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TU/e student competes in HEMA Design Contest

Imagine you’re at a party and an acquaintance or distant relative whose number you don’t happen to have, takes a really nice photo that you would like to have as well. You forget to ask them for their number and… goodbye photo. TU/e student Yvonne Bruin had this happen to her just a few times too often. That is why she came up with HeMy, a photo exchange platform that prevents awkward situations like this from occurring. Bruin competes in the HEMA Design Contest with HeMy. Voting closes on September 30.

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photo Jocky Dock / Shutterstock
Yvonne Bruin. Photo | Yvonne Bruin

“HEMA celebrates its 95th anniversary this year, which is why the theme ‘celebration’ was chosen for the design contest. I used to go to parties quite regularly before corona and I simply like to take photos. Every time I tried to find a certain photo after a party, it turned out that someone I didn’t know had taken it,” the master’s student Industrial Design says.

And that means that you can kiss your photo goodbye. This inconvenience was the inspiration for HeMy. “In short: HeMy is a digital system with which partygoers can log into a cloud via a QR code. Via this cloud, guests can upload, store and share photos, so that they’re accessible to everyone. The photos can then be printed with HEMA’s photo service. It’s mostly meant to make things more practical at parties.”

Sustainable design

And practicality was one of the requirements that had to be met before Bruin could enter the HEMA contest with her design to begin with. “The design also had to be sustainable, and it had to offer a solution to a real-life problem that each of us is faced with occasionally. Whether it be a serious problem or a practical one, such as in the case of my design.”

Combination 

The 22-year-old says that the jury was particularly impressed by the fact that HeMy combines one of HEMA’s existing services – the photo service – with a new one: the QR code that allows partygoers to share their photos. “They consider this combination to be sustainable, and I scored some points with that, naturally.”

Voting

Voting for the designs closes on September 30. “Apart from HeMy, there are nine other designs in the running. If I win, I will get to actually design HeMy with a professional team from HEMA, after which it will be on sale in stores.”

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