If you fancy walking away with some of the £400,000 prize money being offered for the design of a new, secure handset – and help the cause of mobile phone recycling at the same time – then you should submit your application by the closing date of 22 May, 2009.

Created by The Design Council and backed by the Home Office, the competition is focussed on mobile phone security. The Design Council’s Chief Executive Officer David Kester is concerned that mobile phone designers are too driven by a product’s good looks and consumer appeal. This, in turn, he says, makes them more attractive to criminals, putting users at risk from attacks and muggings.

The Design Council highlighted the fact that the average teenager can be walking around with nearly £200 of accessories, making them viable and easy targets. And products which are naturally attractive to criminals, because of their cool appeal, are known as criminogenic. Which basically means if you covet an Apple iPod, then so does the mugger stopping you in the street

So, The Design Council wants a change of mindset, bearing in mind the enormity of the task when trying to down-play a product, yet still make it commercially successful. Their criteria for the challenge is in three parts:

1. how to make a mobile harder, or less desirable to steal;
2. how to make personal data more secure;
3. how to make online and mobile transactions more secure.

The Design Council emphasised the last point, given that handsets are going to be increasingly important when M-commerce – banking by mobile – takes off. So, if you fancy designing a terrible phone, then contact The Design Council. Also, make sure that your handset is compatible with the mobile phone recycling ethos which, arguably, is a bigger problem facing mankind.