USP alum Yong Zi Fong (Industrial Design + NOC + USP, Class of 2019) and her teammate Ng Ai Ling clinched the prestigious Red Dot Award: Product Design Junior Prize 2020 for “The Dyslexperience” – an interactive empathy book specially designed to raise awareness on how having dyslexia feels like. Their project previously received the top accolade, the Grand Prix Award, at the 2019 Taiwan International Student Design Competition.

We featured their achievement last year where Zi Fong shared that the design was inspired by a USP classmate who faces the challenge of dyslexia his entire life and the idea was sparked during her Critical Reflection class (the capstone module at USP) – read more here.

Each year, the Red Dot: Junior Prize is awarded to the best piece of work by an up-and-coming designer along with prize money of 10,000 euros. In a video interview with Red Dot, the ladies shared they wanted to create more emotional awareness about dyslexia and more empathy with people. The jury selected their project for the award as it presented the experience of the dyslexic succinctly, enabling one to vividly assess what it means to be confronted with dyslexia.

As stated on the award page: Presented as an art installation, the project employed projection mapping onto a book, demonstrating through a visual journey all the different reading hurdles that a dyslexic goes through every day – an artistic engagement that forces the audience to confront the challenges that dyslexia presents. Besides being enchanted by the curated experience that quietly and sensitively calls for empathy in the viewer, the jury is as well impressed with the technical aspects – an elegant treatment of the typography and layout in the “book” design, which is half physical, half ­projection. There are many effective awareness campaigns around, but sometimes they are a little in your face. “The Dyslexperience” manages to create an advertising campaign that not only conveys the message clearly, it has won our hearts because it is at the same time artistic and poetic. To borrow the last words in the book, that summarised the message of this project befittingly: “If one more person understood what dyslexia is, one less person will feel misunderstood.”

Congrats Zi Fong! We’re inspired by your creativity in using design to make the world a better place.