A team of talented youngsters are heading to the finals of a national competition designed for students to use design thinking approaches and human-centred designs to solve real-world problems.

The team, made up of four Year 7 ̨��swag Academy Haydock students, are one of only ten finalists, from 119 entries in the V&A Innovate National Schools Challenge, led by the Victoria and Albert Museum. 

Team members Dinil Salwathura, Robert Porter, Logan Potter & Luke Eaves will now head to The V&A Museum in London for the Pitching and Awards Day on March 22nd. Here the team will pitch their design for their ultimate facemask, outlining the research and work they undertook in coming up with their design.

Dinil said:

“It was a real fun project to be involved with and we never really expected to get to the final. It is absolutely incredible that we have been shortlisted. It’s very exciting and we all can’t wait to go down to pitch our design to the judges.”

This year for the competition, students were asked to design a solution to a real-world problem and were told to explore one of three contextual challenges inspired by the V&A’s new Design 1900-Now galleries that ask critical questions about the issues shaping the world. These were;

• Renew: How might we give objects, materials and spaces a second life?

• Connect: How might we better connect with each other?

• Move: How might we keep active and make the most of the outdoors?

Within their chosen context, students discover a problem they want to solve leading to a new design solution.

For their entry, the impressive ̨��swag Academy Haydock team chose to explore ‘Connect’ and gave themselves the task of designing the ultimate facemask, to help overcome barriers in communication whilst wearing face coverings that will enable us to connect with others more. 

This involved conducting research, which found 80.2% of those surveyed said that wearing face masks made understanding others more difficult and that 29.7% found it to be a daily occurrence.

The team’s facemask boasts design features such as headphones, allowing background noise to be filtered out, and a clear plastic centre, enabling those who are hearing impraired to lip read and allow others to see facial expressions of the wearer more clearly.

Upon receiving the good news that ‘Team Ultimate Facemask’ was shortlisted for the finals, the judges told them that they had been incredibly impressed by the team’s detailed user research and the response to user needs.

In their feedback, the judges said: “The group have taken a current and relevant issue of communicating through facemasks and have shown excellent research to identify real problems to explore, including sending out a survey to members of the public

“The judges felt that their ‘ultimate  face mask’ has real potential to tackle some of the issues many people are facing communicating at the moment.”  

Luke said:

“We realised that because of the pandemic, face masks are an essential part of everyday life for many people, but our research highlighted that this has brought with it a lot of trouble for many people. Ultimately, we wanted to do something that could help people.”

Richard Weaver, Head of Design and Technology at the Clipsley Lane-based secondary school, said:

“We are so proud of the students. They really did rise to the challenge and have produced an exceptional piece of work, which is focused on helping others. This is something truly inspirational. 

“It will be an exciting day next month when we head down for the Pitching and Awards Day and on behalf of the entire school, we wish Team Ultimate Facemask the very best!”

More information about the competition can be found here: .