Holographic home shopping wins Electrolux Design Lab 2014

Future-Hunter Gatherer, which uses holographic gaming to educate children on where their food comes from, has been crowned winner of the annual Electrolux Design Lab competition.

Designed by Chinese student Pan Wang, currently studying at Central Saint Martins in London, the concept is a virtual grocery shopping experience which projects holgrams that let the user play a game to gather food by fishing, hunting and gathering food from nature.

The idea is that the information of the collected food in the game is then directly transmitted to the local market or grocery shop which then gathers the goods and delivers them to the user's door, like a fun, hologram-based version of Ocado.

Winning desiger Pan Wang explained: “I find that there is a lack of connection between people and food sources, as buying food from super markets is so easy, people have lost knowledge of where the ingredients actually come from.

"I was inspired by the traditional way people collected food, the hunter-gather period. By simulating nature, bringing an element of gamification into food preparation and connecting this with the food suppliers, learning about food and buying groceries becomes a fun and educational activity for the whole family.”

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While certainly an interesting concept with educational value, it's unlikely that we'll be seeing Future-Hunter Gatherer in our homes any time soon as it's still very much at concept stage.

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Perhaps the most viable design from the six global finalists was Pure Towel, designed by Leobarda Armenta from Mexico, which is a smart towel hanger that refreshes towels after each use, with UV light and a high-speed dryer, similar to a Dyson Air Blade.

Now in its 12th year, the theme of this year's Electrolux Design Lab was 'Creating Healthy Homes with the brand posing the question: "How can we enjoy healthy well-being in the future; living in pleasant envonronments and taking care of ourselves and others in a way that is creative, sustainable and effortless?".

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The Design Lab 2014 jury was made up of Lars Erikson, Senior Vice President Design at Electrolux, Margareta van den Bosch, Creative Advisor at H&M, and Robin Edman, Chief Executive of SVID (Swedish Industrial Design Foundation). Over 1,700 concepts from over 60 countries around the world were submitted to the competition this year.