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.