This year's 81 IDEA winners include everything from warehouse equipment to computer peripherals to medical care designs to innovative kitchen products. But if you read the accompanying text, it is striking how many of them stress simplicity and ease of use.

In many cases, ethnographic observations and qualitative contextual research went into the design of these products, e.g. the Midea 3KG Mini Washer, the Bank of America's Keep the Change service, Costco Gourmet Settings.

Refreshing is also to see this approach filter down in the design of healthcare products or products for the disabled, such as the Intel Mobile Clinical Assistant, the Magic Wheels 2-gear wheelchair drive , the Universal Toilet, the e-Sullivan (a portable handheld communicator for deaf-blind people - see picture), and the MYGO (an electronic guide stick for blind people) - with the latter three being student projects.