Via
this engadget post, I found out about the
Australian Design Awards - Student Award, and some of the designs are awesome. There's designs for chairs, helmets, bags, toilets, blood vessel sensors and others that seem to cover every category under the sun. I never thought we were much of an innovation country, but this has gone a long way to bucking that belief. And these guys are all students too, so wonder what they'll get up to later...
My favourite of the lot is the
Emotion (crap name, but bear with me).
"Emotion is a task chair, designed to be used in the office or study
context. The principle functions embody adjustable seating, status
display and a high extent of secondary usage. The need to constantly
move whilst working has been previously identified as necessary,
however, the display of status and secondary usage boosts confidence
and encourages the user to interact with the chair as a universal
object rather than just a chair."
Essentially, it's a chair that can be used as a normal chair, but also converted into a lounge. Simple, but very cool, and practical when you just want to take a short nap when working.
These guys didn't make the finalists, but were shortlisted.
Check out the site - some designs were more suited for some than others, like bike helmets, but the wide range of designs means I reckon you'd be able to find something you'd like. Now if only they could get it into production...