Emerging designers Yachu Feng and Shuyi Liu have become focal points in the contemporary design field with their original ideas. Their shared goal is to utilize profound insights from social sciences to address complex social issues, designing services with lasting impact and enduring value by deeply understanding their target audience. This vision demonstrates their passion for design and their determination to make a social impact through it.
These two emerging designers stand out on the international stage with their unique perspectives and approaches. Their design pursuits are not only about formative innovation but more importantly, about innovation in content and concept. They recognize that true design foresees and addresses potential social challenges. Thus, their works have garnered multiple international awards, recognizing not only their design skills but also their ability to solve social problems.
“Pulse Pal: A Heart-Healthy Adventure for Kids!”, one of their representative works, aims to educate children about heart health through interactive and fun methods. This application combines challenges, educational content and interactive features, using bright colors and engaging animations to attract children, while also incorporating a parent participation feature, emphasizing the critical role of parents in cultivating healthy habits in their children.
The core of Pulse Pal’s design is to create a child-friendly digital health companion, a concept that runs through the entire design and development process. Feng and Liu understand that to make health education appealing and fun, it is essential to cleverly integrate elements of gamification, storytelling and interactive learning. Therefore, they designed a series of interactive health challenges and educational media libraries, all customized to suit children’s age characteristics while maintaining enough appeal. Moreover, Pulse Pal includes a parent participation feature, allowing parents to actively engage in their child’s health education process, learning and growing together with their child.
The design and implementation of Pulse Pal present a new model of education, making heart health education accessible and fun through digital means. This application has the potential to cultivate lifelong healthy habits in children, with a long-term impact that could be profound. By fostering habits of physical activity, healthy eating and mindfulness from a young age, Pulse Pal aims to reduce the risk of childhood obesity, heart disease, and other related conditions. Furthermore, the application seeks to alleviate the fear and anxiety often associated with health monitoring by engaging children in a fun and interactive way, transforming it into a positive and empowering experience.
Pulse Pal’s excellence in creation has won it the American Good Design Award, which is not only a mark of exceptional achievement for “Pulse Pal” and its creators but also an international recognition of their innovative spirit and design strength. The American Good Design Award, established in 1949, has become one of the oldest and most authoritative design awards globally. Founded by the Chicago Athenaeum Museum and the European Design Centre, it aims to identify and honor international design works that demonstrate innovation and excellence in new products and graphic design. Every year, it attracts designers, companies and institutions from over 30 countries and regions worldwide to compete, with submissions exceeding 1,000 entries across industrial design, environmental design, product design, packaging design, graphic design and other fields.
Moreover, the American Good Design Award’s judging process is rigorous, with all entries undergoing meticulous scrutiny by a jury of internationally renowned design experts, practitioners, and educators. Jury members ensure the fairness and professionalism of the judging process with their professional backgrounds and experience. The judging criteria focus not only on the innovation and aesthetic of the design but also on its practicality, sustainability, and positive impact on society and the environment.
Pulse Pal stood out from over 1,000 international entries through a strict selection process, signifying the global design community’s high recognition of the work, especially in terms of creativity, practicality and positive contribution to society. This adds a brilliant touch to the individual careers of Feng and Liu, and it strengthens the international impact of their works, proving that excellent design can transcend cultural and geographical boundaries and touch the hearts of a global audience. This recognition is an acknowledgment of their ability to improve people’s lives through design and lead societal progress.
Further, this award not only affirms the design concept and execution of Pulse Pal but also highlights Feng and Liu’s sense of social responsibility and mission as designers. By ingeniously combining health education with gamified learning through this application, they aim to cultivate children’s heart health habits while also involving parents in this educational process, thereby raising the whole society’s awareness of heart health. Such design not only reflects their pursuit of the social value of design but also showcases their ability to solve real problems and innovative thinking.
Looking ahead, the path in front of Feng and Liu is filled with possibilities. Winning the American Good Design Award is just one highlight of their journey, affirming their efforts thus far and setting a higher standard for their future explorations. With the success of the innovative design Pulse Pal, they have already shown that design can not only beautify the world but also change it, solve practical problems and improve the quality of life.
In the future, Feng and Liu will continue to explore how to integrate deep insights from social sciences into design to address more complex social issues. Their goal is not only to create designs that are visually appealing and functionally practical but to use design to trigger social change and inspire people to pursue a better lifestyle. They hope to continue playing a significant role in the international design field, inspiring future designers with their creativity and passion, encouraging them to practice boldly.
The news and editorial staffs of the Chicago Tribune had no role in this post’s preparation.