A surprise hit at the 2015 Royal College of Art graduate show was a redesign of the British and Irish three-pronged plug.

A brilliant example of clever design, the plug proved to be a real show-stopper, earning student Min-Kyu Choi rave reviews for his pioneering redesign of the chunky electrics. His plug, which is ready for the market, folds down to the width of an laptop computer.

"The MacBook Air is the world's thinnest laptop ever. However, here in the UK, we still use the world's biggest three-pin plug," says Choi.

At just 1cm wide when it is folded, the plug works by reimaging the position of the two live pins, moving them by 9 degrees. The plastic surrounds that usually support the pins fold back around them, so the face of the unit looks like a standard plug as we would currently know it.

The beauty of the streamlined design can be seen in the multi-plug adaptor that Choi also designed, replacing the chunky white cubes we use today to increase the number of plug points. With Choi’s design, a standard plug socket has enough space for three folded plugs to slot into, or another design which allows users to charge USB devices.

The plug as we know it today has remained largely unchanged since it was first developed in 1946. Choi’s innovative redesign suggest that 2016 could well be the year for things to spark a change?

See more images of Min-Kyu Choi’s plug below: