- Client:Projecte Europeu H2020
- Sector:
- Services:
- Year: 2018
Mine-Spark is a portable device that exploits the potential of spatial augmented reality to support and encourage collaborative creative thinking in the design process.
Frustrated with multiple iterations and building endless prototypes?
Answering these questions is the main role of Stimulo as a member of SPARK H2020. Augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality technologies present challenging opportunities for the near future, but how can we ensure that they are aligned with what designers really need? SPARK is a design platform that through the application of spatial augmented reality focuses on co-creative design activities to present, modify, review and select design proposals through a single digitally enhanced physical prototype. Spark combines physical and digital elements in the prototyping exercise: it uses a tablet-based interface to trigger suggestions from participants to the session and also allows all involved to collect, feel and examine real physical models, so that they can quickly understand the scale, appearance of a design proposal and provide better quality feedback to the designers.
You can see the modifications directly on the changing prototype in your hand and all participants of the session can also immediately see the impact of the new ideas generated during the co-creation.
Characterization of user needs and expectations
Our aim is to analyse the design process from the perspective of design teams when interacting with prototypes in order to identify new ideas or insights that are generated around the dynamics of a co-creation process, whether cognitive or behavioral. To map the interactions generated between virtual and physical prototypes, the Stimulo team organized practical sessions in the studio considering different participants (remote and on-site designers, product or innovation managers, consumers and other stakeholders) and analyzing their reactions in real time through the use of the Spatial Augmented Reality (SAR) platform.
El análisis y las evaluaciones obtenidas a lo largo de estas pruebas en entornos relevantes y grupos de interés acontece como un aspecto clave para definir el nuevo modelo de negocio y su posterior explotación.
Exciting future for augmented reality
Taking into account the product development process, SPARK will have an impact on the following aspects:
Time savings. Thanks to the stimulation of creativity and above all the reduction of iterations, the time needed to generate a final concept is expected to be reduced by 40%.
Human resources involved in creative projects. Human resources involvement is expected to be reduced by 25%.
Workload with respect to the whole design process. The different types of efforts that a person would have to undertake throughout the process were assessed in terms of design iterations; the reduction in working documents (number, length, etc.) that will be produced will be used as further evidence of the reduction in workload (-50%).
Efficiency of the design process (also meaning quality of output). The efficiency of the design process is usually expressed as the ratio between the number of successful ideas (or ideas accepted by the client) and the overall amount of resources spent throughout the process. This aspect is of paramount importance for the estimation of the economic impact of the platform, as it is expected to increase the efficiency of the design process by more than 70% through co-creation.
Cost savings in prototyping. This is understood as the costs that creative companies will be able to reduce through the adoption of the SPARK platform by reducing the number of prototypes they would have to produce to show new proposals to clients and the costs of manufacturing rapid prototypes that will be used with the SPARK platform that allows us to explore and iterate on a single model.
IMPACT OF THE PROJECT
40%
Estalvi de temps
25%
Recursos humnas
Team members
Competences and synergies. All partners carry out research in the field of innovation and/or design, but each of them will bring their own expertise and specific interests to the SPARK project.
Meet our partners in the SPARK project.
The Politecnico de Milà (It) is putting its skills in virtual and augmented reality, as well as creativity in the design process to good use.
The team at the University of Bath (UK) has recognised expertise in the study of creativity from an engineering perspective.
The Grenoble INP (Fr) department involved in the project conducts research on the human and social aspects and environment of creativity and design, with a psychological perspective. The research carried out by each of these departments requires highly multidisciplinary scientific skills. All departments highly value their research cooperation with industrial partners.
Viseo (Fr) is a French mid-market company specialised in information systems and digital marketing, which will bring its extensive experience in the development of innovative software solutions.
The end users represent the two main facets of the SPARK target group: on the one hand, ArteficeGroup (It) is a typical creative industry of Milà, with a huge portfolio of design and brand communication. On the other hand, Stimulo (Sp) is part of the high-tech creative industries focused on product design. Finally Antwerp Management School (Be) hosts both designers and engineers in its facilities and is therefore perfectly placed to make heterogeneous and complementary contributions to the development of the SPARK platform and to disseminate and communicate the project results to a wide range of industry actors.
This choice of end-users ensures that the project results are suitable for a wide variety of research fields and companies that rely on creativity and innovation and are willing to adopt a co-creativity approach in their design process.