Nick has an eye for design

University of Teesside graduate Nick Palfreyman’s design of an eye-drop dispenser has reaped dividends. Not only has it helped him to win £4,000 but has also led to a top job.

Nick, 21, from Sunderland, has achieved a First Class BA (Hons) Industrial Design degree. In his final year he won a competition organised by the Royal Society for Arts, Media & Commerce (RSA) to develop a product, service or system that takes account of the needs, aspirations and capabilities of older people. The competition was open to all UK and European Universities and received around 2,500 entries.

Nick’s design, an eye drop dispenser, earned him the Helen Hamyln Development Award of £3,000 and the Whittington Award, a travel bursary of £1,000. He is now employed by Gateshead-based Virdev Design as an Industrial Designer.

He said: “Winning this competition was great. It looks brilliant on the CV and has helped me get a job, even before I had my degree results.

“It was my granddad Bill Render who suggested the idea of developing an eye dropper, which improves the measurement, accuracy and efficiency of dispensing eye drops. My granddad, like a lot of elderly people, suffers from eye related problems that require eye drops up to four times a day. After an accident at work he lost the use of one of his arms and a stroke left him with poor control of normal body movements. However he can use one of his arms and he said he would prefer to administer his own eye drops because at the moment my grandmother does it for him. To administrate eye drops the user holds the eye open with one hand and squeezes the bottle in the other - no way is this possible for my granddad or many other elderly people. If the person lives on their own, then a nurse comes out to administrate the drops. Hopefully my product will give elderly people more freedom.

“I hope to eventually get the dropper in the shops as it would be useful for lots of people, such as glaucoma suffers, contact lens users and hay fever suffers etc. At the moment I'm trying to secure more development money from various sources and I hope to develop my product at Virdev. The prize money will go towards the costs of development, taking it right through to a production-ready version which will be ready for release onto the market.”

Nick used some of the travel bursary to go to London to visit the New Designers 03 exhibition and the Design Museum.

Nick, who attended St. Aidan's Secondary School and Sixth Form Centre in Sunderland, is the son of Sue and Terry Palfreyman.

For more information about the BA (Hons) Industrial Design, call 01642 384019, or visit: www.tees.ac.uk

For more information about the Royal Society for Arts, Media & Commerce, visit: www.thersa.org

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