Monthly Archives: December 2016

Between 25 to 27 November, Spotify Tech Challenge took place at Spotify HQ in Stockholm. It is an event of exploring new ways of interacting with music and collaborating across competences. Under the guidance of Spotify employees we were given the opportunity to create something amazing and present to our fellow participants finally.

On 25^th November night, cross-functional teams were formed and there was a get-together where we could meet the other participants and get ready for the weekend ahead. Spotify employees gave us an introduction about how to properly use Spotify’s open data – Spotify Web API and Mobile SDKs, which would work as the code resource library during this weekend. Apart from that, they built fine atmosphere for us to get familiar with other team members and come up with new ideas of music service. We discussed advanced functions of music APPs and finalised three backup concepts as the basic goals of this weekend. Besides, it became a great night also because Thomas Stenström’s live show was arranged as a big surprise for us.

On the whole weekend, we decided and enriched our idea, found possible solutions to implement new functions, and completed the main programming work. In the morning, Spotifier recommended us thinking lines of new concepts of interacting with music. For instance, new ways to share music. Thus, we came out with an idea that A playlist can be attached to a specific place on the map. In order to implement this idea we built a project on Github, got source code from Google Map APIs and Spotify API. By organising this code properly, we developed our own mobile APP to make it possible that users can share music in a certain place and record their own story relating this music and this place. In the final step, we presented each other our final work and got new skills and knowledge from others.

As developers and normal users, we had this innovative concept of interacting with music. Open source from Spotify and Google Map provided feasible functional code to make it possible. Besides, Github worked as an innovation community to help us build private project. It was convenient for us to collaborate and organise our programming work. Within two days, we completed main functions. It can be seen that open and user innovation is an efficient way to implement user’s new need.

One thing that Open & User Innovation takes to me so far is that I am getting passionate about evreything on innovation. With this enthusitastic in November 19th, I went to Uppsala to take part in an innovation community event called Uppstart which is a tech startup conference, held in Uppsala Castle once a year. Uppsala is a beautify city with rich history. This old city is now a big node of Innovation in Sweden and from where hundreds of IT start-ups origined. During the event, many tecnical start-ups would come and show their innovations.

There are many start-up companys on exhibition this time. Their booth located on the stairs of the castle. Everyone there is friendly and smart and passionate about innovation. The first start-up company called 46elks. It basicly offers an API for customers to add custom telephony features that are prfectly suited to the way they want to do. For example, using its product, which is the API. Is you are owner of a restuarant and you feel uncovenient managing your employees working schedule, you can customize a special SMS or phone call interaction with your employees cellphone number. So that they can easily send a email to a number you have set before, and then the number send back their schedule people by people. Every employee, with network or without, could know their arrangement easily. I was pretty impressed by this idea. It is just what I learned from this course, open and user innovation. The company do the negociation with telecom operators, so they got the right to send SMS in a low price. Then they open their platform to the users to let users innovate. One thing I remember Serdar taught me is that letting users themselves innovate to solve their problems is more workable and efficient. 46elks opens a simple way to the users and users can achieve so many goals. Except the restuarnt time arrangement, they could using the SMS to increase the safety of payment, they could using the API to redirect their incoming phonecalls when they are at office and do not want to be interrupted. Anyway, 46elks could solve many problems by offering API and platform to the users and let user innovate themselves which makes me have a better understanding of this course.

After listening several start-up’s introduction. I took a seat at the main hall and listened the conference talking about the future technology. Several topics were discussed, including cashless world, Uber’s strategy and VR in the future. I saw an upcoming world which is open and full of innovations. Some diferences between now and future is that every user in the future could take part in the wave of creating innvation and good stuff. Sweden is really a great place to start up an technology company.

While I have to say that I learned a lot in this event. The world is becoming more and more open. Everyone could be the part of innovations. I would really appericiate the thing I learned from ME1033 Open&User Innovation. I could not have a better understanding of open and user innovation in this course. I will pay more attention on the open world. Not only in information technology part, but innovation should not be ignored in every area in our life. Like learning, cooking or sporting. We should spread out our creativity and it is impossible for the person not to succssed in his/her life. Let’s hug the open world!!

If you want to get more info, the link is http://uppstart.com/.

About 10 years ago, a friend told me that in the future, we will be able to print things. Not things on paper, but actual things, like a cup from which you can drink your coffee. She told me that we would be able to do this in our homes too. If we need a plate or a fork, or a cup for our coffee – we’ll just print it! I didn’t believe her. I couldn’t.

10 years later, last week, I attended a 3D printing and modeling workshop and printed a (tiny) boat.

Women@EIT is an initiative by two of my fellow EIT Digital students (Dora Pálfi and Maria Kanov) with the goal to build a community and network of female innovators, creators student and others in ICT. Even though it is called women in EIT, it is open to any women (or men) who would like to become part of the network. The community works to connect women for the exchange of knowledge and experience as well as inspire and empower each other. This is something that I personally appreciate and that I think is needed, as a woman in this field were we still are a minority. Apart from that, they also provide women with the chance to learn real technological skills. In order to do this, they organise workshops with different themes that also features elements of networking and the chance to socialise. The first event they organised was an Arduino workshop. The event I attended last week was a 3D printing workshop. It was held at the VIC Studio at KTH Campus. The workshop began with an introductory lecture about 3D printing and modeling. We then used Blender https://www.blender.org/ for modeling our 3D prints. As many of you might already know, Blender is a 3D creation suite that supports pretty much anything you might need that has to do with 3D: modelling, simulation, rendering, motion tracking, video editing. And the list goes on. To you who don’t know it, I would definitely recommend Blender because as a novice user it is actually very easy to use, it is free and it is open source! Anyway, we got to create 3D models of a boat. Mine ended up as a catamaran unintentionally. Still a boat though.

What is so exciting about 3D printing is that it has the potential to really change the way innovation and production takes place. Especially as the 3D printers are becoming more and more consumer friendly in terms of price and size. An open innovation community is already being established and growing, where 3D models ready to print are being shared.

Join Women@EIT facebook group to be part of this community and get information about future events https://www.facebook.com/groups/EITwomen/

Open and User Innovation

I have already evoked this competition several times during the lectures so I thought it would be good to write something about it on the blog!

On the 17^th of September, I participated in the Open Stochholm Hack hosted by Openlab, for the city of Stockholm. It was an innovation challenge that focused on finding ideas to make good use of the Stockholm’s Open Data Portal. The Hackathon has been organized in close connection with the Open Stockholm Award 2016.

Background

The city of Stockholm has the ambition of becoming an example of smart city and has developed the 2040 Vision “Stockholm for all” where sustainability and inclusion would be driven by intelligent use of new technology. In order to reach this goal, Stockholm launched the Open Stockholm Award to invite innovators, engineers, entrepreneurs and students to contribute by developing new ideas that could “make Stockholm a better city for both inhabitants and visitors”. The winners will be announced on February the 1st and will be awarded a 100 000 SEK price.

Two competitions have been organized within two themes. The first, “A Financially Sustainable Stockholm and a Climate-Smart Stockholm” has been held in spring and the second “A Cohesive Stockholm and a Democratically Sustainable Stockholm” happened this autumn. In order to develop even more ideas, a hackathon has been held for each competition.

The Hackathon

So I participated in the hackathon corresponding to the second theme, “A Cohesive Stockholm and a Democratically Sustainable Stockholm”. To narrow down the reflection, the hack proposed two problems: “How can we use Stockholm´s open data to increase inclusion and interaction between people of different generations?” and “How can we use Stockholm’s open data in public spaces to create a more open city?”

The event started with a breakfast during which we could meet and mingle with the other participants. I was quite impressed already by chatting with people by how diverse the participants were. There were a few tech people, a lot of designers, and some artists, there were several students of course but also professionals or just curious citizens there were born and raised Stockholmers as well as foreigners that just arrived in the city (like me!). Now that I am writing this paper, I realize that this is probably the expected outcome of the selection process that happened prior to the event. Indeed, we had to subscribe to the event by answering some questions and presenting ourselves. The selection was then made according to the different profiles.

We subscribed as a team (of 5 members) with mostly other EIT people, but it was also possible to subscribe individually. In the latter case, teams were made according to the profiles of the participants. Since one person of our team couldn’t come, the hack crew attributed us another participant: it was an experienced designer in his thirties.

After the breakfast, we assisted a presentation by the CDO of the city of Stockholm that introduced us to Stockholm’s 2040 Vision and the future ambitions of the city. We also had a presentation by the Openlab team which explained us the schedule of the day and the ideation methods that were going to be used. It was mostly about the design thinking methods. Then, the ideation session started: we spent the morning doing some guided workshops in several steps where we wrote down on post-it’s the different stakeholders affected by the problem, and the places. There was also a workshop where we had to write down different problems related to sustainable democracy and inclusion but over different “time scales”. For example, we had to propose a current problem which solution could be developed in the near future (1-2 years) and we had to imagine bigger societal problems or propositions that could happen or be solved on the long term (10-20 years). For example, I remember writing down a long term proposition about a regulation allowing and encouraging active people to follow one university course every year aside from their job. The ideation session was very broad at first, but then we narrowed down and picked up the most interesting ideas that came out before lunch.

The ideation session

After lunch, we reflected again on the chosen ideas to explore different solutions, and then picked up the best as well. What I realized is that ideas mostly come from personal experience, and having teams as diverse as possible is definitely an asset for such ideation sessions. It provides not only a broad set of different skills, but mostly a variety of experiences, occupations and interests from each member. So we ended up with the following problem that had been experienced by two of our team members: getting an appointment to a doctor in Sweden is sometimes long. We need to go to a Vårdcentral to be checked and if it is no emergency, the appointment to the doctor can be given in several days. Sometimes, the disease can even heal in the meantime!

My group (I’m on the left) developping our idea

We proposed the following concept: a web service available as an application allowing patients to exchange appointments to the doctor. Here is a use case: let’s say we’re Monday and Alice went to a Vårdcentral and got an appointment on Wednesday. Bob is a senior and has his weekly appointment on Monday at 4 PM. But he would like to pick up his grandson at school, so he proposes an exchange of his timeslot. Alice sees the proposition and exchanges the appointment with Bob, and everyone is happy! Our service would use the open data from the city of Stockholm that provides the place of every Vårdcentral to present the available appointments on a map. This example showed a use case where people from different generations could help each other, which was in the spirit of the hack’s guidelines.

We worked on a mockup of the application and presented a video showing such a use case. At the end, a vote was held to designate a winning team. We didn’t win, but it was a very pleasant experience. I’ve learned some ideation techniques and I kept contact with a very enthusiastic designer!