Skype in the Classroom

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.

Lumen tries to explore a new paradigm for interactivity and immersion. Imagine using Lumen inside a museum, an otherwise static/one sided experiences turns into an interactive experience that immerses you into the story. A visitor uses this enchanted flashlight to bring the exhibits to life, and they get to hear the story directly from the exhibit.

Amoeba revolutionizes the workspace post-pandemic by addressing challenges in office relocations, significantly reducing wire waste and rewiring costs while enhancing sustainability. Rewiring costs, typically accounting for 25-40% of the total relocating or renovating budget, have been a significant hurdle.

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.

Out of the 39 million blind people around the world, only 10% know how to read/write in braille. Even those who know braille cannot understand the shapes of many objects around them. Through Fittle, we are trying to make visually challenged children learn braille letters, spellings of words, and shapes/forms of the objects that these words represent—all at the same time, engaging them through a puzzle.

Precious Plastic is a combination of people, machines, platforms, and knowledge to create an alternative global recycling system. In selecting this year’s Future Voice Award, I found myself looking at designers who are looking around at how do human beings interact with the planet … In brief, Precious Plastics is trying to solve the horrific environmental crisis of the waste of ocean plastics … what I’m recognizing is tens of thousands of individuals around the world who are bringing out their own Interaction Designer … addressing some of the most problematic carnages that come from how we live on this world. – Dan Makoski, Interaction Awards Jury Chair

Efficia ECG100 is a low cost, portable, tablet based ECG device for cardiac screening that utilizes the mobile platform, offering portable ECG solutions (with 12 lead quality data acquisition) for price sensitive emerging markets.

To ensure safety and efficiency in the densely populated air space over Europe, The European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) has requested more precise takeoff scheduling from the continent’s airports.

Research shows that a great number of cosmetics and body care products contain hormone-altering chemicals that can seriously harm your health. But information is sparse and difficult to access. How can you remember what to look for when you don't even know how to pronounce the chemicals? The Norwegian Consumer Council wanted to inform the consumers about these dangers without creating the feeling of effortlessness that press stories and campaigns about product dangers often do. At the same time, they wanted to activate them in a battle against the cosmetics industry to rid dangerous products from the shelves. We created 'Hormone Check' - an application on your smartphone - that enables you to check cosmetic products in the store before you buy them.

With a brief to explore innovations in the area of space design and placemaking, we decided to look at low-cost and low-entry-barrier solutions that would allow us to engage the local population in public consultations.