Visit http://www.id.carleton.ca/undergraduate/minor-in-design/ for more information.

It all started at Startup Weekend Ottawa, an event that brings together entrepreneurs and their ideas. In the weeks leading up to the event, Tannahill fused the two things he likes most into a workable idea, he says.

“I like tattoos and I like doing tech, so the combination sort of came together,” he says. “It wasn’t my life’s goal to start a website about tattooing, but it worked out that there’s a real need for it.”

This need was demonstrated by his first place finish at Startup Weekend. After the event, Tannahill joined forces with two other entrepreneurs, including Carleton alumnus and designer Minh Dao.

After months of work, Tattoo Hero recently launched at the International Startup Festival in Montreal. The team hoped the reveal would generate some buzz around the website, Tannahill says.

Instead, Tattoo Hero was covered by TechCrunch, a popular website within the IT community. This exposure has brought thousands of unique visitors to the site every day, Tannahill says.

“(Tech Crunch) is something that we wanted down the road,” says Minh Dao, the website’s designer.  “To have that on the first day that we launched – it couldn’t have gone any better.”

As of now, Tattoo Hero makes finding an artist easier for people who aren’t linked into the tattoo community, Tannahill says. Because some great artists can work solely on referrals, they simply don’t have a need to build a good website to attract new clients, he says.

Tattoo Hero is working towards bringing these artists to the forefront and “doing the work for them,” he says. In the future, this will develop into bringing in a scheduling system operated through the website to allow people to book appointments with artists online, Tannahill says.

Carleton has prepared both Tannahill and Dao for the challenges of running a business.

“Being a software engineer, it’s given me good insight into the theories around software structure,” Tannahill says.

“My other two partners aren’t very tech savvy, and I’ll try to explain some things to them, and they just don’t get it. So I definitely learned something in school,” he laughed.

As the person in charge of branding and design, Dao also feels as though Carleton has prepared him for some of the challenges associated with running a website. He says one of the strengths of Carleton’s Industrial Design program is that it’s well known for producing well-rounded students.

“What Carleton Industrial Design does is give you a good broad spectrum of skills and knowledge – not just on design, but on marketing, on engineering, on psychology,” he says.

Even though Tattoo Hero only launched recently, the team is already proud of what they’ve done.

“We’ve created something that we all believe in,” Dao says.

Visit the Tattoo Hero website at tattoohero.com

In the product design category, winners are:

1st place: Inclusive Moto, Tiziano Cousineau; Carleton University
3rd place (tie): Skate Soccer; Jeff Burgers, Carleton University
3rd place (tie): Harambee, Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu, Andrew Theobald & Alyssa Wongkee; Carleton University

Fourth-year Carleton student Tiziano Cousineau took first prize in the Product Design category for his Inclusive Moto project. The project aims to make off-road motorcycling accessible for those with lower limb disabilities. Cousineau designed a solution that gives a disabled rider complete control of the motorcycle, as well as the ability to ride independently without an assistant holding the motorcycle upright when starting and stopping.

“I was inspired by people who have been injured and paralyzed riding motorcycles,” says Cousineau, himself a motorcycle enthusiast. “I started to think about how I could give them the opportunity to continue riding. From there, I realized that I could help give this opportunity to those who had never been able to ride a motorcycle because of their disability. So the project evolved toward being universal and inclusive for everyone.”

Cousineau attributes part of the project’s success to the training he received in the Industrial Design program at Carleton.

“Carleton’s Industrial Design program really puts an emphasis on exploring a problem,” says Cousineau. “I was actually able to consult with the disabled community by speaking with adaptive sports participants, so in the end I was able to learn from the people I was designing for.”

Tying for third place was a project by fourth-year students Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu, Alyssa Wongkee and Andrew Theobald. They developed a variety of assistive devices for users in rural Uganda requiring better mobility so that they can participate in small businesses. Also in third place was Jeff Burgers for his project Skate Soccer.

Electronics students Tim Inglis, Alim Baytekin, Natalie Lavasseur and Alborz Erfani took top spot. This is the second consecutive win for Carleton. The first runner up was the industrial design team of Ruby Hadley, Carmen Liu and Andrew Theobald that developed a variety of assistive devices for users in rural Uganda requiring better mobility so that they could participate in small business. The second runner up was Neil Voornneveld, whose navigation system alerts users to obstacles in their environment and provides location on command via audio.

“The 3-D prosthetic hand is an extraordinary invention that could make the world far more accessible for anyone missing a limb,” says Alastair Summerlee, Chair of COU and President of the University of Guelph.

The prosthetic hand is more nimble when it comes to opening doors or picking up small items such as eggs, and costs considerably less than the average of $15,000 for prosthetic limbs, its inventors say.

Inglis and Baytekin will continue to work on the prosthetic hand over the summer. They have received support from Tom Skinner, MEng/72, who donated funds to run a two-year pilot project that will help engineering students begin to commercialize a fourth-year group project.

About IDeA

Ontario universities are committed to the provincial goal of creating an accessible environment on campus, and in all walks of life. The IDeA competition asks Ontario undergraduate students to use their creativity to come up with ideas to turn that goal into reality.

This year, 18 of 21 Ontario universities participated in the contest, which is supported through the Ontario government’s EnAbling Change Program and COU’s partners at the Accessibility Directorate of Ontario in the Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Employment.

Next year’s competition will focus on parasport and active living in honour of the upcoming Pan American and Para-Pan American games taking place in Ontario.

A group of four undergraduate industrial design students are crediting their final-year project, which had them visiting “end users” in Africa, with going beyond their expectations.

The four worked in close collaboration with local stakeholders in Kasese, Uganda, to improve the design of products such as a hand-operated tricycle for the disabled in rural Uganda.

“When we started, we had a lot of assumptions and our heads were filled with questions,” says student Ruby Hadley. “Sending a drawing to Uganda and then seeing it as a reality when I arrived and being able to work with the manufacturer (welder and artisan Kio Muikiika), was a learning experience so much more than I expected.”

The Design Innovation for Disability in Kasese project, funded by a $50,000 grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), brought together the students, their instructor Stephen Field, Bjarki Hallgrimsson, acting director of the School of Industrial Design, Navin Parekh of CanUgan Disability Support Project, Carleton’s READ Initiative (Research, Education, Accessibility and Design), and experts with experience in design and disability for low-income communities and developing countries, specifically Noel Wilson of Catapult Design and Aaron Wieler of Whirlwind Wheelchairs.

“There’s a movement in the design field called ‘Design for the Other 90 Per Cent,’” says project leader Hallgrimsson, who saw the opportunity to work with Parekh and the Kasese District Union of Persons with Disabilities (KADUPEDI).

“We applied for funding from IDRC and approached Stephen Field with the idea for a fourth-year project. Then we brought in the experts (Wilson and Wieler) to gain insight.”

It was important, Hallgrimsson stresses, that the end users of the products be involved in the design process, and so he and Field, the students and Parekh made the trek to Uganda in February.

Encountering the manufacturers and users of her design who were “half a world away” was “something very real and new” for student Alyssa Wongkee, who started to work on improvements for the existing design on the computer (CAD).

Carmen Liu, who designed a maize mill for Ugandans who earn their living grinding nuts and maize, found it challenging to design outside her comfort zone. “I definitely sharpened my skill of working and communicating with people from different cultures, backgrounds and needs. I like the idea of designing in a new way. It has widened my scope.”

The students went straight to work in his first week of school by building a full-scale prototype using a quarter-scale model of Kio’s design. To better understand the issues of the eventual users, Andrew Theobald bound his legs and initiated a coffee-selling business pedalling around the campus on a prototype tricycle.

“Going to Uganda was eye-opening,” says Theobald. “It was so different from what I expected. I fell in love with the country. I saw so many opportunities for someone in our profession, not only to design as a humanitarian effort, but for the many needs that can be solved through the application of design.”

KADUPEDI co-ordinator Balouku Peter, who visited Carleton’s campus at the end of April, points out that the students’ designs are “improving the economy of the people. The minority tend to be left out and sometimes things are done for us, but they’re not the way we need them done. Working directly with the people has made a lot of difference.”

The students returned from Uganda with a new understanding, says Field. “It’s been a huge learning curve and an incredible learning opportunity. What these four have started is going to be a hard act to follow.”

READ director Dean Mellway explains the concept of the initiative “is to build Carleton’s leadership in the disability area, and demonstrate that we have an expertise and are willing to collaborate.”

Hallgrimsson adds, “Our biggest challenge will be making the project sustainable on a year-to-year basis. We have really set something in motion. What the students did blew me away.”

Ross Nicholson was playing in an obscure rock ’n’ roll band eight years after leaving high school, when one day he saw the light.

“I realized that the only culture I was absorbing was bacterial in nature,” he says, “so I went to university to expand my horizons.”

Nicholson initially studied industrial design before completing a masters degree in architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Born in Gatineau, Que., in 1958, he had grown up in the nation’s capital where his father, James (Jim) Nicholson, worked as a chemist for the National Research Council. While at university, he gravitated toward lighting which, the way Nicholson describes it, seems to hold a connection to the better aspects of his rock ’n’ roll past.

“It’s emotional, perceptual, almost visceral, technical, but mostly it’s fun,” says Nicholson of his (ahem) brilliant career as an award-winning lighting designer. “It’s also quite intrinsically rewarding, and cheaper than therapy.”

Nicholson’s first job right out of university was with Ottawa lighting designer Phil Gabriel, whom he credits for giving him a solid background in design principles and practice, as well as access to project opportunities.

Eventually, he was creating his own lighting fixtures, or luminaries as they are called in his industry, relying on a software lighting algorithm and interface he developed which accurately reflects natural lighting design processes.

His job can be complicated but in essence he creates and controls brightness on large-scale architectural projects, ranging from shopping malls and illuminated bridges to museum exhibits and urban planning. “I juggle the sometimes conflicting needs of the functional requirements for lighting, the desire to create an aesthetically appealing visual landscape, the need to help people intuitively navigate the spaces they travel in, reinforce the strengths of the architecture, minimize equipment cost, figure out how it’s controlled, and control how hard and expensive it is to maintain,” Nicholson explains.

His current projects include the faculty of social sciences building at Ottawa University, the Isabel Bader Centre for Performing Arts at Queen’s University and the Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health in Ottawa.

In his spare time, he creates light-art projects for the Candela Light-Art Exhibition in Ottawa, the IIDEX design and architecture show in Toronto and LightFair International in New York.

Allowing that it is hard to create good lighting without good architecture, Nicholson generally works closely with architects, including Diamond and Schmitt in Toronto, Snohetta in New York and Douglas Cardinal in Ottawa.

Some of these collaborations have resulted in award-winning projects, among them the Canadian Museum of Civilization’s Grand Hall exterior and Les Promenades St-Bruno shopping mall in Quebec.

After a decade of working with others, Nicholson, a single dad with a 10-year-old son, started his own practice.

He says he is now committed to sharing the light, so to speak, with as many people people as he can.

“I run a one-man shop,” he says, “but I get the opportunity to pass on some of what I know by teaching part-time at Carleton in the school of industrial design.

“Teaching is a blast, because there are lots of keen, sharp minds looking for new avenues of exploration.”

The contest invites undergraduates from all disciplines to propose ideas that can improve accessibility and inclusion for persons with disabilities and accepts a maximum of two submissions in each of five categories from each university based on issues identified in the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act (AODA). This year, Carleton students have submitted: an affordable prosthetic hand (video above); an adjustable heigh wheelchair seat; a collection of products building on a hand-powered tricycle to explore accessibility and economic opportunities for people in Uganda; an offroad motorcycle for riders with lower limb disabilities; a dot navigation system for visually impaired athletes; and a presentation for students on IDeA.

Selected as a finalist is the low-cost 3D printed prosthetic hand with intelligent EMG control designed in the Department of Electronics as a fourth year project. The team of Tim Inglis, Alim Baytekin, Alborz Erfani and Natalie Levasseur were supervbised by Dr. Leonard MacEachern. The team will showcase the project at the Ontario Centres of Excellence Discovery 2013 Conference.

View this year’s submissions. In 2012, Carleton students won 1st and 2nd place.

The team defeated Jennifer Jones of Manitoba 9-6 in the final of the 2013 Scotties Tournament of Hearts at the K-Rock Centre in Kingston.

Miskew graduated from Carleton’s Industrial Design program in 2012. It was the first Scotties title for the team, which plays out of the Ottawa Curling Club. Team Ontario dominated play throughout the game, making the big shots when required, peeling and ticking guards and waiting patiently for opportunities to score.