Theodore Scoufis Wins WantedDesign Conscious Design Award
We are excited to announce that Theodore Scoufis (class of 2020) has won a WantedDesign Conscious Design Award (in the category of Best Student Project with Social Impact) for his thesis, FireLink: Fighting Fire with Data. FireLink is an information management ecosystem for firefighters that focuses on the 4:30 minutes between receiving the call from dispatch and arrival on the scene. The purpose of the system is to provide firefighters with realtime insight into the conditions of the building they are responding to.
FireLink is an ”incredibly thoughtful design concept that explores the practical and urgent issues that firefighters have to solve and understand in their very short transit to the scene.”
Jury member Matilda McQuaid (Deputy Curatorial Director at Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum) shared that FireLink is an ”incredibly thoughtful design concept that explores the practical and urgent issues that firefighters have to solve and understand in their very short transit to the scene.”
FireLink is a bifurcated system of data collection and information dissemination that is based on input from FDNY firefighters. Data is collected via three different sources: the Data Standpipe, data landscape, and the pre-fire inspection reports—and disseminated via two main modes: the command center tablet app and the helmet mounted augmented reality heads-up display. Information gathered by FireLink allows firefighters to make more effective decisions more efficiently, which will reduce threat to civilians, firefighters, and property.
Avinash Rajagopal (the editor-in-chief of Metropolis magazine) shared that “in selecting the winners, the jury paid close attention to the process, the outcomes, and the presentation. The projects that stood out were the ones that followed a rigorous, multidimensional process to achieve great outcomes. The clear, well laid out presentations were also important, indicating that the student designers had distilled their thinking about whatever concerns they’d chosen to address—whether it was caring for older people dealing with diabetes or helping firefighters make better decisions.”
Learn more about FireLink and check out the impressive list of student winners here. We are delighted about this well-deserved recognition of Theodore’s thesis work. Congratulations, Ted!