The Industrial Design Department of Ming Chi University of Technology (MCUT) announced today (Dec. 3, 2019) that its graduating team won two “Best of the Year” awards in the internationally renowned design award, “iF Design Talent Award,” in June, 2019 and thus won the 15th “Outstanding Award of Technological and Vocational Education (TVE)” given by the Ministry of Education (MOE) this year.

The MOE’s “Outstanding Award of Technological and Vocational Education” is to recognize the outstanding achievement of TVE teachers and students, who have participated in international skill competitions and won honor. The award ceremony, also known as “the TVE Oscars,” is held annually and has two major award categories—“Outstanding Award for Competitions” and “Outstanding Award for TVE Achievement.”

The MCUT team winning this year’s “Outstanding Award for Competitions” was made up of two graduating students (now graduates), Nai-xuan Chen and Ya-chu Huang, under the supervision of Prof. Kai-shu Li of the Industrial Design Department. Their winning works, “Umbilical care” and “Wood gramophone,” were specially designed for baby care and music education respectively, as the recent falling population of children has made the care and education for babies and children more of the focus of the society and the two themes are more likely to become attention-getters in competitions.

“Umbilical care” detects bacterium with a biogenic amine patch, which shows a crying face emoji once the umbilical chord needs to be sterilized. Its L-shaped structure facilitates the measuring of the distance needed for the umbilical clip, leaving room for the possible catheter surgery on the umbilical artery. “Wood gramophone,” on the other hand, was created for 2- to 4-year-olds to learn music staff and musical scales. Kids can compose their own music only by inserting wood sticks into different wood disks to make sounds. They may also create images for their music using the pictures of forest animals on the wood sticks.

The “iF Design Award” has been highly recognized around the world ever since its establishment in 1954, which attracts over 1800 products from more than 30 countries to participate annually. Its review panel, composed of internationally renowned designers, is the guarantee for the special status of the award. Of all the iF award categories, the “iF Student Design Award” has been the biggest one of its kind worldwide to discover new young talents in design. This award category has been renamed to the “iF Design Talent Award” and given biannually since 2017. It calls for ideas from students in all subareas of design, and their ideas must take future challenges and contemporary design strategies into consideration. The two above-mentioned works winning the “Best of the Year” awards in the “iF Design Talent Award” and the MOE’s 15th “Outstanding Award of Technological and Vocational Education” is undoubtedly a great honor to the MCUT team.

The winning team themselves also feel honored to receive the MOE’s “Outstanding Award of Technological and Vocational Education.” The two MCUT graduates, Nai-xuan Chen and Ya-chu Huang, said, “The two winning products went through evolution after evolution in order to get more advice from experts. We participated in all kinds of design contests in order to elevate the product values. We also interviewed medical staff and early childhood educators for making our products more suitable for user mode. We believe all glories come from hardships, so we would like to give our special thanks to everyone who had supported us all the way through our journey to the glory. This award belongs to all of you.” The MCUT Industrial Design Team also said that they will continue to work hard to participate in future design contests.

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Congrats! MCUT Industrial Design Team Won the 2019 MOE Outstanding Award of Technological and Vocational Education