The winner of the Electrolux Design Lab 2014, a global competition for design students to present breakthrough ideas for future household environments, has been announced. The theme of Design Lab 2014 was ‘Creating Healthy Homes’.

‘Future Hunter-Gatherer’ (FHG), a nature-inspired educational grocery shopping experience created by Pan Wang of China, was declared the winner. FHG was selected by an expert jury in the presence of an audience of 150 international journalists and bloggers at the Electric Venue in Paris, France.

Currently studying at Central Saint Martins, UK, Pan Wang based her design concept on a virtual grocery shopping experience inspired by nature. FHG projects a hologram that lets the user play a game to gather food by fishing, hunting or gathering from nature. The information of the collected food in the game is then transmitted to the local grocery store or market, which in turn gathers the goods and delivers them to the user’s door.

Lars Erikson, Senior Vice President Design at Electrolux and Head of Jury explained that the concept addressed issues of ecology and consumer awareness related to the food supply chain in an urban society in an educational, honest and playful way.

Observing how there was a lack of connection between people and food sources, Pan Wang said buying food from supermarkets had become so easy that people had no clue about the source of ingredients. Inspired by the traditional way people collected food during the hunter-gatherer period, she decided to bring an element of nature-inspired gamification into food preparation, and connect it with food suppliers, turning the whole process of buying food and groceries into a fun and educational activity for the whole family.

The second prize in the competition went to ‘Lotus’ by Fulden Dehneli from Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Lotus is a concept for a portable product used to purify, humidify or deodorise air. According to the jury, the Lotus concept has an appealing design inspired by nature, and creates a perfect indoor atmosphere, with full consideration to specific consumer needs.

The third prize was won by ‘UrbanCONE’ by Michał Pośpiech from Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts, Poland. UrbanCONE is a concept for creating healthy microclimates in urban areas, and has been described by the jury as a visionary and poetic view of solving a truly global environmental challenge, with a sculptural form and beautiful intuitive movement.

The People’s Choice Award went to ‘HERO’ by Fiorella Rios, a gamified air purification concept, which received almost 6,000 public votes on the Design Lab website.

The Design Lab 2014 jury, comprising 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), selected the winner from six global finalists. Over 1,700 concepts from over 60 countries around the world were submitted to the 2014 competition.

The first prize winner gets 5,000 euros and a six-month paid internship at an Electrolux global design centre; the second prize is worth 3,000 euros, third prize winner gets 2,000 euros and the People’s Choice Award wins 1,000 euros.