Digital Surgery — A Research Probe

The ʻI Want To Beʼ course is a 2-month after-school program for 12-15 year olds, designed to open the minds of children in Ghana to the career opportunities around them. The class, led by a teacher, takes children on a trip of (self) discovery through company visits, interviews, talent quizzes, and group assignments. An interactive computer application supports the class, tracking kidsʼ progress and showcasing companies and careers available in their communities. Children in Ghana have a narrow view of career options. When researching kidsʼ ambitions, most children told us they wanted to be a ʻdoctorʼ or ʻlawyerʼ and that they didnʼt want to be a ʻdrug dealerʼ or ʻbank robberʼ. In reality, most children leave school at 16 and take a low-paying job to help out with the family finances. This course gives children and their parents the chance to explore realistic career goals and understand paths to achieve them. As a result, children and families may reach higher in terms of education and career and contribute to the long-term skills needed to develop Ghana – and eventually other developing nations.

The Inc. 5000 Marketplace is a virtual world created for the Inc. 5000 Vision Conference where attendees could meet other attendees, share ideas and make lasting connections. The Marketplace is the first-of-its-kind, virtual experience specially themed for the conference.We integrated Inc. 5000’s history of honoring the fastest-growing private companies in America by designing the world around a fictitious Main Street, the heart of the Marketplace. Here, honorees from all over the country converged to walk the red carpet, play a round of golf, socialize at the virtual bar, take pictures at the art gallery and challenge one another with social games at the recreation center.The Marketplace combines the beauty of the real world, walking down the street with a friend chatting, with the power of a virtual world — where people from all over can immediately be present and explore. We achieve this through playful design, integrating game technologies and enabling all attendees to participate.Honorees poured glasses of bubbly at home and then joined in the fun with their live-streaming avatars. They bumped into friends on Main Street, popped into the local art gallery to add their photos to a mosaic, and wandered into the local bar to play trivia quizzes together. Finally, honorees stopped by the Inc. 5000 theater to celebrate each other’s accomplishments with a group photo. The challenge was to successfully create a virtual version of attending an event, where chance meetings and side conversations make the night that much more fun and interesting.

Eye Conductor helps people express themselves through music using only their eyes and facial gestures.By translating eye gaze and facial expression into music, Eye Conductor enables people who are otherwise unable to express themselves creatively.

Our project, macroinvertebrates.org, leverages an emerging class of gigapixel image technology to make the process of learning to see and identify insects more visual and engaging, without sacrificing scientific detail.

‘Enhans’ is a system designed to improve doctor-patient communication within the NeuroImaging and Interventional Radiology (NIIR) Department at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) in Bangalore, India. Being an institute of eminence, NIMHANS receives a large amount of patients from all over the country. Due to their different socio-economic backgrounds and the fact that they speak several different regional languages, it is often difficult for patients to communicate efficiently with the doctors. On a daily basis, both doctors and patients are faced with several challenges that lead to miscommunication and inhibit the patient from being able to take informed decisions about their treatment.

Midas is an accessible gaming controller which can turn any object or surface touched into a control interface. Designed to improve the gaming experience for people living with Muscular Dystrophy (MD), Midas acknowledges the lack of inclusive gaming hardware for people living with musculoskeletal disabilities. It challenges the idea of a traditional controller by proposing a solution which caters to an individual’s experience of MD, unique even within a similar diagnosis.

Tink is a toolkit that allows kids to engage with familiar objects in new ways. The kit includes six sensors (light, sound, tilt, vibration, motion, temperature), six plugs, and an iPad application that connects the sensors with the plugs.

The U-Bot is a robot powered by ai behaviors and the aim is to make blind children aware of the space around them. The important phase of this project is been the research part focused on the available product on the market to help blind people have a better understanding of “orientation and mobility”.

Expressive Wearable explores clothing as a communication tool. This project imagines a scenario in which clothing expresses the wearer’s attitude directly without the concern of adhering to social conventions.

Children love to solve mysteries and to play detective by tracking down hidden objects. PIIQ is an interactive DIY scavenger hunt kit that encourages children (6-8 years) to work together. It contains detective tools for role play, set of themes to build up on and design their own scavenger hunt and blank clue cards to add curiosity. Each child plays a different role in one team and they need to use their respective tools for unlocking the boxes to get to the next clue. By working together, children not only learn how to solve problems and communicate but also work on rebuilding their confidence around social skills and restoring their sense of community through meaningful and collaborative moments.