Business News

Design success

Published 7 December 2012

University of Brighton students have won £1,000 by developing a jacket that illuminates in the dark to make it safer for cyclists and pedestrians in night-time streets.

Their invention is exciting the business world and talks are underway to develop the product further.

The second-year product design students took part in Seen Me, Seen You, a road safety campaign run by Brighton & Hove City Council and FHOSS which makes high-visibility safety products for industry.

The contest idea came about when a FHOSS employee was stopped for not having lights on his bike at one of the council's road safety awareness events in Brighton.

The company's chief executive Andy Kimitri realised that most high-visibility gear is not attractive, particularly to young people, and he decided to work with the council and students to come up with something new.

Students had six weeks to develop ideas and prototypes, using FHOSS's self-illuminating high-visibility fabric. The competition involved product design, fashion and business students who competed for FHOSS's prizes of £1000, £500 and an i-pad 3 for the best ideas.

The city council has worked with the University of Brighton product design students previously on road safety for cyclists and pedestrians. A council spokeswoman said: "Many of the casualties on the city's roads are young adults and a major contributing factor is failing to look or see. This is partly due to them being distracted when using their MP3s or smartphones, or when they are just in a hurry. Today's fashion for dark clothing contributes to the difficulty of seeing people."

The winning team came up with a reversible jacket with strip lights on one side to be worn at night and a plain look on the other, so it appears more "cool" in the daytime.

The jacket has light strips on the surface, making it much easier for wearers to be seen. Lights can also flash along one arm when a cyclist is making a turn in that direction.

Student Adam Hargrave, a member of the winning team, said the lights are powered by a rechargeable battery cell and are operated from a control panel on the jacket's sleeve. The panel can be connected via Bluetooth to an iPhone, allowing the controls and the phone to be activated by voice command.

Adam said: "The jacket was a collaborative effort by all members of the team and it's brilliant that we won. This is an exciting project and FHOSS want to speak to us about developing the product further."

Left to right: Student Adam Hargrave, FHOSS's safety and innovations manager Will Stephenson, student Raul Jimenez, student Danny Hughes, FHOSS's chief executive Andrew Kimitri and student Barnee (crct) Lloyd.

Richard Morris, principal lecturer in the University of Brighton's School of Computing, Engineering and Mathematics, said: "The university has a great reputation for working with industry and in our Product Design courses we have very capable students working on a number of live projects from small local companies through to multinational corporations.

"This particular project was exciting for the students because it involved them working on a tricky problem with both the council and FHOSS, and it has also had a keenly competitive edge. As these students are the most likely sector of the population to be affected by road accidents it is also a great exercise in co-design. They will now be able to take these experiences out into industry when they start their placement year in a few months' time and if any companies are looking for innovative design placement students or have project ideas we would be pleased to hear from them."

Councillor Ian Davey, chair of the city council's transport committee, said: "This campaign is a great way of harnessing the creative talents of our local students and raising the issue of road safety.

"By working with students we hope they will develop innovative ideas which will help solve the problem of not being seen on our busy roads. Previously, students have gone on to develop their idea into a business and we hope some from this competition will too."

Second prize in the contest went to Andrew Frost, Timi Oladeji, Tudor Opait, Alex Osborne, and Doyin Odusina; and third prize was awarded to Becki Allen, Edd Topple, Nick Akhurst, Louie Amphlett, Mike Serafini, Richard Smith, Toby Adedayo, David Sollesse, Alessandro Tear.