With a digital roommate for the elderly and people in need of care, STUDIO PORTO and CARU are currently mixing up the AgeTech market. The industrial design agency STUDIO PORTO and the Digital AgeTech company CARU were nominated in the Consumer Goods category by the Design Preis Schweiz only nine months after the product launch of the CARU Smart Sensors. The winners of Edition 2019/20 were announced on 1. November 2019, with a subsequent exhibition in Langenthal.

For almost 30 years now, the Design Preis Schweiz has been awarding the biennial prize for "top performance in all business-related design disciplines". The aim is to bring the understanding of design closer to business and society through qualitative public relations work. The award has become an integral part of the Swiss design landscape. The Design Preis Schweiz, which is organised as an association, is committed to "considering design as an economic factor with high social and sustainable relevance".

With the goal of developing an optimal solution for older generations in a completely new way, CARU dared to take the courageous step of entering completely new territory: "We could not orient ourselves by any role model, since there was no comparable product on the market", says Thomas Helbling, co-founder of CARU. In the joint founding year 2017, CARU got to know the designers of STUDIO PORTO and commissioned them to implement the idea conceptually and technically. Kristian Marjanovic, co-founder of STUDIO PORTO, explains: "As an industrial designer, our greatest challenge - the central design service, so to speak - was to pursue the fundamental question: What exactly is the CARU Smart Sensor? Once the premises had been established, we were able to derive the physical and user-interactive design from them".

Within less than two years, STUDIO PORTO and CARU have developed an industrialised product that today provides a completely new, rethought understanding of safety in everyday care for numerous customers in the DACH region. The CARU Smart Sensor gives people independence in everyday life and security in emergencies, with the help of a unique user-friendliness and the greatest possible protection of privacy. The nomination for the DesignPreis Schweiz confirms the social relevance of the two young companies' work and encourages the teams to continue on their chosen path.