Future of TV

By reneestumpel July 2nd, 2014

Time for goodbye

It is the last day of our internship and it’s time to wrap things up. Today we are finishing the research paper, saving important files from the computers and cleaning our project table.

We learned a lot during the past months, but also had a lot of fun during the complete process. Discussing, brainstorming, designing, prototyping, sketching and presenting, we did it all during these 20 weeks. Although we had enough ‘ups’ and a few ‘downs’, we are very happy with everything we have accomplished.

For now this is the end, but we would like to develop the concept more if opportunities arise. If you want to know more or want to order an Oglow (now or in 2016) just let us know! ☺ You can contact us at futureoftv.medialab@gmail.com.

As they would say in Rio de Janeiro: Adeus!

Daan, Douwe, Frederik, Jochem & Renée

By reneestumpel June 27th, 2014

Final presentations!

After months of hard work the moment was finally there: final presentations at the MediaLAB! Although we were ready to present our stuff, we were a little bit curious what the day would bring.

The presentation went great, and everyone felt the compassion when the Oglow bracelet showed us that another Dutch medal had been won. After the presentation it was time to do the expo, which was visited by people who wanted to know more. You couldn’t miss our stand: everything was orange! We got a lot of questions about the bracelet and our prototypes which we all answered. We were very happy and proud and on Thursday we were still amazed by the succes of the evening.

On Thursday we also visited the Mediapark Jaarcongress, to show our concept to a couple of media business specialists. Jos, our embedded researcher, helped us with this. We got a lot of positive reactions and some helpful feedback.

Today we are going to do a final presentation at TWC to show them what we’ve done all this time. Next week, we are going to do some user research, finish the research paper and then it is already time to say goodbye…. But before that, we first want you to check out our video about our concept: The Oglow!

By frederikhermann June 21st, 2014

Update on our app and bracelet

It’s been a while since our last blogpost and we have made a lot of progress. Time for an update.

The last few weeks we have been working hard on the prototypes of the Oglow, both the app and the bracelet. As we have not shown any concept drawings of the smartphone application so far, let’s start there.

The App:
After several rounds of concept drawing for the app, we decided that it is most important to keep the live experience of the Olympics central. Also, the application should not only be of functional use but should enhance the experience the Oglow offers. We chose to put the content central by using large moving images of the Olympic events. Also, each event should have it’s own dynamic page in the application and the user should be able to swipe through these events, starting with the current event. On the left of the current event, the user can see earlier events, on the right are the upcoming events. We made a lot of wireframes for these pages to get the optimal design. Next we created the actual designs using data, images and videos of the 2012 Londen Olympics. With these design we made an interactive prototype, which you can try out yourself below. This prototype is meant to give an idea of how the application would look and function.

After making the interactive prototype we got into contact with Starting Point, a creative company based in Amsterdam. They are currently helping us building the actual app in such a way that we can demo it during our final presentation. Their work also includes creating a back-end architecture making the building of the actual application easier. While the prototype tool offered limited options, the demo prototype will show the entire interface as it will be in the final app.

The Bracelet:
Of course we also made progress with the bracelet prototype. We got in touch with Sven Haitjema, who works as the Create-IT lab of the HvA and has his own company in iBeacons (Glimworm Beacons). He made a custom microcontroller board for us, making the prototype increasingly smaller. This board also came with an already build application we could use to turn the lights and vibration on/off. Also, he helped us make a 3D printed casing for this prototype so it would become wearable.

Although the board Sven made for us was very small, it also had its limits a to where the lights were places. This is why Sven made another board for us which we could connect to the LEDs we already had so that we could control the brightness and color of the light. Also, this way we could spread the lights better across the bracelet. Currently we are working with this new microcontroller board and the LEDs to make it all connect and wearable. Also, Tamara made some edits to the code of the application to control the board so that it would do exactly what we needed it to do.

We are currently working very hard to finish everything for the final presentation the 25th. Next to finishing the final prototypes we are busy making flyers, posters and preparing the presentation. We are also going to present our project at the Mediapark Jaarcongres at Hilversum the day after our Medialab final presentation. Here we will mainly discuss business-to-business opportunities for this project and hopefully get some useful feedback. Also, we are going to do some extensive user tests as well end of this month (30th June and 1st July). If you would like to help us with this and be one of the first to experience the Oglow, please contact us at futureoftv.medialab@gmail.com.

By frederikhermann May 22nd, 2014

Presentation at TWC and peer-pitch

Our project is pretty good, we are on the right course and we seem to have the complete grasp of our concept.

There is still work to be done, especially the app and bracelet prototype are two things that we are going to be working on the coming weeks in order to finish our project. We are excited about being able to design a user-friendly app and well designed bracelet.

This week we have had a presentation at both TWC and at the MediaLAB.
The Presentation at TWC went really smooth, Daan and Renee did a great job with the presentation and TWC was satisfied, both with our work during the previous sprint, the presentation but more important they were happy about our concept and the direction we are going.
We got some feedback as far as prototyping the app and bracelet which was very helpful.

The day following our presentation at TWC we had a peer-pitch at the MediaLAB, it went quit well, and once again Daan and Renee aced the presentation.
We got some helpful user insight as far as being able to use the app with and without the bracelet, which might lead to some slight changes in the app, but nothing major. We also got feedback on how much they would be willing to pay for a bracelet, and how we could distribute the bracelet. Furthermore we got a lot of creative ideas for the further developing and usage of the Oglow.
The feedback was positive and helpful.

To assist us with prototyping the app, we will be getting advise and assistance from our assigner TWC since they have a huge capacity of knowledge regarding designing apps. This will be a great learning experience.
For prototyping the bracelet further, we have contacted firefly, a kickstarter project that are using similar hardware as we are looking for, they have the knowledge and experience with designing the hardware. we have contacted them to ask if they are willing to send us a bracelet and software development kit so we can research if their product is comparable with our project, if so it could turn into a very interesting collaboration.

If youre interested in checking out the firefly project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1446565822/firefly-1?play=video_pitch&ref=users

A funny thing that was noticed during the peer-pitch is how the different teams are getting more confident in their project and use their knowledge to defend the decision they have made, whereas in the beginning people where insecure about their project. This is a very positive thing, and its great to see how well the other teams are doing with their projects. it will be very interesting to see the final presentations on the 25th of June where every team will be presenting their projects. If you are interested in seeing the final presentation you can sign up on:
https://www.facebook.com/events/245667452302273/?ref_newsfeed_story_type=regular

we will be working hard on the app and bracelet, and hopefully the next post will be about our new app and bracelet.

By jochemderoos May 13th, 2014

Oglow

By frederikhermann May 6th, 2014

Sprint 7

Its been a while since we have last posted a blog post, we’ve been fairly busy with working on our project, attending meetings & workshops and also working on school projects.

Last weeks we developed the prototype further (and the Fablab helped us a lot, thanks!), tested some functions we could add with users, made a lot of sketches, made a MoSCoW list and discussed a lot of subject. Last Thursday we had a presentation at TWC, which went pretty well and we got some good feedback and instructions on how to continue developing our project.

We have an basic idea about the functions of our bracelet, the Oglow, but we still need to determine exactly what functions the app will have, and how it will connect. This is the phase we are currently working on. In order to figure out which function the app will have we have decided to make a large quantity of user stories, with we will discuss with users and TWC, and afterwards we will finally decide on the apps functions.

Renee wearing the Oglow

As fare as the team dynamic, it’s been working quite well and we have a good teamwork, I think the people at the MediaLAB did a good job of getting a group together with the different skill sets that will give us an opportunity to succeed.

We’re going to present the final functions of the app at TWC the 19th of may.

By frederikhermann April 7th, 2014

Sprint 4 Demo

Last sprint we worked on a new concept that focused on the social part of the Olympics, and how it could unite people. We wanted a concept that would bring the digital world into the real world, instead of information always being in the clouds and only available to individuals, we wanted it to be real, and available to everyone. Our focus was to generate pride, togetherness & influence for the fans. In order to do that we came up with whats currently named the Oglow.

The Oglow is a bracelet that will glow, when certain actions takes place during the Olympics, such as when a Dutch athlete wins a medal or scores a goal etc. It will also indicate how many dutch people is currently watching the Olympics. Certain notification updates will also be available on the Oglow.

After working hard on our concept for a few short weeks, it was time to present it to TWC. We felt quite comfortable about this concept, and we were very nervous about how TWC would feel about it. However they liked the general concept, and had suggestions to how the technical part would work, and how we should continue to develop this project.

This sprint we will focus on developing our concept further, by finishing our user research, user scenarios & producing an improved prototype.

By frederikhermann March 21st, 2014

Peer pitch at the MediaLAB

Last Wednesday we had a peer pitch at the MediaLAB, which gave us an opportunity to share our project with the other groups, as well as hearing about their projects and get inspired by some of their ideas and methods.

After presenting our project to our peers and their coaches we got some very good feedback. We have been struggling with narrowing down our project and we have kept all doors open, but maybe it is time to make some decisions, narrow down our project, and focus on one or two concepts using modern technology, not futuristic technology.

The day following the peer presentation we had a workshop with the great Charlie Mulholland, who helped us with idea selection and how to make the right decisions. Once again a very helpful workshop, that resulted in us making some requirements for our concept that will make the decision process easier, and also helped us to decide on one idea we’re going to work on next week.

We also learned that maybe we haven’t focused as much on the user as we should, mostly we have been focusing on which technological inventions we should use, instead of researching what the user need and want. Therefor we have planed to spend a few days where some team members will focus on researching the user.

It was very interesting to get feedback from our peers, as well as hear about their project, and the problems they are facing.

By jochemderoos March 14th, 2014

The real problem

By reneestumpel March 11th, 2014

Discovering new possibilities at TNO

Since we’re researching ‘THE FUTURE’ we thought it would be nice to learn more about future technologies. The perfect place to learn more about these things is TNO. TNO is, as you might know, an applied science research organisation. They do a lot of research on different fields, like healthy living, industrial innovation, information society, etc. Yesterday we had the chance to talk to Rob Koenen, who is part of the media department placed under the information society theme. At TNO, Rob and a few of his colleagues showed us some great demos of a couple of projects they are working on.

We started with a demo of the FascinatE project (http://www.fascinate-project.eu/). In this demo we were given a tablet where you can see a panoramic video of a sport stadium. It was recorded in 4k, which offered a view that was really sharp, but when you zoomed in, it got even sharper. We could zoom in on every detail! We were surprised that it worked so good and so smooth. Later, we saw a demo which combined this idea with a smart TV. In this demo the view of the smart TV stayed the same but with the tablet in your hand you could zoom in on everything, change the angle, get more information, etc. While you use your iPad to zoom in on Lionel Messi, the rest of your family can just watch the regular match.

The next demo was an automatic generator of graphs of soccer matches. This program makes all sorts of graphs of the match so you can see different patterns when a team scores or when they are just running around the field. As a user, you can like certain moments, so the program can recognise moments like these in the graphs. You can now choose to get a summary/recap with all sorts of moments like these. This project was specially made for the amature soccer, because everything goes automatically.

Next up they wanted to show HbbTV to us. Unfortunately, the TV wasn’t really working with us (it was a monday..) so we didn’t see it. Rob did told us that he thought the HbbTV should be up and running on every channel with every cable company by 2015/2016.

After the demos we chatted and discussed some more about other technologies and trends with Rob. It was very nice to see and hear that most of our concepts are relevant. It’s nice to know we are on the right track! We are very thankful that we could visit TNO and the option to ask everything we wanted to know.

Until next time!
The future of TV

CREATING TOMORROW