Eight Engineering students to showcase innovative products at New Designers Show

Eight Product Design Engineering students from LJMU are heading to London next month to show off their innovative designs to industry experts.

New Designers is the longest running and leading graduate design showcase in the country. This year is its 39th anniversary and will bring together 200 flagship university design courses, with LJMU proudly among them. The work of 3,000 design students will be showcased across the first two-weeks of July at the event in Islington, London.

Bob Barker, Dominika Blaszcyk, Dylan Plummer, Sam Wilkes, Marcus Hammersley-Roden, Elliott Harris, Josh Pleavin, and Dario Bafumi, all from the School of Engineering, have been chosen to represent LJMU and will graduate this summer.

Biggest opportunity of their lives

The students are preparing for the biggest opportunity of their lives so far, to present to industry employers, entrepreneurs, members of the media, and the design hungry public. Companies in attendance include Unilever, Kenwood, Made, John Lewis, and Joseph & Joseph, offering prizes such as cash and industry experience up for grabs.

After presenting to the experts, the LJMU students will get to pitch their designs to industry scouts as well as representatives from a wide range of businesses, schools, friends, family, and the general public as they visit the show.

Household fire safety

Elliott’s project focuses on safety in the household. “It’s a total redesign of a fire extinguisher that aims to provide low-income households with an effective and simple means to combat household fire incidents. Fires are a pressing issue faced by everyone in the UK. On average it takes 8 minutes and 45 seconds for the fire brigade to reach an incident in England. Within this time a fire can easily spread to an extremely dangerous size. To make matters worse, more than half of households in the UK do not have access to a fire extinguisher in their homes, leaving them with no instant means of defending themselves and their property when a fire arises,”.

His design takes into consideration multiple factors such as limitations of current products, user centred design and ergonomics. He hopes that by simplifying and improving upon existing fire extinguisher designs, he could make a real difference to household fire safety.

Designing against crime

Meanwhile Josh is focusing on the rampant issue of bicycle thefts with his innovative lock, while Dylan is looking into concerns of assaults, muggings, and personal security. His personal security device aims to reduce crimes during a night out and make it safer when travelling home.

Tackling environmental issues

Other designs focus on environmental issues such as Bob’s smart radiator thermostat that improves the efficiency of household heating systems. Dominika’s development of a low-cost soil testing device to help farmers monitor and improve the quality of their soil and in doing so improve crop yields. While Marcus has created a reusable drinks bottle, designed to reduce the ingestion of micro and nano plastics and Sam has designed a device that reduces the use of plastics when prototyping through the production of 3D printing filament from discarded plastic drinks bottles.

The challenge

As the team put the final touches on their design stand, Dominika reflected on her final year experience. “This year has been very demanding for everyone, but our programme encouraged us to research and identify a real-world problem that we care about. This allows us to work within a design sector that we are interested in and therefore gets the best out of everyone, and leads to highly desirable, innovative solutions. In turn, by applying a rigorous design approach we further develop our skills and knowledge which prepares us for our future careers.”

The show

The LJMU stand can be found on the main show floor at location FP53 from Wednesday 3 July to Saturday 6 July.

Interested in studying Product Design Engineering at LJMU? Read our course information.

Visit the New Designers show website.