Sound Blocks

With the advent of Precision Farming, agriculture has become fully mapped and will transform farming to a highly digital activity. This in combination with other changes underway in the countryside, mainly the paradigm shift from food to biogas production and various EU subsidy schemes to promote diversity, will lead to disruptive changes within the next few years for the (European) countryside.

For nearly two centuries, the industrial revolution has made humans the dominant force in shaping the planet. 2020 marks an important turning point when the mass of man-made objects exceeds that of biomass, and it becomes crucial to rethink our relationship with nature.

People are increasingly interested in sustainable lifestyles and urban community gardening to grow their own food, but the challenges in maintaining these spaces include the limited time and skills for beginning gardeners, and the lack of organization to coordinate community gardening efforts. There are many advances in computer vision and AI technologies that can be used in agriculture. We see an opportunity for AI technologies to solve problems facing framers such as climate change, yield-reducing pests and weed infestations, and to speculate on autonomous systems that can help urban farmers manage and care for their gardens. In collaboration between communication design and industrial design students, GardenSpace and Eden were proposed as conceptual solutions to this problem.

The aim of this project was to create a musical instrument inspired by nature and biomimicry adapted to people with disabilities. To do this, we were inspired by the spotted woodpecker and its drumming, which allowed us to experiment with the resonance of wood. We wanted to offer a fun, sound and visual experience to users.

MusicTongue is a tongue-training game App designed for middle-aged and elderly people. The purpose of the training is to retard the decline of mouth function, reduce the risk of choking and improve the quality of life of the elderly. The game can be played on phone or tablets, and through image recognition technology, the game can identify whether the player’s current mouth movements are correct through the front camera; the movements during training are designed by nursing experts according to the《Dysphagia Care Manual》of the Ministry of Health and Welfare of Taiwan; the rules of MusicTongue are similar to “Just Dance”, players will do the training action with the music. After the game is finished players will be able to check the leaderboard and view their exercise records on the main screen. From the reaction time and correct movement rate, elders can see if they have improved.

Simplifying banking through M-powering the worker using POSB jolly™ POSB has been at the forefront of availing banking services at affordable cost to all Singaporeans and migrant workers. In line with our mission of being a “People’s Bank”, the bank has a strong social purpose to support financial inclusion initiatives in Singapore.

In a truly e-commerce and on-demand based economy, more than 25 million US workers perform material handling activities: they move our goods and mine our raw materials, construct our buildings, and create the energy needed to power our society. Last year US companies spent $60bn on lifting related injuries, the most expensive cause of injury in the US, most of which is preventable. Most injuries happen due to cumulative trauma on the spine and surrounding muscles, caused by repetitive bad biomechanics when lifting.

Australian hip-hop legends Hilltop Hoods and Google Play collaborated to create an interactive music video that harnesses mobile capabilities to capture a world turned upside down, as experienced by band member Dan Smith during his son’s leukemia treatment. Two 3D environments rendered in code are navigable by rotating the phone, translating a personal journey into a powerful digital experience. Each listen on Google Play generated a donation to support young Australians living with cancer.

Oasis is a smartphone application for mental support through digital mindtrip. It designs to support individuals in recovering from traumas, creating new connections, and boosting their mental health. It simulated a trip from the desert to an oasis. Daily challenges must be completed by the users in order to advance toward the oasis. The users of this journey not only experience changes in their own mindset, but also the community’s support. Every day’s challenge will be recorded, to witness user’s journey and effort during the days. It will automatically be generated into a personalized diary. Users can view the diary and share them with the community. As time goes by, users will find more and more smiles in their Oasis Diary.

SWYP (See What You Print) radically simplifies printing by giving you the ability to see and manipulate, in a 1:1 scale, what the finished result will look like before you print. The underlying idea is that many common problems, including the wasting of time and paper, could be fixed by making all aspects of the printing interaction more natural, predictable and understandable.