MediaLAB Amsterdam is now the Digital Society School! You are viewing an archive of MediaLAB projects. Content on this website may be outdated, and is without guarantee.

Green Grid

It is estimated that the number of electric vehicles (EVs) will increase up to one million in 2020. This is a great development towards a greener future, but it also brings some side effects. With one million electric cars charging every day at peak times, a lot of power is requested from the grid. Vehicle to Grid is one of the newest technologies which could help stabilize the grid!  With this technology electric car batteries can be used as temporary storage, hence  can not only charge, but also give energy back to the grid. The missing link  is a service for EV users that will stimulate them into using Vehicle-to-Grid. For this project we developed Greengrid a hybrid mobile app that will help EV users to overcome their fears and encourage them to start using Vehicle-to-Grid.

 

Coach: Felipe Escobar Vega – MediaLAB Amsterdam

Partners: Cofely, Alliander, Mitsubishi, Amsterdam Smart City

Thanks to: Pico van Heemstra

SeeThru

Waking up the Sleeping Phones

Stimulating the Recycling of old Phones through Education

Smartphone use is increasing worldwide, and at the same time users are replacing their devices on an average of every 18 to 20 months. The large amount of smartphones made every year requires a lot of resources, energy and raw materials. In the case of the smartphone, when users replace them, they tend to store the old phones in drawers at home. This behaviour prevents the materials to be recycled and put back in the system. Therefore, encouraging users to remove their old phones from drawers would make the consumption of smartphones more sustainable. We propose SeeThru as an educational platform to change this behaviour. SeeThru educates people through games, stories and information, and aims to increases the awareness towards the recycling of old phones. SeeThru is designed to make smartphone users change their behaviour and empower them to actively start recycling their phones.

You can find more detailed information about the design process on the project’s blog.

And you can also check out the research paper here.

Virtual Cinema

About the project:

This project, which was brought to life by Mirjam Vosmeer at the Interaction & Games Lab focused on the use of 360 video capturing technology to create Drama. The film is a transmedia extension of “Project Orpheus”, a new science fiction television series produced by the broadcasting giant AVROTROS. The team took the existing scripts from the television series and focused on key themes and elements to write and create a supporting 360 degree film for the series. The technology and VR production expertise was supplied by WE MAKE VR and crew from the television series itself aided in the production. One of the key things that seperates this VR Film from others is the use of Binaural Sound from AMP AMSTERDAM.  The VR experience is to be debuted alongside the launch of the television series in February 2016.