How
do you use your touchscreen phone or iPad at a temperature of -10°C without
freezing your fingers off?
Charmain Tan faced this problem during her NUS
Overseas Colleges (NOC) Stockholm programme in winter. She could not find
gloves that keep her hands warm while allowing usage of a touchscreen phone or
tablet PC.
To address this need, the NUS Faculty of Science
undergraduate decided to create her own solution - touchscreen gloves that
double up as mittens.
To turn her idea into reality, Charmain got together
three like-minded NUS friends: Fitzkhoon Liang, an alumnus from NOC Stockholm
programme; Tan Yan Liang, an alumnus from NOC Shanghai programme; and Cia Zhi
Yun, a student from the School of Design and Environment. Both Fitzkhoon and
Yan Liang are students with the Faculty of Engineering.
They set up FiETT (Fun in Ecological Tech Textile)
to develop and manufacture the glove-within-a-mitten. The startup is being
incubated by NUS Enterprise, enabling it to access business clinics,
mentorship, networks and infrastructure support.
Hand-held touchscreen devices such as iPhone and
iPad are made of capacitative screens which detect changes in electrical
impulses from the user. A normal winter glove is made of insulative materials
that prevent the detection of the signals from the fingers, thus curtailing the
use of the device.
FiETT's ISGLOVES have an outer layer woven from
eco-friendly materials - recycled polyester and recycled 3M Thinsulate
microfibers that trap heat effectively. The inner gloves are knitted from
sustainable bamboo which is anti-bacteria, hypoallergenic and sweat absorbent,
together with conductive polyester that possess conductive and touch-sensitive
functionalities. The removable cap of the outer mitten can be flipped over at
the fingers to allow operation of the touchscreen device while keeping the
fingers warm by insulating the heat within the mitten.
The team members' diverse expertise dovetails each
other seamlessly. Charmain, whose inspiration sparked off the invention, looked
after operations of the Singapore startup. Fitzkhoon tapped his international
sales experience picked up during his internship to develop the sales and
marketing strategy for the gloves. Yan Liang leveraged on his contacts in China
and negotiation skills learnt during his stint in Shanghai to source for
materials and mass produce the product. Zhi Yun applied her Industrial design
skills to fashion a unique design for the gloves.
The patent-pending invention, now retailing in
Sweden and online at fiett.com, is the only double-layered touchscreen handwear
in the market.
FiETT won a Demoguru Award for their innovative
product at the inaugural regional Demo Asia event held in March. The gloves
also received an honourable mention in the prestigious international "red
dot award: product design 2012" where a total of 4,515 submissions from 58
countries competed in 19 categories.
The four final year students are thrilled with the
recognition and intend to leverage on it to establish a network of retailers
and distributors in Singapore, Australia, the US, Norway and Denmark this year.
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