Dr Stephen Reay - Senior Lecturer, Product & Design, AUT University

Our mission is to produce excellent product design graduates who are not just great designers and design thinkers, but who care about the impacts of their design decisions on people and the environment. Our graduates will be well placed to contribute to the social, cultural, economic and environmental fabric of New Zealand, now and into the future.

We define a product as the ‘end result of a critical, creative and collaborative design process that explores, challenges and/or meets + exceeds a clearly defined set of parameters. We believe that design outcomes must aim to have a positive impact on social, cultural, health and wellbeing outcomes, and have either a neutral or a positive impact of the environment. These outcomes, while considering contemporary issues must be placed in a context of a future scenario.

In 2010 we collaborated with Sir Ray Avery (and Medicine Mondiale) and on a 3 Day design challenge- a team design challenge where all Product + Design undergraduate students were given a brief to develop a method/device for humidifying air for the Medicine Mondiale Liferaft Infant Incubator. From this initiative we are looking forward to further developing our relationship through our postgraduate programme.

Visit website: www.aut.ac.nz