The Good Design Awards are Australia’s peak international design awards and the highest honour for design and innovation in the country. The team won in the 'Service Design: Commercial Services' category for their work streamlining transactions in the beef supply chain, and in the 'Design Strategy' category for 'Beefledgends', the design strategy connecting Australian producers and Chinese consumers.
The Blockchain in Beef Exports project is led by QUT researchers and industry partner Beefledger. The project is using blockchain and IoT to create an unbreakable, immutable record, tracking beef from paddock to plate, credentialing the provenance of Australian beef. This information will drive aps for consumers and suppliers, giving them confidence that their meat is 100% Aussie.
The team is also building a digital system using ‘smart contracts’ to replace letters of credit, new packaging with a range of anti-counterfeiting measures embedded to prevent the substitution of fake products, and investigating how cryptocurrencies could be used to incentivise compliance throughout the supply chain.
Professor Marcus Foth from QUT Design Lab said BeefLedger is an industry-led interdisciplinary project that brings together design, business, technology and legal research to protect the reputation of Australian beef exports.
Dr Brandon Gien, CEO of Good Design Australia said receiving a Good Design Award is a significant achievement given the very high calibre and record number of entries received in 2020.
“BeefLedger combines mature approaches with newly developed blockchain technologies for an elegantly simple result. It’s a great example that demonstrates the intersection of data and design,” Dr Gien said.
The group also won a second accolade for BeefLegends, a design strategy to connect Australian producers and Chinese consumers by engaging individuals, social influencers, group buyers and distribution networks with digital content. The BeefLegends community engagement strategy was designed and led by QUT Design Lab doctoral researcher Jock McQueenie.
“We were able to show through the BeefLegends project how the combination of digital technologies and human-centred storytelling can bring consumers and producers closer together and create new economic value,” said Mr McQueenie.
“As a proof of concept, it was successful in showing how blockchain-enabled provenance credentials need to be accompanied by new modes of data sharing to create maximum value all around. Local community engagement was vital to achieving that. It shows that there are real pathways for employment growth in regional Australia through combining new technologies in data analytics and creative arts with traditional regional industries,” he said.
The Good Design Awards Jury commented that: “BeefLegends embodies positive innovation connecting two ends of the supply chain for mutual benefit for the first time. It's exciting to see a truly transdisciplinary approach bringing together technical expertise in blockchain and smart contract development; legal expertise in international trade, policy and governance, and humanities expertise in food provenance and consumer culture.“
About Good Design Australia and Australia’s Good Design Awards
Good Design Australia is an international design promotion organisation responsible for managing Australia’s annual Good Design Awards and other signature design events. With a proud history that dates back to 1958, Good Design Australia remains committed to promoting the importance of design to business, industry, government and the general public and the critical role it plays in creating a better, safer and more prosperous world.
