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Sector: Creative services
Employees: 2
Location: London
The big idea :- using innovative designs to help children concentrate.
What they do
Concentrate is a new company which has, for the past two years, been working in primary schools looking very closely at the design of the whole learning environment, including furniture and equipment with a mission to help children improve their concentration and their speed of uptake of lessons. Once new designs are approved, the products can be purchased through the company's website.
The challenge
…in the first instance was to understand the barriers or constraints to concentration. No matter which school they were in, the Concentrate team noticed the same thing. It is easier for children to play and learn if they are better able to concentrate. Once the team had recorded the barriers to concentration - distractions present, being uncomfortable and so on - they set about designing new, simple, cost effective products to address some of the problems.
The solution
'We believe it is important to have parents, pupils and teachers involved in identifying problems that need addressing and also evaluating our solutions,' says Managing Director and Founder, Mark Champkins. 'Some of our key discoveries came in 2003 when we worked on a year-long project with the marvellous Helen Hamlyn Research Centre, based at the Royal College of Art.'
This research identified that tackling the issues that prevent children from focusing in school was more important than futuristic new school buildings, equipment and teaching initiatives.
The five main reasons children have difficulty focusing in class are:
Concentrate decided to apply some innovative thinking to remove some of these barriers.
Tackling problem seating
Concentrate produces the Chairpadbag to help children feel more comfortable on the hard plastic chairs common in many schools. The chairs make children fidget and in winter they are cold and in summer they make children's legs sweat. As schools would not choose to replace the existing chairs, the idea was born for a bag, which the children carry books and pens in, but which also has a padded flap that can be folded over the backrest and seat of the chair, providing a high degree of comfort.
Healthy eating
The Concentrate Food for Thought Lunchbox is innovatively designed to protect fruit from being damaged, and to provide a daily reminder to munch at least one piece of fruit at lunch.
A recent government survey found that: 'Over a third of schools that have encouraged children to eat more fruit have reported improvements in pupils' concentration (38%) and in their ability to settle down in lessons (36%)'. Eating fruit provides essential vitamins, minerals, and anti-oxidants and has been shown to have brain-boosting properties.
Providing drinking water
To help them focus, children need to have water on their desk, and the final product produced by Concentrate is the Bottlecoolerpenholder, a wetsuit style jacket for bottles which stores stationery and keeps water nice and cool.
Children need to drink more than adults and the smaller they are, the more they need to drink. A boy between the ages of 11 - 14 needs 3.3 litres of water a day and a girl of the same age needs 2.8 litres in the same period.
Issues arising
Concentrate was keen to get it right in the notoriously grey area of copyright and so sought the advice of the patent office, and worked with Own-it - a free intellectual property resource set up by Creative London and the London College of Communication - to register the design of each of its products.
Concentrate also took advice from MAS - (Manufacturing Advisory Service) when deciding where to manufacture its products. As Mark and his colleagues are designers, they didn't want to expand their small company into manufacturing as this would diffuse their core expertise. It was eventually decided to prototype and develop the products in the UK and source large-scale manufacture in China. The products will be launched into the UK market in early 2007.
The outcome
Mark says: 'It has been an enormous privilege to work on these projects. One of the outcomes has been a greater collaboration between designers and schools. As an offshoot of the report: Pay Attention - Investigating the design of the environment, furniture and equipment in Primary Schools, the key findings have been encapsualted in the children's story book Concentrate so that even the youngest reader will be able to understand what we are trying to achieve.'
Mark is determined to pursue his success, 'In the future, I would like to expand my website to encourage the co-design of products by including forums to enable teachers to evaluate products and talk to each other - and other designers - about their experiences and ideas.'
What could you do?
Public sector procurement should and will be structured to encourage innovative solutions, services and products, not only for schools but also for the NHS and other government departments. Working with designers to come up with such ideas will be an important way to arrive at these solutions. Visit the Design Council's website - http://www.designcouncil.org.uk - for further information or NESTA - http://www.nesta.org.uk - if you believe you could start a business in the arts, science or technology arena.
Concentrate Website: http://www.concentrate.org.uk
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