Design in Society: Utopian Design

A design is Utopian if it purposely aims to improve society.

Some of the best examples of this can be found on the website for the James Dyson Award, targeting the field of engineering design. The terms of entry are simple for qualifying participants: design something that solves a problem. And really, that's what practical design is about. Solving problems.

This year's winner is a project dubbed Longreach. Longreach is a portable device designed for rapid deployment of emergency buoyancy devices - Life Preservers - which are composed of a highly compressed foam compound that's activated by water. When the capsules hit the water, they expand almost instantly to form a fully useful floatation device. These floatation devices are supposed to keep the drowning victim alive until emergency personnel can prepare an appropriate response. 

Every year, hundreds of people drown while rescue personnel are present, unable to get to them in time. Longreach could solve that problem. The expanding foam floatation rings are relatively cheap to manufacture. As such, Longreach could be put into use in a wide array of circumstances, replacing the conventional life ring with something capable of launching a rescue tool much further and quicker than the human arm can throw it. It's currently in the prototyping and testing phase, but it shows a lot of promise.