近日，The final of the fifth Goldreed Industrial Design Award was held in Xiongan New Area，The project "Harvest Hand, a portable handheld cotton picker for the cotton growing industry in West Africa" by teacher Sun Bowen from the Open Design Laboratory of the School of Design and Art of Beijing Institute of Technology stood out from the 7,106 entries，Won the highest award in the Concept Design Awards - the Future Star Award。

Since its launch in 2019, the Golden Reed Industrial Design Award has attracted a total of 35,318 design works from more than 80 countries and regions around the world in the past five years, helping Chinese design to improve new quality productivity and promote Chinese design to the world。

HarvestHand is a low-cost cotton-picking wearable designed for the West African region, which can be widely used in the cotton industry and easily accessible to the general public。At present, agriculture is the pillar industry of many African countries, taking Benin in West Africa as an example, cotton is the main economic source, creating 40% of foreign exchange earnings and 13% of GDP, providing and creating more than 40% of jobs in rural areas, and feeding about 50% of the population。At present, there are two main ways of picking cotton in Benin: large-scale mechanical picking and manual picking. The cost of mechanical picking is huge, the efficiency of manual picking is low, and it is easy to cause harm to users。Through product use innovation, structure optimization and user experience improvement, this HarvestHand design greatly reduces the use cost, improves the picking efficiency and improves the working conditions, and provides ideas for promoting the modernization of African agriculture。At present, the team is actively carrying out close exchanges with the Benin government, stepping up product development and research, and strive to put into the West African market at an early date。

The School of Design and Art of Beijing Institute of Technology closely follows the national strategic development direction, takes a global vision and the "four aspects" as the guidance, aims at the intersection of global "art innovation and design", actively responds to the global technological, economic and social changes, and promotes innovative design cooperation with multiple perspectives, wide fields and vertical pragmatism。In recent years, OPEN Design Lab has focused on the field of social innovation design, and has won 46 awards such as the German Red Dot Award, the Paris Design Award, the Italian A 'Design Award, the Dyson Design Award, the Golden Reed Award, and the Chinese Design Intelligence Award。The works submitted this time fully understand the special needs of agriculture in West Africa, and take "design + agriculture" as a breakthrough to meet the needs of local farmers to pick cotton through low-cost and innovative design, and reduce the economic burden of farmers' purchase and use。Compared with the traditional cotton picking method, it significantly reduces the labor cost, improves the production efficiency, and brings direct benefits to farmers。In the future, the School will further explore the global frontier fields, promote cross-research, focus on design innovation, serve social development, and build an open and diversified platform for exchange of design research practice。