Design 1st Collaboration on blueSLR Recognized by 2011 Excellence in Design Award
blueSLR wins Bronze in Appliance Design’s 24th Annual Design Competition
May, 2011
Ottawa, Ontario (May 3, 2011) – Design 1st, a product development company, announced today that client XEquals and its highly successful product, blueSLR, received a Bronze award in the Electronics category in this year’s Appliance Design’s 24th Annual Design Award competition. Products entered in this prominent competition are carefully examined by an independent panel of judges, comprising of industrial design experts who judge the entries based on appearance, human factors, innovation and technical merits.
The blueSLR product combines a Bluetooth® module and companion Smartphone application allowing users to remotely control a digital camera’s functions as well as embed GPS location information in picture metadata. By connecting the blueSLR product to the digital camera and downloading the free application, users experience a new way to map memories while wirelessly controlling their digital camera from up to 300 feet away.
Working with Ottawa-based XEquals, Design 1st was the industrial design and physical product engine for the blueSLR “Made in Canada” product. The Appliance Design award comes as a crowning accomplishment for the Design 1st collaboration with XEquals.
“The decision to engage with Design 1st to be our design partner was an excellent investment. They had the talent to take my idea, render it, complete the engineering, prototype it and work through the physical, ergonomic and aesthetic aspects of both the manufacturable product and the retail package, which allowed me to focus on the software, the operation and the requirements of the business,” said Derick Cassidy, Founder & CTO of XEquals Corporation.
Each year, the Excellence in Design awards attracts a high-level group of product entries. For the 2011 Appliance Design competition judges noted that the companies behind the honored entries demonstrated they were serious about industrial design and showed that significance by their attention to detail and innovative approaches that sharply differentiated winning products from their competitors.
Photos and descriptions of winners will appear in the June 2011 issue of appliance DESIGN magazine. To read more about the blueSLR product, please visit www.blueslr.com and get in the picture.
About Design 1st
Design 1st is a product development company with a team of highly talented Industrial Design and Mechanical Engineers who help inventors, start-ups and growing corporations bring new innovative products to market. Specialists in physical product design and mechanical engineering development, Design 1st takes clients from a napkin sketch concept to a production-ready product. Working closely with strategic marketing and development teams Design 1st manages the detailed design, prototyping, verification testing and documentation. Design 1st is based in Ottawa, Canada with satellite offices in Montreal and Vancouver. For more information, visit www.design1st.com.
Contact: Ian Kayser, Toll Free: 1.877.235.1004 ext.228, ikayser@design1st.com