Award for Design Excellence 2009 to Hardanger and Per Finne

This year Hardanger Sylvplett and Per Finne Industridesign received the Award for Design Excellence as well as the Design for All Prize for their Tuva cutlery range.

The Design for All category is not about providing aids for the disabled or niche solutions, but about making a product or service more user-friendly, easier to understand and enhancing the user’s experience.

Cutlery is something that we all use every day. We all have our own way of holding cutlery, but not every type of mass-produced cutlery suits every group of users. When developing the Tuva range, Hardanger Bestikk and Per Finne Industridesign studied how people use knives, forks and spoons. They incorporated this knowledge into the whole design process to end up with a result which suits anyone who sits down to eat. Thanks to the cutlery’s design, there is no need to have special cutlery available for particular groups, either for children or people with a restricted use of their hands.

Tuva cutlery is also attractive to look at, making it something people might want to have as a wedding gift, but is also extremely practical to use. Hardanger Bestikk is using this cutlery range to show that it is possible to create products which are considered to look good on the table and are accessible to a larger group of users.

The Tuva range uses the “hollow-handle” technique for all the items in the cutlery set. The hollow handle gives the cutlery good balance, making it more difficult for it to fall on the floor. The cutlery offers good grip without being heavy and can be held in many different ways. The design of the Tuva cutlery’s handle offers scope for large grip variation. The cutlery’s volume and weight also mean that users with a restricted use of their hands find it easier to use it. In this case, the winner demonstrates in an excellent manner that even simple, well-known products can be designed to suit everyone.