Monday 22 April 2013

Winners of DEVICE Award 1.0


On April 10th, 2013 the winners of the DEVICE Award 1.0 have been announced. In total, 2 projects out of 12 were selected as winners: one in the children area and one in the elderly area. For elderly, the winner is the project “Motivating the elderly to be more active using messaging and progress tracking ” by Jack Ord Rasmussen; whereas in the children area the winner is the paper “Physical-digital Interaction Design for Children” by Kenneth Christensen , Mikkel Andersen, Erik Monsen, Saman Safiri, Jakob Vest Hansen.

The DEVICE Award 1.0 is the first step in order to establish an international EU funded award of excellence for designing for vulnerable generations - children and elderly. A first round of the award has been announced at the Student Interaction Design Research conference SIDER’13 . The work considered for the award were judged in terms of innovation, and human-centric approaches to design, along with the conference theme of empowering people through technology, as well as helping people create technology that empowers themselves or others. The selection criteria for the award are excellence, innovation, and enhancement of the quality of life.
The winners of the award were awarded with a diploma and a NEXUS 7 tablet for each of the six contributing authors. The award is sponsored by the EU funded DEVICE project, and the winners were selected by a committee consisting of members from the project. 

LinkFit: Motivating the elderly to be more active using messaging and progress tracking
Jack Ord Rasmussen
Aarhus University / Eindhoven University of Technology
Email: jack.ord@gmail.com
The project addresses how to motivate elderly to be more physically active, which is a highly interesting subject. The paper presents a prototype of a product intended to motivate residents of a living complex for elderly people to engage in planned physical activities. The prototype is clearly a result of a thorough process in which the elderly residents’ challenges regarding exercise and new technologies have been taken into serious account and are met in a convincing manner. Moreover, feedback on the prototype leads to good and relevant discussions of the product’s usefulness and the viability of its design. All steps of the process are adequately described in the well-structured and well-written paper.
The project promotes innovative or creative design, by involving elderly in the clearly described design process, and by exploring new ways and interesting materials in an interesting way. The design reflects a socially relevant issue. The design quality is high, as there are conscious decisions to do without superfluous details, smart materials are used and these materials support the purpose. The design connects well to its surroundings, and the development has added to the existing range of services.

Physical-digital Interaction Design for Children
Kenneth Christensen , Mikkel Andersen, Erik Monsen, Saman Safiri, Jakob Vest Hansen
Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, University of Southern Denmark
Email: kechr09@student.sdu.dk
The paper describes the design of a social drawing application based on interaction using gestural/natural interaction. The system is aimed at children with and without special needs.
The painting application is based on a Kinect-like system. An Arduino-board is used for additional input (selection of colors, etc). The project was successful and appreciated by a group of children that evaluated it.
The project promotes innovative and creative design, where children were involved in the clearly described design process. New and interesting materials have been creatively used for design explorations in an imaginative way. The design reflects a socially relevant issue, and the materials support the purpose. The project provides access for people with different types and levels of ability.