Learning to See, Seeing to Learn

Pigzbe is a (very) smart device that teaches kids 6+ the value of money in a digital world. It's one of the first-ever family products built using the blockchain.

Government websites have a wealth of information but are often hard for citizens to navigate to find the answer to their specific questions. As a citizen, when you visit a government website with a question in mind, chances are you want a quick answer and a simple explanation, so you can be on your way. Unfortunately, this is not how the experience usually goes. On most govt websites, a lot of the time, you run into things like bad navigation, broken links, old content, and information that's hard to understand. Basically, a website rich with information isn't useful if the information cannot be easily accessed. Hard to use govt websites are frustrating for both citizens and City Hall. Honolulu’s city staff spends a lot of time answering phone calls from frustrated citizens who find the city website so unmanageable that calling for the information is inevitably easier. Honolulu Answers (answers.honolulu.gov) is a new approach to make it easier for people to get quick answers to their questions about city information and services. It's an open-source website that is citizen-focused, question-driven, and simplifies the govt website experience with a clean, easy-to-navigate design.

Bo.by is an interactive system that enables bonding between premature babies in incubators with parents, in situations where normally it would be impossible. A device for parents, and a mattress for an infant, are connected and collect, send and receive data such as touch, breast movement, vibration, heartbeat or body heat, enable to feel the touch of one another. This two-way communication, enriched with senses, offers the possibility to experience a natural, prolonged skin-to-skin bonding.

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.

Can Metaverse today replace reality? As the global COVID-19 pandemic distanced humans from each other, an expedition for new ways of communication began to rise. The concept of ‘Metaverse’ became widespread as a solution. However, VR interaction methods developed so far are biased toward audiovisual aspects. There should be more elements to reproduce for actual communication. Considering the early concept of VR suggested in Stanley Weinbaum’s 1935 SF novel <Pygmalion Glasses>, which included vision, hearing, touch, heat, and smell, humanity is still half as successful.

Studio H is a high school design/build curriculum for rural community benefit. Launched in Bertie County, North Carolina, the program now resides at Realm Charter School in Berkeley, California. By learning through a design sensibility and “dirt-under-your-fingernails” construction skills, we’re developing creativity, critical thinking, citizenship, and capital to give students the skills they need to succeed, while building the assets the community needs to survive. Given the opportunity to engage within a public education system, we believe the next generation will be the greatest asset and untapped resource in rural communities’ futures. Studio H is a different kind of classroom. We design, build, and transform.

One of the greatest shortcomings of human-centered design is its lack of guidance on how to include diversity as part of the design process. Which human, exactly, belongs in the center? Most designers end up using their own abilities and experience as a baseline for their designs. This problem is even more pronounced for the predominantly young and able-bodied designers that work in technology. The result is products that work well for people with similar abilities and resources, but end up largely excluding everyone else. This is especially true for roughly 1 billion people on the planet with disabilities.

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.

Money isn’t a number, it’s the way through which we express our liberty as an individual. Thus, it comes as no surprise then, that there is an indisputable link between mental health and financial literacy. Yet less than 50% of adults living with autism in the UK have any control over how their money is managed. But why is this so?

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.