Coach: Marco van Hout – MediaLAB Amsterdam (m.van.hout@hva.nl)
Partner: Bell Labs (Alcatel Lucent), Internet of Things dept. // Fahim Kawsar
Research partner: Prof. Jeremy Myerson – Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the Royal College of Art (London)
Nico-chan is a wearable with a tamagotchi-like app that acts like a digital companion for employees, and suggests social tasks colleagues can perform when they meet each other. The employee can indicate whether these have been performed, and if so Nico-chan becomes happy and rewards the employee with items he/she can collect. It is designed to facilitate open and friendly communication in the Japanese workspace, by creating more social and informal habits that are not usual in Japanese office environments. We hope that by encouraging these social habits we can create a more open & friendly office environment where employees more openly communicate with each other, facilitating the exchange of knowledge between all employees, regardless of title or age.
Coach: Marco van Hout – MediaLAB Amsterdam // Hiroshi Tamura – Re-Public (Japan)
Partner: Innovation Studio Fukuoka
Research partner: Dr. Yasuyuki Hirai – Kyushu University (Japan)