solve real problems rather than just trying to invent the next consumer phone.

“We were really, really impressed with the quality of the entries, I think looking forward to next year we’re hoping to be bigger and better and I’m really excited.”

Next year’s Young Mobile Phone designer of the Year Award will open again in September 2014, when a new brief will be issued.