ALTEN’s Peter von Zweigbergk, Senior Industrial Designer & Design Manager, is a Red Dot Award winner with the team for Elekta Esprit.
On Monday, June 19th, the Award Ceremony for Red Dot Award: Product Design 2023 was held in Essen, Germany. Together with parts of his team, ALTEN’s Peter von Zweigbergk travelled there to accept the award in the “Product Design” category for the Radiosurgery System “Elekta Esprit”. It’s a Gamma Knife® stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) system used in cancer care. The device is used for several different treatments to cure targets in the brain with high precision, such as tumors, vascular malformations, or functional disorders.
— It’s great to receive international recognition and an award for all the work you have put into the project! Especially when it comes to the Red Dot Design Award, as it’s a very renowned and esteemed price in the industry.
Image: Elekta.
Working as a designer at a Neuro Department
Peter works as a Senior Industrial Designer in an assignment at Elekta’s Neuro department, focusing on delivering design solution in all walks of the product development process. He’s been involved with the project since day one: It started back in 2019, when he began investigating what it would take to get the project going. Together with the team, Peter worked to find the right balance between the scope and perceived value of the product and what it would take to make the product a success.
— The most challenging part has been that a large chunk of the project was done during the pandemic. It’s always a challenge to discuss details of physical products with suppliers if you can’t be there on-site. On the other hand, it’s been really exiting to work with the Elekta team that has been really engaged and involved. Everyone pushed to always get that little extra. Without that commitment, we would not have achieved the same results.
”It was a very close collaboration between ALTEN and the Elekta team, both from Jönköping but also with several visits on-site.”
Peter’s assignment is more than solely working with award-winning products. Elekta Neuro has products that are very different in both size and character, meaning that the job to create them is both varying and motivating. That’s often the case when you’re, as Peter is, involved in all phases of a project.
— It varies from design strategy to implementation of details with suppliers. This in turn means I use many different skills and tools: It’s everything from software where I create digital hand sketches, illustrations, 3D CAD to physical mock-ups in paper, 3D printed prototypes and the like. We also do a lot of milled prototypes because in many cases we work with extreme precision and long tolerance chains.
Collaboration with ALTEN
During the process of working with the product, ALTEN’s in-house team in Jönköping became involved in the project. They worked on the engineering details of a plastic tray at the side of the bed on the Elekta Esprit.
— It was a fun and rewarding collaboration for everyone involved, with many prototypes and tests that were performed on site at Elekta in Stockholm to create a durable hinge solution for the lids on the tray. It was a very close collaboration between ALTEN and the Elekta team, both from Jönköping but also with several visits on-site, says Peter.
Willy Olofsson, based in Jönköping and who joined the project from ALTEN’s side, can only agree with Peter.
— We collaborated very well despite the distance. My experiences from concept and product development helped me to deliver several mechanical solutions to all parts in the tray and to the Elekta Esprit team. All in all it was a very rewarding project, getting to work so closely with an experienced industrial designer like Peter but also to be a part of creating such an amazing product.
About the Award
The Red Dot Design Award is one of the world’s largest design competitions and has become established internationally as one of the most sought-after marks of quality for good design. The Red Dot Design Award breaks down into three disciplines: Product Design, Brand & Communication Design and Design Concept. Competitions for each of these disciplines are held once every year.
The jury’s motivation: “Modern and minimalist in appearance, the design generates a calming atmosphere that subtly pushes the technical aspect of the device into the background.”
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