Tata Swach wins Gold at the IDSA Design of the Decade Awards
Joins the league of BMW, Apple, Nike, Gillette and Porsche
Mumbai: After product and technology innovation, it is now its design that is winning accolades for Tata Swach. The Industrial Design Society of America (IDSA) has declared Tata Swach as the winner of its Design of the Decade Award — Gold, announced on December 8, 2010.
The 2010 Design of the Decade (DOD) winners feature a combination of brave thinking and progressive action. Winners such as Tata Swach®, Nike Considered footwear and Target’s ClearRx reflect the smarter contributions design is making to business and society on the whole.
Other DOD winners this time include Gillette Venus, Apple Retail Stores, Amazon Kindle, Virgin Atlantic Upper Class Suite. Past winners awarded by IDSA include familiar brands such as BMW, Porsche, Apple products, Mercedes, Logitech, Moen, and XO Laptop, among others. The Tata Swach design has been co-created with M/s Design Directions and has 13 design registrations to its credit.
Speaking on the achievement, Ashvini Hiran, COO, Consumer Products business, Tata Chemicals, said, “Right from the beginning, design was of prime importance in the development of Tata Swach. For a product targeted at the non-user of water purification system, it was imperative that the design was not only high on user-friendliness but also high on elegance and aesthetics. Today, across urban and rural India, users have accepted Tata Swach with a sense of pride, and winning the IDSA Design of the Decade Award is another endorsement of its ‘thoughtful’ design.”
During the last 10 years, design has been leveraged with increasing effectiveness to remedy poor user experiences, rescue tired brands and empower developing economies. With the Design of the Decade programme, IDSA honours the work that best reflects this. IDSA jury chairperson Charles L Jones, FIDSA, said, “Design of the Decade is a remarkable competition, pitting the best designs as submitted by their designers against stringent design and business criteria…demonstrating a clear intersection between great design and great business outcomes.”