Alumni Stories - Maeve Whelan
”Winning two categories in the Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Awards is a major career boost for myself and Leah. It's like having a prestigious accolade on our CV and LinkedIn profile, showing off our design knowledge, skills, drive and commitment.”
NCAD - Alumni Design Competition Achievement Interview
Designer: Maeve Whelan
Occupation: Designer
Course/Graduation: Interaction Design MA 2023
Disciplines: Product Design Innovation / Interaction Design
Residence: Co. Waterford
Design Competition Awards/Achievements:
Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Award 2023 in Product Design
Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Award 2023 in Design Collaboration
Briefly describe your design project?
This project was a co-design collaboration with my NCAD classmate and peer Leah Moore.
Through interviews with families, Leah and I discovered that many parents struggle to maintain a consistent bedtime routine for their children. We identified an opportunity to design a tool for home that would make the bed time routine a more fun experience for everyone involved.
SlumberShip redefines bedtime routines by helping children establish a consistent and enjoyable bedtime ritual. Guardians can assign their young ones five simple task balls to complete before bedtime. As each task is successfully accomplished, the child places the ball in its slot, experiencing the magical moment of it lighting up in acknowledgment. When all five balls are carefully placed, SlumberShip transforms into a soothing nightlight, casting a gentle ambiance that paves the way for a restful night's sleep. By incorporating SlumberShip into a child's nightly wind down routine, both the child and guardian can enjoy a more tranquil and relaxing bedtime ritual.
SlumberShip was a three week project. During the first week we focused on researching how to design for children, conducting co-creations with children, and talking to parents to gain an overall understanding of how to design for children and how to meet the needs of families.
Building on this in-depth research, we dove into the prototyping stage with great enthusiasm. For an entire week, we immersed ourselves in the shoes of our target audience, seeking guidance and feedback from parents, lecturers, and classmates. During this phase, we embraced innovative thinking, exploring ideas beyond the conventional norms.
Leah and I realised the importance of simplicity in design, where interaction and user experience take center stage. Using this principle, we created a child friendly design and were able to address the various "what-if" scenarios identified in our primary research.
Briefly describe how you look for high profile design competitions to enter?
NCAD lecturers are really keen on students entering the annual Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Awards. My lecturers spoke highly of Institute of Designers in Ireland and the great volunteer work all their members do for the design community in Ireland. This really gave us that extra push to get involved. We all felt that the Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Awards competition was a great opportunity to show off our knowledge and skills. It will help us to grow more connections within the design world regardless of winning.
There’s several ways to search for good design competitions. You can find them through typical key words online or simply through talking to other designers. It’s also good to build a community on social media such as Linkedin and Instagram and make an effort to go to design events. All of these platforms frequently share information about design competitions, especially more niche or specialist ones.
Briefly describe the work that goes into submitting a professional design competition entry?
Most competitions will be looking for a paragraph or two explaining your final outcome, some might want process images, others will also want a paragraph about your process. It's very important to show the purpose of your project, what problem it solves, who does it help and how it is a good solution. These are good questions to try to answer within your paragraphs and visual materials.
For the Institute of Designers in Ireland competition, Leah and I did not include any CAD drawings or renderings, as we felt that it wasn't necessary. We had made a working prototype, which we took lots of hero images of. When taking hero images of your final outcome the best pictures are usually in-context shots. For example, our hero images were all based in a child's bedroom, as that is where it would be used.
With this prototype we were also able to create a two minute promotional video which showed the product in use and the genuine reactions of a child engaging with it which gave the product authenticity.
Briefly describe what was it about your submission that made it stand-out from the competition?
I designed SlumberShip collaboratively with my peer Leah Moore. I think what made our design stand out was the clear collaboration that went into our design. We were a real team and worked really well together for the entirety of the three weeks.
We came up with the concept of SlumberShip together through concept generation, crazy walls and initially terribly designed prototypes. Doing all of these steps was essential to getting SlumberShip to where it is today.
Our in-context hero images and promotional video really added a sense of originality to our design.
The project was short and very intensive. We kept the momentum going throughout. We weren’t afraid to put all of our ideas on the table, no matter how out there it was. This allowed us to show all of our ideas before progressing the best ones further. Using this method, we came up with the SlumberShip in its most basic form. We then started developing our SlumberShip idea through sketches, interviews, co-creation workshops. SlumberShip was designed, prototyped, tested, and improved before we reached the final version.
Briefly describe what impact will your design competition success make?
My Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Awards success will no doubt add value to my future career prospects in design. Winning two categories in the Institute of Designers in Ireland Graduate Awards is a major career boost for myself and Leah. It's like having a prestigious accolade on our CV and LinkedIn profile, showing off our design knowledge, skills, drive and commitment.
This kind of recognition will catch the eye of potential employers, clients, and collaborators. No doubt, this will open up exciting new opportunities for my emerging career in the design sector.
