design award win for Meditech 4 Sports

The Fleetseat emergency stretcher designed by outerspace for Meditech 4 Sports, has won a prestigious Good Design Award in the product design category, a recognition of outstanding design excellence and innovation.

what the Good Design Awards jury said: 

“Congratulations to the Fleetseat design team on the development of this well-resolved robust and ergonomic two-person carry system. This is an important problem in need of a solution. The care the design team has shown is evident in the robust human-centered design process. This design is carefully considered and sensitive to issues such as non-consensual contact between users. Well done.”

designing a way to safely carry injured athletes

The founder of Meditech 4 Sports, Luke Versace, approached us with an idea for a portable, compact emergency stretcher. He was concerned about the adverse ways young injured athletes were being carried and how consent is crucial to this process.

With a background in the education and legal sectors, Versace has deep knowledge and insight into the importance of obtaining consent before safely carrying an injured athlete. Along with obtaining consent, carrying an injured athlete needs to be closely aligned with a safe and ergonomic way to carry people to receive medical attention, while avoiding unnecessary body contact.

“During the product development process, it felt like outerspace was just as invested in getting the best product outcome possible, as we were!” says Versace.

“outerspace’s commitment to making Fleetseat the best it could possibly be, was absolute. Whenever there was a problem, they proactively sought to solve it to the best of their ability. This is something other designers simply don’t do,” he says.

“It’s been fantastic to work with outerspace. The quality of their work is equally matched by their client-centric approach. They leave no stone unturned in seeking to achieve the best product design outcome for their clients.

“outerspace gave us so much comfort and confidence throughout the design process. This was a relief after the difficulties we’d experienced prior to engaging outerspace. The quality of the design and engineering solutions outerspace generated was always of the highest standard,” Versace explains.

expertise in design for sport and medical products

“We worked side-by-side with Meditech 4 Sports to develop Fleetseat to be the essential first aid tool it is now. We combined our expertise in product development for sports-related products and medical equipment to engineer and design an ergonomic, user-friendly product,” says outerspace Founder and Managing Director, Fred Blochlinger.

From our experience in design for sport, we knew the Fleetseat stretcher needed to be robust and strong. It had to withstand rough treatment outdoors and indoors and be able carry people of all sizes. It needed to be highly portable, easy to wear across the body, deployed in seconds and easy to roll up into a compact size.

The principles of product design for sport in the rugged applications and environments where sports are played, set the benchmark for the material selection and construction details of the stretcher.

Our medical equipment design expertise ensured the stretcher was safe to use and designed to meet medical grade standards.

ergonomic design and a human-centered approach to ensure safety

Fleetseat is designed to safely and comfortably carry injured people of varying weights and sizes. It’s equally designed to be worn by rescuers with variable strength and physical abilities.

The correct distribution of an injured person’s weight when lifted and carried, and the combined loads that are applied to each rescuer, were carefully calculated and tested until the ideal format and engineered solution was found.

Versace explains, “We needed to ensure that every aspect of our product was as safe as possible. This meant testing and retesting different design iterations. At the same time, we needed to keep costs down to make the product commercially viable. With this in mind, I’m impressed by the ingenuity of the outerspace design team in coming up with optimal and safe solutions that aligned with my brief.”

Fleetseat was designed for applications across athletic and sports sectors including sports education, sporting clubs and sports leagues. It also provides safe transport of injured people in emergency rescues, workplace accidents and military applications.

CEO of Good Design Australia and Chair of the Australian Good Design Awards, Dr Brandon Gien says, “Fleetseat’s Good Design Award is an endorsement of professional design quality. It tells the world that Fleetseat represents design excellence. It surpasses criteria for design innovation and design impact.”

authors

Belinda Stening Design Strategist and Industrial Designer
Design Strategy and Marketing

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