Self-adjustable prescription lenses win Design Museum's first Visitor Vote
05 July 2013
Child ViSion Glasses, featuring adjustable fluid filled lenses, has won the inaugural Visitor Vote for the Design Museum’s Designs of the Year 2013.
Designed for children aged 12-18, Child ViSion uses self-adjustable fluid lenses that allow children without access to an optician to change their prescription as their eyesight changes and evolves. Child ViSion won with 486 votes and beat other nominations including The Shard, the London 2012 Olympic Cauldron and the new GOV.UK website, to be named the public's favourite.
Since June visitors have been voting for their favourite designs from the 99 nominations in a pop-up polling station in the exhibition. The official Design of the Year Winner 2013 was awarded to GOV.UK at an awards reception held in April. GOV.UK is designed by the Government Digital Service and is a revolutionary website combining all of the UK’s government websites under one single domain.
Professor Josh Silver, designer of the Child ViSion Glasses expressed delight at winning the Visitor Vote. "There are two aspects to eyewear," he says. "Firstly it has to function properly and give you clear vision, but equally important, it also has to look good! It’s great that the public have taken this design to their hearts and voted us their design of the year.
"The Centre for Vision in the Developing World has had some extremely talented engineers and designers working on our Child ViSion Glasses, and our challenge now is to get these glasses to the tens of millions of children whose education is hampered by their inability to see a blackboard in class clearly - a problem our self-refraction glasses will solve."
The 3D Printed Exoskeleton ‘Magic Arms’, a device that helps children with muscloskeletal disabilities and a non-stick ketchup bottle came in second and third respectively in the vote.
Child ViSion and all of the 99 nominations are on display at the Design Museum until Sunday 7 July.