Engaging men for better family health outcomes

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.

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.

A pavement brings to life an old emirati tradition in a way that gets strangers to create music together. For centuries, Dubai fishermen made a living diving into the sea looking for pearls, known as the “local gold”. Pearl Divers is an interactive plaza dotted with pearl-like sensors that play music with participant’s shadows. Paying tribute to this ancient tradition, passersby trigger original Bayati and Hijaz melodies, bringing magic and connection to the heart of an emerging neighbourhood.

VISO's aim is to provide a transformative solution accessible to a broad audience, bringing attention to how in-car technology could be harnessed to enhance focus, rather than serve as a distraction.

Little Signals, a series of interaction experiments, explores new behaviors for technology in our daily lives. The objects in the series signal for attention with different sensorial cues like a waft of air, a soft shadow, or an ambient sound. Additionally, their simple movements and controls bring them to life and make them responsive to changing surroundings and needs. Just as everyday items find simple ways to inform us – like the moving hands of a clock or the whistle of a kettle – this series shows how to stay up-to-date with digital information while maintaining moments of calm.

DODU is an AR-based multimodal interactive literacy teaching aid for Chinese children aged 3-7 with dyslexia, which calls children's senses such as sight, hearing, touch and movement through Augmented Reality and multimodal interaction, so as to achieve effective and interesting literacy training effects.

n the beginning of 2010, Microsoft Research came to our interaction class at Art Center College of Design and proposed a design challenge–“service meets social”. Being from California, our educational system has been deeply effected–to name a few of the giant issue: budget cuts, young and new teachers getting pink slips, students being packed into classrooms, and outdated standards. Our group easily, though sadly, found a field that desperately needs real solutions. Watching our family, friends, and community being negatively affected by the troubling educational system, we were motivated and inspired to find innovative ideas to solve our state’s educational problems. We approached our project with these questions: How do we update and integrate relevant technology into the classroom? How do we allow teachers to feel comfortable to share their ideas? Most importantly, how do we allow students to get the most out of their education? STEPS, our project, is an online resource and community for educators. With lesson plan databases, member profiles, and a series of expandable integrated applications and devices. STEPS brings networking to K-12 education and allows innovative ideas to be shared beyond the classroom.

Human trafficking affects 20-30 million victims worldwide. Over 70% of these are women who are forced to work in factories, farms, homes, and brothels around the world. In the United States, hundreds of thousands of minors are considered to be at-risk for commercial sexual exploitation. Victims are rarely “rescued” from trafficking. Most survivors extricate themselves, and are immediately dependent on a variety of support services for housing, medical attention, and emotional care.

Throughout our lives, we amass a myriad of personal belongings, from the teddy bear we received at birth, to the new shoes we bought last week. As our belongings accumulate, it is inevitable for some items to stop serving us, whether it be a shirt that’s no longer our style, or an old toy we no longer play with. However, just because an item no longer serves us does not mean it cannot serve someone else. Whome helps pre-loved items find a home where they can be appreciated and cherished once again.

The Philippines has storied history of labor export – with Filipinos working all over the world in various industries. Among these migrant workers, Filipino domestic helpers bring a huge yet complicated impact to Filipino society at the familial level, as many of them are mothers absent from home life. Though there is no shortage of tools in this technological society with instant messaging & video calls, there are facets of the migrant worker’s life that are expressed in the culture of transnational gift-giving.