Touch-screen napkin worth $20,000

The idea of using napkins as touch-screen computers helped get a Cal State Long Beach student top honors in Microsoft’s Next Generation PC Design Competition May 30.
    Avery Holleman, a recent CSULB graduate, won the competition’s Judge’s Award and Chairman’s Award, each worth $10,000, for his Napkin PC. The competition, which was open internationally to professionals and students, had participants design their vision of tomorrow’s personal computer.
     Holleman’s design conceived the use of electronic papers as notepads on which creative professionals can draw their designs. A pen would be used to interface between the electronic napkins and the computer, which also acted as a napkin holder for other electronic papers.
     “This is a competition that is sponsored by Microsoft, obviously, and by [Industrial Designer Societies of America] the top organization for student designers in this country,” said Jose Rivera-Chang, a CSULB industrial design professor. “When you see who sponsors it, that tells you the type of competition it is.”
    The concept of the Napkin PC was the result of a class assignment given by Chang in Holleman’s Senior Industrial Design Studio class during the fall 2007 semester.  The four-week assignment had the same guidelines as the competition, which proved, at first, to be frustrating to Holleman.
     Two weeks into the assignment, and still without a design, Holleman was in his school studio at 2 a.m. trying to figure out what to put together.
     “I was getting pretty pressed as far as time,” Holleman said.
    After having several concepts fly through his head, Holleman had the novel idea of using a napkin as part of his futuristic computer.
     “From then on it just designed itself; it all came together,” Holleman said.
     Holleman’s design immediately got great reviews from Chang and design professionals that Chang brought to the class.
     “When they say it’s beautiful, that’s the best compliment they can give you,” Chang said.  “The other [designs] got a little bit of critiquing, but when they looked at Avery’s they said ‘this is beautiful.'”
     CSULB’s design department produced two other finalists: Jonathan Lucas and Jason Farsai, two recent graduates. Lucas’ Siafu design envisioned an interactive keyboard that help the blind more fully interact with computers. Farsai’s Yuno PC design was an Internet-connected coffee mug that showed the day’s stock index and weather on its sides.
     Two more of Chang’s students’ designs have been showcased on the competition website.
    The competition, sponsored by prestigious design organizations, made the five showings coming out of CSULB remarkable, Chang said, noting that the reason for such a good show by CSULB was the innovation of the students’ designs.
     “[The focus on innovation] is what distinguishes us from different schools,” Chang said. “That is the biggest challenge for design schools — how to teach innovation.”
     Holleman’s first-place finish will officially be announced at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference in November at the Los Angeles Convention Center.