Umeå Institute of Design once again claims top spot on Red Dot Ranking

For the fifth year running, Umeå Institute of Design (UID) at Umeå University takes top position on the Red Dot Design Ranking, rating design educations in the Americas and Europe.

The Red Dot ranking is based on design projects created by the schools’ students over the past five years. This year’s winning UID student projects range from coral reef restoration drones to storytelling tools for parent-child interactions.

Thomas Degn, programme director about why Umeå Institute of Design ranks at the top again.

“It’s a testament to the valuable work that our students are doing” says Thomas Degn, Programme Director for the Master’s Programme in Advanced Product Design. “It shows us that our students are able to present their projects in a way that people outside the industrial design community can really appreciate them. The ranking is a kind of quality stamp on the things that go on here. Maybe anybody can get top spot once but to do it five years in a row and eight times in ten years, that has never been done before”

A keyboard for the futuristic screenless workplace

One UID student project received special honours at the Red Dot Awards. The next-generation keyboard Logi ULTRA was presented with the Red Dot: Best of the Best award. The concept is a keyboard that bridges the gap to the future screenless workplace by utilizing technologies such as virtual- and augmented realities (VR and AR).

Students Shuai Li and Tillmann Schrempf created the product with the aim of improving remote working efficiency, especially in the home office or in shared offices. Shuai Li, currently in his final year of the Master’s Programme in Advanced Product Design, believes that the office technology we surround ourselves with will change significantly in the next decade.

“Logi ULTRA can adapt to different working situations, which will be key in the future” says Shuai Li. “We’ve used emerging technologies such as ultrahaptics, which enables sensory feedback in mid-air, and a capacitive touchscreen that responds to your slightest touch. The keyboard changes layouts according to the user's ergonomics and preferences and over time it also adapts to the user's way of working through machine learning technology. By pushing the fingerprint login button, users can wake up any Logi ULTRA keyboard with their familiar layout in any shared office in the world. We are really proud of winning the notable Red Dot: Best of the Best award for this particular product.”

Tillmann Schrempf believes that the highly international student body at UID is part of the secret recipe behind the visionary design concepts produced each year by students from all corners of the world.

“For us, being a German and a Chinese designer working in the very north of Sweden, we constantly face intercultural communication challenges. But this gives us a unique perspective on the changing, globalizing workplace. We believe that the mixed cultural heritage of students at UID provides us with a wider perspectives to explore the design world and tackle the problems we want and need to solve”, says Tillmann Schrempf.

Read more about Umeå Institute of Design

For more information, please contact:
Jens Persson, Communications Officer, Umeå Institute of Design, Umeå University
Phone: +4690 786 50 63
E-post: jens.persson@umu.se