The International Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), co-organized by the Association of American Industrial Designers, held an award ceremony in the early morning of the 16th. This award is one of the world's largest and most prestigious design awards. The teams was formed by Feng-Jia Zheng, Shuan-Yan Li, Kai-Rong Peng, Wei-Ming Gao, Ying-Jie Wang, Wen-Shuan Chao, Yu-Ling Tseng, Han-Jing Liu, Yi-jie Zhu, and Yang-Zhen Shie, directed by Associate Professor Kun Ouyang of the Department of Creative Product Design of STUST. They won one gold medal and two silver medals in the International Design Excellence Awards with three distinct works: "Hando," "T³ Monster," and "Visual Fairy Land." Over the past decade, only a handful of student teams from Taiwan have won awards in the IDEA. The three teams made great achievements in this competition, once again proving the international strength of STUST students.

[The STUST team that won a gold award with their work “Hando": (From left to right) Shuan-Yan Li, Feng-Jia Zheng, Kai-Rong Peng, Associate Professor Kun Ouyang, and Wei-Ming Gao]

The work "HanDo" that won a gold award this time is a prosthetic designed by four students—Shuan-Yan Li, Feng-Jia Zheng, Kai-Rong Peng, and Wei-Ming Gao—for children aged 6-12 with unilateral amputated limbs. Through modular and adjustable design, kits are designed for learning, sports, entertainment and life. It can improve the economic problems caused by frequent replacement of entire prostheses and assist children with severed limbs in their daily lives and school learning needs, so that they can grow up healthy and happily.

[Prof. Kun Ouyang of the Department of Creative Design, STUST and his teams in the competition]

"T³ Monster," which won a silver award, was designed by Ying-Jie Wang, Wen-Shuan Chao, Yu-Ling Tseng, and Han-Jing Liu. The work is a set of training aids for children with delayed hand development. Each of the monsters in this teaching aid is designed for different hand muscle group training and has different gameplay contents to achieve different training purposes. "T³ Monster" is also integrated with the use of an APP. The APP automatically integrates the record of each game so that the therapist and parents can use the recording function to understand whether the daily progress can be achieved when children return to the clinic and start to practice.

[The STUST team that won a gold award with their work “Work-T³ Monster": (From left to right) Yu-Ling Tseng, Han-Jing Liu, Associate Professor Kun Ouyang, Wen-Shuan Chao, and Ying-Jie Wang.]

Another silver award-winning work "Visual Fairy Land" was designed by Yi-jie Zhu and Yang-Zhen Shie, under the guidance of Associate Professor Kun Ouyang from the Department of Creative Product Design and Associate Professor Wan-Rong Chang from the Department of Electronic Engineering. The work was design as training aids to enhance the concentration in digital learning by children aged 4-6. The work is based on fairy tales, integrating visual tracking, scanning eye movements, visual recognition, visual gestalt, and other visual perception skills. All these training goals were put into the game, applying magnetic field induction modules to achieve the virtual and real interaction between physical objects and the game and to improve one’s concentration and hand-eye coordination.

[The STUST team that won a silver award with their work “Visual Fairy Land": (From left to right) Yi-jie Zhu, Associate Professor Kun Ouyang, and Yang-Zhen Shie]

Prof. Kun Ouyang, the driving force behind students’ winning of the IDEA with one gold award and two silver awards, said that concerning the development of this award-winning work, special thanks should be given to Taiwanese masters, the high-tech rehabilitation team, and Prof. Wan-Rong Chang of the Department of Electronic Engineering of STUST With. The work can be truly and completely developed and will enter the clinical stage in the future to help more children in need. However, due to the anti-pandemic policy against novel coronavirus, the award ceremony and exchange party were not allowed in the United States. All the participating students expressed their regret, but they were still honored and excited by the results of this competition.

[The work "Hando" by STUST won a gold award in the 2020 IDEA in the U. S.]

[The work "T³ Monster" by STUST won a silver award in the 2020 IDEA in the U.S.]

[The work “Visual Fairy Land” by STUST won a silver award in the IDEA in the U.S..]