ihub, Ushahidi, Brick, led by Juliana Rotich

Advances in computer vision and natural language AI continue to unlock new ways to explore the billions of images across our devices, websites, and the public domain. However, it remains difficult to express subjective concepts, such as visual tones (‘vibrant’) or moods (‘eclectic’) to current systems, where visual interpretation is shaped by culture and community and is personal to the individual.

Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) kills over 350,000 people every single year in the U.S. alone. It is the leading cause of death for adults over the age of 40 and also leads to the loss of nearly 23,000 youth annually. Despite being a massive public health issue, survival rates have unfortunately remained dismal at around 10% for decades. Fortunately, there’s a treatment for Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) – a life-saving shock from an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). If used quickly, an AED can be highly effective. However, the problem is that AEDs are not readily accessible, and too often don’t get to the people who need them. Avive is on a mission to change that. With each passing minute prior to treatment reducing a victim’s chance of survival by 7%, an AED’s accessibility, design, and usability make the difference between life and death. Our strategic design collaboration with Avive focused on developing a first-of-its-kind connected AED system. In addition to a standard AED’s capabilities, the Avive Connect AED™ is a portable device that, when spread across a community, acts as a mesh-network of coverage enabling support to any individual within the radius of that network. When activated, the network of AEDs and local responders are alerted to find the closest AED to the victim. Once an AED is activated, it provides diagnosis and instruction to both professional and pedestrian users supporting a victim of sudden cardiac arrest.

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of the giant issue: budget cuts, young and new teachers getting pink slips, students being packed into classrooms, and outdated standards.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.

Medical imaging is the backbone of clinical medicine, informing diagnostic and patient management decisions across the healthcare system. The ever-growing number of medical examinations and worldwide decrease in staff challenges radiologists and healthcare providers to read more complex scans with decreasing resources while maintaining high standards of clinical excellence. Because of this, even well-resourced healthcare systems face significant imaging backlogs. Under-resourced healthcare systems with low clinician-to-patient ratios may miss opportunities for early disease detection due to long patient wait times.

Toot is an interactive toy designed for children aged between three and six years old. Toot wants, through tangible play, to create a new type of musical experience, where children can explore concepts like sequence and composition.

B-cycle is a next-generation bike-sharing program. It is a zero-hassle, zero-emissions way to get around town. It’s a bike-sharing program that meets the transportation, health, and environmental needs of our communities. One that adapts to any size city, corporation, or campus. It’s free and spontaneous, but also practical. Imagine a network of bike stations located within a few blocks of one another throughout your community. As a member, you can unlock any of the specially designed bikes at any station and ride it to any other bike station. Fast, simple, and inexpensive. B-cycle is also the only bike-sharing program that measures the actual distance traveled on each ride and keeps track of the calories you’ve burned and the carbon emissions you’ve prevented. All this information is available on your personal B-cycle web page. Sustainable design that frees you from your car and is optimized for the needs of urban living, B-cycle is a new transportation future and it’s available now.

We collaborated with pro riders to create never-before-seen digital skate experiences. What came out of it changed the way skaters participate in the world’s biggest action sport.

Lotza.io is a review site and an online community carefully designed to cater to individual needs, where users can contribute their opinions on subscription services and direct-to-consumer products. The platform boasts a unique emotional-based rating system that tracks sentiment over time, enabling users to express their feelings about a brand over time. The platform provides a breadth of different media - from text to video to audio - to allow people to express themselves in the way that they feel most comfortable. Partners also benefit from Lotza's contextual feedback, enabling them to enhance their product offerings. Finally, Lotza finds the most relevant online products and subscription services that match an individual’s personal tastes.

A global study showed that the number of people in the UK dying before they reach 75 was worryingly high (the UK ranked 12th of 19 EU countries). Equally, levels of early death varied hugely between the regions of England, demonstrating that where we live can impact how long we live. The Secretary of State for Health made tackling premature mortality a key priority. He issued a call to action, vowing to save 30,000 lives in 7 years. He commissioned Public Health England to make the relevant data transparent and available to all. The goal was to generate debate and awareness of the issue across multiple audiences whilst inspiring intervention from local government to build healthier populations. This gave rise to Longer Lives, a new website providing the information and insight needed to facilitate better health and reduce premature mortality. The team, a partnership between Public Health England (PHE) and SapientNitro, delivered a compelling solution in a matter of weeks.

Gaggenau Live allows customers to connect to the showroom from the comfort of their homes, via their mobile, tablet or desktop browsers. Customers who scheduled an online 1-1 tour can watch the sales consultant’s live stream and digitally interact with Gaggenau products. The solution provides an enriched, interactive and personalized experience by letting customers review details of their product of interest, configure the products based on their personal preferences, create a list of favourite products, view inspirational product/kitchen images, show their kitchens to sales consultants for guidance and invite family members, friends, architects etc. to join the live session. Gaggenau Live is also designed to digitally empower sales consultants by broadening their product demonstration abilities during a showroom tour and personalizing the experience through a consolidated customers’ interaction dashboard. The solution allows consultants to manage their appointments, review customers’ information and interested products prior to the live session. During the session, the consultant has high control over the experience by simultaneously tracking customer actions through an interaction analyser and tailor the tour instantly based on customer interest. High integration with the product catalog enriches product demonstration experience and allows consultants to push interested products to the customer's screen or configure the products on behalf of them and create an offer list. What makes the solution special is that it is designed to make customers feel like they are in control of the experience by letting them actually interact with the space and products rather than just staying as viewers.