The recognition places an often overlooked part of healthcare, the everyday experience of recovery, within a wider conversation about what good design can change.
Design that Leads
This year’s awards theme, Design that Leads, celebrates design as a way of thinking, imagining and acting. It asks how design can help people navigate complex problems and create positive change.
The Australian Good Design Awards were established in 1958 and recognise work in fields from architecture and digital experiences to healthcare and emerging concepts. More than 100 Australian and international experts assessed the 2026 entries against three criteria: Good Design, Design Innovation and Design Impact.
Hilvaren joins a wider awards program recognising projects from organisations including NAB, Samsung and BMW. The shared question across these disciplines is how thoughtfully a design responds to the people who will use it.
What the jury recognised
“The Jury recognises Hilvaren for identifying a significant gap in healthcare design and creating Healing Performance Wear as a genuinely new product category.”
The jury’s comments focused on the relationship between dignity, comfort and connected care. They commended the empathy and practicality of the concept, and the thinking behind bringing these concerns together.
They also highlighted the tap-activated zip as a discreet connection to care. It was an example of design considering how a physical object and a digital interaction could work together within someone’s daily life.
From personal experience to design practice
Monica’s own surgical recovery prompted the question that became Hilvaren. Her background in strategic design and customer experience gave her a way to explore it: start with what people experience, then consider what could be different.
That perspective has particular relevance in life sciences and medical technology. Scientific and technical advances reach people through products, services and interactions. Design helps connect those advances with the realities of receiving care.
Hilvaren’s Concept Design award recognises the value of asking a question about recovery that had received too little attention. It is a milestone for an idea shaped by lived experience, and for the patients, carers, clinicians and collaborators who have helped inform it.
What we wear while we heal matters.