Hasta La Ideas

Sony’s Open Planet Ideas kicked off back in September with the challenge to create a new solution to a crucial environmental issue, all by mashing-up available technology. The open-source project is now in the midst of the “Concepting” phase, with participants adding new ideas of tech combinations up until December 4. From a design perspective, this represents the pie-in-the-sky phase, with contributors brainstorming their most genius concoctions (some more do-able than others, of course.) With the forum framework of the project, it gets especially interesting when participants and Sony’s team add their input and expand on the creations being contributed.

We had the opportunity to ask Takuya Kawagoi, Director of Sony’s Design Centre in Europe, and member of the Open Planet Ideas expert panel, about his role so far with the project, how the project is moving along, and some of the challenges to come in evaluating and realizing a concept. Tak provided some great insights into the design side of the project, and what he has to consider working with a framework of this kind.

Can you please provide an overview of what exactly is your role in this process?

As a member of the expert panel, I have been involved from the initial stages of the Open Planet Ideas project, helping to identify the challenge brief, participating in the online conversations and answering questions posed by the community. My involvement will increase further as we enter the next stage; the evaluation of ideas, and the all important realisation of the final concept. This is where the focus will shift to the look and feel of the final concept – and this is where I expect to have the greatest involvement.

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This Thursday (Oct 21st) Kate Bellingham of the BBC hosts a live chat with Open Planet Ideas program participants Dax Lovegrove (World Wildlife Fund) and Ben Moore (Sony) to discuss how you can get involved with the program’s current phase of design collaboration.

With the establishment of recently announced eco-design themes, participants are now tasked with the fun assignment of appropriating existing defined showcase technologies like GPS, portable gaming, and RFID to be used in new and interesting ways in tackling environmental challenges.

How might a PSP gaming device be used outside of its commercial gaming context to address environmental impact? Or better yet, how might gaming frameworks create incentive based systems for participants to practice better environmental behaviors. These are the types of questions you’re asked to explore while concepting.

Tune in at Studiotalk.tv and post your questions via twitter using hashtag #studiotalk this Thursday at 3pm BST (UK).

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The Sony Open Planet Ideas Challenge wrapped up the first project stage, “Inspiration,” a week ago, with 335 suggested environmental issues to tackle. After culling through the inspirations, the next phase, “Concepting,” kicks off today with the announcement of the selected environmental brief.

The Inspiration phase brought out tons of great ideas from participants, with Urban Farming, Product Packaging, Deforestation, Water and Food Waste rising to the top as the most popular issues. With such a big starting question: “How can today’s technology address the environmental challenges we’re all facing?,” the answers were bound to be tough to sort out. So tough to sort out, in fact, the team decided upon six prominent areas which are all encompassed by the theme of using resources more efficiently rather than focus on one single issue. The six resulting themes:

1. More with less: How can technology help us use our resources more efficiently?
2. Bringing the issues to life: How can technology close the gap between our actions and their impacts?
3. No such thing as waste: How can technology turn waste into something more useful?
4. Smarter Design: How can technology help us design less resource intensive products, services and infrastructure?
5. Smarter recycling: How can technology help us recycle more?
6. Behavior change: How can technology help us make the less resource intensive option the desirable option?

Now it’s up to participants to use these inspirations to come up with technology mash-up solutions, build on others’ suggestions, or just comment or applaud concepts they like. This concepting phase goes until November 29th, when the panel re-convenes to sift through the mash-ups.

We were curious about the challenges and process of this open-source concept, and had the chance to discuss the project up to this point with a few participating members of the Sony team: Emily Nicoll, general manager of environmental communications, Sony Europe, and Morgan David, head of Sony Broadcast and Professional Research Labs. Emily provided us with a bird’s eye view of the process, while Morgan relayed in-depth insights from the engineering side.

Below, we talk with them about the transition from Inspiration to Concepting, what lessons the prior Forest Guard project brings to Open Planet Ideas, the value of the project overall, and how the community will be involved throughout the challenge.

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