Product Design students developing Crime Prevention Solutions
Wed, 25 Mar 2015 09:24:00 GMT
First year Product Design BA(Hons) students have presented their design ideas to a select panel of industry managers, as part of a project focusing on the prevention of shoplifting in association with West Yorkshire Police.
The project was led by Lecturer in Product Design, Robert Silkstone, with support from an existing collaboration between Professor Rachel Armitage, Director of the University’s Secure Societies Institute, and Chris Joyce, Crime Prevention Officer for West Yorkshire Police. The industry panel included loss prevention, asset protection and risk managers from ASDA, Next, Morrisons and the Co-Operative Group.
The design students were challenged to develop innovative shoplifting deterrents, such as new security tags and shelving devices, which would slow down the criminal work and prevent shoplifting crimes. This involved researching into the psychology of the criminal, developing concepts and exploratory designs and refining their ideas. The students then had the opportunity to get feedback on their ideas from the industry panel, before selecting one concept to take forward and develop into a new design innovation. The students then presented their final designs to the industry panel in a design showcase.
Professor Armitage said, “I was extremely impressed, not only with the innovative designs, but with the extent to which the students had researched and considered the crime problem in the development of their solutions”.
Heather Walker, Regional Loss Prevention Manager for Next Retail Ltd said, “The Loss Prevention Departments within the fashion/food retail sector always strive to design security tagging solutions to enable our customers the best access to our products, whilst keeping them secure and protected. It has been refreshing and exciting to work alongside the design students at the University of Huddersfield on such a project. The innovative and truly inventive ideas the students have come up whilst thinking ‘outside the box’ has been amazing. They all strived to overcome the design issues and the standard of the work throughout has been outstanding”.
Not only did the project present the first year students with a real-world problem to be solved with a design solution, it also brought together industry professionals from big businesses to talk about crime prevention. Robert Silkstone commented, “Running a live project with so many different companies and participants has been really enlightening for everyone involved. Our students have benefited greatly from the astute and informed feedback from our commercial partners, whereas our partners revealed how refreshing it was to discuss new innovations and build on their collective experience by bringing industry managers into one room to talk about crime prevention”.
Professor Armitage added, “I am extremely excited about this work, and hope that we can continue to build on these links”.
