Object details
| Designer / Studio | Niklas Andreasen, Umeå Institute of Design |
| Company | Fjaryl AB, Germany |
| Components | Instrument replicas, layered surgical pads, mixed-reality overlays |
| Award | EPDA 2026 Emerging Product Designer of the Year; Top Design, Educational Tools (Student) |
| Explore the design | niklasandreasen.com |
Extended reality is now part of surgical training, but it often leaves out touch. Most systems rely on generic handheld controllers, which share little of the size, weight, feel or mechanical precision of real instruments.
MX Surgical, by Niklas Andreasen at the Umeå Institute of Design, starts from that gap. The project earned him Emerging Product Designer of the Year at the 2026 European Product Design Award.
The kit combines three layers. Replica instruments recreate the physical behaviour of real tools. Layered surgical pads give the hands something realistic to work on. Mixed-reality overlays then add the visual information and guidance a trainee needs.
Together they allow practice built around both specific skills and full scenarios, across the most common types of surgical procedure. Trainees can repeat a task as often as they need, on their own, and without risk to a patient.
The system is modular and mobile. High-fidelity training no longer has to happen in a hospital simulation suite; it can travel to wherever learners are.
Andreasen’s approach is a useful corrective to purely digital tools. It treats the hand as a source of knowledge, and designs the physical objects that let that knowledge be learned.
View MX Surgical on the European Product Design Award winner’s page →
Image: Fjaryl AB.
