Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum announces winners and finalists of the 11th Annual National Design Awards, which recognize excellence across a variety of disciplines.

The Product Design Award is given to an individual or firm for exceptional and exemplary work in the design of consumer goods, technology, or home and office furnishings.

This year, the award has been given to Smart Design.
Founded in 1980, Smart Design is a multidisciplinary design consultancy led by Davin Stowell and Tom Dair. Smart Design uses insight and innovation to develop consumer products that meet peoples’ needs, answer market demands, and solve critical manufacturing challenges. Projects are designed with a focus on connecting with the end user and have included OXO Good Grips kitchen tools, the SmartGauge instrument cluster for the Ford Fusion Hybrid, New York City taxi graphics, medical devices for UCB, and HP Photosmart compact photo printers.

OXO Good Grips Kitchen Tools
Starting a revolution, one potato peeler at a time.

New York Taxi Graphics
Checkered past, bold new vision.

Johnson & Johnson Reach Wondergrip
Designed for kids, not miniature grown-ups.

Johnson & Johnson Operating Gowns
Breathable protection in the OR.

UCB/OXO Cimzia® Prefilled Syringe
Cimzia® is an innovative biological medication that can greatly alleviate the symptoms of Crohn’s Disease and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The 2010 National Design Award nominations were solicited from a committee of more than 2,500 designers, educators, journalists, cultural figures and corporate leaders from every state in the nation.

StickSafe is an award-winning medical innovation that will significantly reduce the incidence of needlestick injuries, protecting healthcare workers from potentially life-threatening diseases.  As well as reducing the associated costs of treating these injuries, it will simultaneously reduce the cost of sharps waste in hospitals.

Needlestick injuries are accidental skin puncture wounds caused by needles and other medical sharps, after they have already been used to treat patients.  Such injuries are a daily risk to healthcare workers, occuring in the course of performing routine and frequent procedures using needles.  Needlesticks carry the risk of infection of many potentially lethal diseases including HIV and Hepatitis, which can require a lengthy and expensive treatment process, including tracing the source of contact, blood tests, post-exposure drug prophylaxis and, in instances of proven infection, long term drug treatment. In the UK alone, needlesticks are the second biggest cause of injury in the NHS, affecting over 100,000 healthcare workers, and costing the NHS at least £300 million per year in prevention and treatment.

Michael Korn, an industrial design student at London's Royal College of Art, decided to look more closely into the issue as part of a healthcare design project. Through the College's Helen Hamlyn Centre, Korn was paired with medics from St Mary's Hospital, spending weeks observing ward practices.
The result was a complete redesign of the paper-pulp trays used by nursing staff and a completely new way of using them. Korn's invention, called StickSafe, incorporates a special safely feature that allows one-handed safe use of needles.

StickSafe is a simple, environmentally friendly, low cost device that can significantly reduce needlestick injuries from hypodermic needles and vacutainers. Its innovative design intuitively encourages healthcare workers to adopt safer workplace practices. StickSafe is a redesigned medical tray, which incorporates a patented, easy-to-use clutch mechanism, that allows the healthcare worker to safely unsheath the needle from the cap, and once they have completed their procedure, then allows them to safely recap the needle. The risk of carrying an unsheathed needle around a busy ward is eliminated, and as needles can now be disposed of capped instead of uncapped, so too is the risk of needlesticks from incorrect disposal.  StickSafe will also greatly reduce the amount of sharps waste, as the needle can now be disposed of without the syringe attached.  In the UK, this means a potential cost saving for the NHS of £160 million.