Shoes that can ease pain in feet and help people move easily.

 INDUSTRIAL designers should pay more attention to life-saving design, Tong Huiming said Friday during an international industrial design forum.

The forum was organized by the Shenzhen Industrial Design Profession Association as part of a celebration of the association’s fifth anniversary.

Life-saving design refers to the design of equipment that can help reduce casualties in disasters and emergencies.

The April 20 earthquake in Ya’an, Sichuan Province, claimed 193 lives and injured more than 12,000 people. In the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan five years ago, more than 80,000 people lost their lives and more than 46 million were affected.

These natural disasters have been regarded as deadly killers in a peaceful era and have sparked concerns about shoddy construction, but people seldom pay attention to the lack of life-saving design in rescue attempts, Tong said.

Tong is the dean of the Design College at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and has studied life-saving design for about five years.

“Well-designed emergency equipment and life-saving facilities could rescue the wounded and retrieve the dying just like doctors do,” he said.

Previous experience has shown there are numerous deficiencies in China’s disaster relief efforts, including shortfalls of rescue facilities, inapplicability of medical and relief equipment and a lack of self-help skills and gear.

Some of the victims of the recent quake in Ya’an might have survived if they had prepared emergency food and water at home or even had a whistle handy, reports have said. Some lives might have been saved if life-saving facilities or medical equipment had been more applicable to earthquake rescues.

Tong said better design could help solve some of those problems and save more lives. For example, a girl buried under a cement deck in the Ya’an quake was found dangerously dehydrated and in desperate need of water, but rescuers found it almost impossible to pass water to the girl until an unidentified man came up with an idea. He bent one end of an iron wire, hung a bottle of water on the hook and passed it to the girl.

“This was a simple idea, but it is exactly how design works in rescuing people,” Tong said. He said life-saving products include self-help products and rescue products, which have great potential for design innovations.

Tong’s students have designed some innovative life-saving products, such as an emergency stretcher that can carry goods if folded, shoes that better protect relief workers’ feet and a streetlamp shelter that is easy to carry around and can protect people from small aftershocks.

More well-designed products are in development, including anticorrosive and antibacterial cadaver bags and life detection instruments that are lightweight and easy for nonprofessional volunteers to use.

Tong called on Chinese designers to devote more time and energy to the study of life-saving design.

“When a disaster happens again, we hope design can help save more lives,” he said.