Enterprising Mind of the Year Award Applications 2018
Eight applications were received this year. Morganne Wilbourne and Izzy Dunstan were the winners of this year’s award and Bernardo Domingues was the runner-up.
Bernardo Domngues (Runner-up)
I remember sitting on that lecture room and feeling overwhelmed by the thought that occurred to me: “all I was learning is sometimes used for harm”.
Context
I was having a Human-Computer Interaction lecture (CS5040) wherewe are taught how to use Cognitive Psychology to make technology usable for people. That itself is a noble mission however, the more I have learned, the more I realised some of these techniques are used to addict people to their phones. Mobile apps like Instagram, Facebook and Youtube increasingly use “techniques to keep us glued. …they point Artificial Intelligence-driven news feeds, content, and notifications at our minds, continually learning how to hook us more deeply— from our own behaviour” (Harris, 2019). As an aspiring web designer, I felt lost. But technology has brought us so many benefits. So I realised, making technology too addictive it’s not good, but make it accessible is.
I decided to take action and “design for good”. Research shows more than half of teens and millennials feel like they spend too much time on their phones and have taken steps to reduce it (Ballard, 2019). Furthermore, mobile phone usage is directly correlated with sleep depravation, anxiety and depression. As so, I decided to use what I have learned from this module and interviewed a few students. Research showed many students wish to use some apps in a more balanced way but feel it is impossible.
From here, I designed an app that tackles the specific concerns people have and hopefully will empower them with more time and improve their mental health.
How
In the module we were taught how to understand what users need by researching them. As so, I have executed the typical product design process, from initial research (interviews, market research), defining the target market and creating basic prototypes to actually testing them on real users and design the final prototype. The all process is documented here: (PDF1).
What
The final product is a mental health app called Focus App. Its main feature is that the phone adapts to specific times of the day, depending if users wish t be distracted by their phones or not. Per example, night mode will turn off blue lights of the phone and stop notifications (so that sleep is not disturb). Focus mode can be used to study, work or just be present when with friends or family. It uses Artificial Intelligence to detect if messages are important or not and based on that decides if they are showed on the phone.
Criteria
In respect to the judging criteria, here is how I believe I have showed enterprising capabilities:
1) Creativity and innovation: Many apps exploit psychological vulnerabilities of the human mind to addict people. In order to fight this problem I had to also exploit them. Yes, however, most likely for the first time on mobile apps design, this was done not to addict people but instead to protect them – which arguably represents a paradigm shift in design. An example of this is that people don’t like to be offline because they fear they will miss something important, they feel anxious. Apps exploit this vulnerability by constantly notifying people of things that are happening inside an app, like a friend that liked our picture per example. Only by deeply understanding this I was able to create a tool that protects users by assuring that they will see the important messages if needed. Since taking human mental health into consideration when designing is not a common practise in industry, one can argue that it is an innovation.
2) Opportunity recognition, creation and evaluation: In face of a very complicated problem that currently is not being tackled (effect of phone usage on mental health) I ideated over twenty possible solutions and presented them to students to collect feedback (PDF1);
3) Decision making supported by critical analysis and judgement: In order to understand what problems people have when “unplugging”, extensive research was undertaken. Collection of data came from a wide range fo methods: from user interviews and secondary research to a competition analysis. It was then critically analysed and put together to formulate “user personas” – typical users that have specific behaviours and needs – a concept learned in the module (PDF1);
4) Implementation of ideas through leadership: After concluding the design process, the final prototype was tested with real users in order to collect their feedback. From here, specific modifications here made. Now that the prototype is built, I wish to take this personal project as my dissertation project, so that I can programme the app and make it available to all students and people in general.
5) Reflection and action: This personal project helped me realise how much people lack tools to protect their mental health and how much responsibility designers have when creating digital products. It also taught me in a practical sense many of the concepts learned in the CS5040 module.
6) Communication and strategy skills: designing this mobile app was a process that followed a carefully elaborated plan. All stages of the design process were carefully prepared in advance so that students could be involved at all times and contribute to the final product. Communication happened in the form of informal and formal interviews, conversations and tests with several prototypes.
In sum, feedback was very positive and students said they need this app. The project was reviewed by professors and industry people that encouraged me to now move forward and programme the mobile application. So the next step is to programme it as my research project so that in September is live for everyone.
REFERENCES
Ballard, J. (2019). Over half of millennials say they waste too much time on smartphones | YouGov. [online] Today.yougov.com. Available at: https:// today.yougov.com/topics/technology/articles-reports/2018/06/25/ smartphone-habits-millennials-boomers-gen-x [Accessed 8 Feb. 2019].
Harris, T. (2019). The Problem — Center for Humane Technology. [online] Center for Humane Technology. Available at: http://humanetech.com/ problem/ [Accessed 8 Feb. 2019].
Jonathan Short
My name is Jonathan Short and I am a student in my penultimate year of study. I am studying a Bachelors of Science in computer science. This piece is largely about how I used enterprising capabilities to capitalise on what I was learning in my course and using these skills to earn a summer internship for the coming year.
As, every student will tell you when looking for an internship most positions are highly competitive and sought after. Technology internships with financial industry leaders are no exception to this which makes them difficult to accept onto.
As a second year, I was applying for internships with the hopes of working in the financial sector. However, I was not performing well during the application processes to become a successful candidate. Realising that this was most likely going to be the case for the summer of 2018 I set out an initial objective of figuring out what I could improve my professional skill set so that this would not happen in the future. This was the first step I took to achieve a set goal, using reflection and forward planning.
The problem I was facing was that I was not taking full advantage of what each of my course and this university had to offer. Whether this be leadership skills, creative responsibility or general professional growth. I was fortunate in the sense I had a module was primarily a creative module geared towards group submissions. This module, CS2006, allowed me to learn about when it is required to be a leader and when it is best to be a role player.
Building on my experience within the module I took the opportunity to attend an event ran by St Andrews Computer Science Society (STACS). This event was a hackathon that allows teams to be creative and build an idea or product and present it to the committee. This was the perfect opportunity to gain more experience with creative innovation as the constraints to the event were purely open ended. My team and I decided to build a product that took a fun spin on a course that we had in the semester previous, using what we had learned to build an interactive app. For this event we placed 3rd being recognised for our creativeness.
Taking the initiative to achieve what I was wanted to achieve, namely being accepted on to an internship, was my first step in this journey. Recognising the areas of my professional development that required improvement was part of this path to my goal. Realising what each of my courses had to offer and how I could use them to gain more than just credits was extremely helpful. Furthermore, taking the extra step to cover areas where university courses may not be able to help, such as the professional settings of a spring week or the creative nature of a hackathon, was important to achieve the most out of this personal project. I can happily say during the second half of semester one I was offered an internship that I have accepted and I believe this is due to viewing my university course as opportunities of learning more than the set curriculum.
Rohan Hundia
As a computer science undergraduate at the University of St. Andrews, I have always had a penchant for innovation. In the fall of 2018, I was sitting idle gazing at my computer screen looking and searching for the next amazing idea I could work on that could solve a problem in the world (yeah, I know it sounds cliched). And looking for big global problems to solve, I came across some horrifying women sexual assault statistics as my computer screen read – “More than 200,0000 women across the world have experienced some form of sexual assault as per the 2014 rape statistics”. And the next line read, “with surveys showing dark figures of up to 91.6% of rapes going unreported”. Digging in deeper I found that these sexual assault, murder, kidnapping women statistics were beyond belief in the United Kingdom and even more so in my native country India. I knew that such victim situations were a problem but the statistics were unimaginable.
I knew then that this was something I couldn’t ignore and had to do something about it. I had been involved with the university on a few undergraduate research projects mainly focused towards human computer interaction and sensor development and I thought I could use my skillset to maybe come up with a solution for victims to signal for help in the most discrete manner possible when they are in these dangerous situations. I explored already existing technologies that were used by victims to call for help which ranged from – wearable wristwatches to send alerts to predetermined friends/family, necklaces and pendants which with a single press dials an emergency contact or the police, to voice based alert system to call an emergency number. Although these pre-existing technologies were novel, they had one underlying problem – they weren’t discrete and in certain situations would make the rapist/kidnapper even more cautious. Secondly, they required some form of voluntary action from the victim – a tap or motor movement from the user, a voice enabled command to activate or signal the wearable tech used and therefore could not be used in situations where the victims are tied with ropes or their mouth is duck taped. I was thus looking to create an assistive victim help technology that was discrete and could be activated by the user even when he/she is completely tied up.
The solution to my problem was – breath (exhales and inhales from the nose) – a very discrete mode of action which the kidnapper/rapist could not restrict since they can’t control the victims breathing. And there I was creating a sensor that could be activated by patterns of breath and then would automatically send a message with the victims’ current location to the emergency contacts. I therefore started to create a nose ring with an embedded MEMS microphone sensor which could be activated by short exhales from the nose and interfaced to a microcontroller which would be automatically then send a message to the emergency contacts. Most of my programming was done in Python to detect and differentiate breath patterns from external noise and calculate the victim’s current geolocation to be sent. Over 4 months, under the guidance of Prof. Aaron Quigley in the computer science department, Over 4 months, under the guidance of Prof. Aaron Quigley in the computer science department, I was able to create a breath activated emergency help interface.
After developing the sensor, I was able to carry out a pilot test across 45 females in India (during my winter break) by creating artificial emergency help situations. All the females wore the nose ring embedded with a sensor and used one of our sample phones. A simulated emergency situation was created for all these women, they were supposed to exhale thrice in a span of 4 seconds to signal for help and the sensor worked perfectly in detecting breaths and sending a message for help in 43 out of 45 situations with an accuracy of ~95% suggesting an amazing potential for such a help based wearable technology. The next steps would be creating a pilot test study across females at the University of St. Andrews with this wearable nose ring and then finally commercialising such nose rings with embedded help interface sensors.
Vinh San Dinh
In any learning process, to be able to apply what I learnt is a strong indicator of whether I have truly understood the concepts. Below is my story about it.
After taking modules on computational Physics methods such as Computational Astrophysics and Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer Method, I have a good understanding of how software is structured and developed. Furthermore, other Physics modules play big roles in preparing me the basic concepts. My knowledge was then effectively applied to enhance Physics researches. There were several following main works.
Firstly, new automated features for current software were added to increase the research productivity and reducing manual effort. Interdisciplinary research projects require complex instruments and methodologies. As a result, researchers need to use tools from different fields such as mathematical calculations, physical concepts, chemical synthesized materials, biological cells and sophisticated electronic instruments. One person often cannot cover all the aspects of the research so the process goes slowly when it comes to the stage that the work is tedious. With the taught programming background from the above modules, my work focused on automating the tasks so that the researcher spent less time on taking the data but more time on interpreting it and designing the experiments. Automating the task can also enable experiments that last for several days. This was not possible when the experiment is manually conducted. Also, I helped with adapting the old set-up design to new hardware and software where there were mismatches in different versions. Thanks to all my modules’ instructors who gave me the strong background knowledge and showed me where to ask and find the answers when I was stuck. Without the little initial spark from the modules, I would not be able to do these real works.
Secondly, my work can reduce research expenses. Researches often deploy highly customised instruments that are not mass-produced. Hence, these instruments are very expensive. By understanding how an instrument works electronically and how to program them, I confidently consulted my supervisors to buy basic packages which I can assemble all the parts together and utilize the available expertise in the school to build the instrument that they need. This option for example only costed around £2000 and saved £5000 compared to buying a completed plug-and-play instrument.
Finally, the knowledge that I acquired from the modules and working experiences at School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St. Andrews can not only be applied to researches within the school but also is widely useful for researches all around the world. In summer 2018, I got the internship at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, U.S. because of my work experiences at St. Andrews. While working on my project, my skills helped me make meaningful contributions to the group that I worked with in term of hardware and software for their experiment. This also strengthens the research collaborations between the U.S. and U.K.
To sum up, learning and working are the two back to back self-supportive processes for me. Learning provides background to work. While work enhances the learnt concepts and inspires more learning. The cycle keeps going and sustains my development.
Ana Clara Caetano and Vanshika Sood
The good tote
As part of our Enterprise and Creativity module (MN2112) we decided to create, produce and sell the good tote; a multifunctional, eco-friendly and stylish alternative to a simple plastic bag that is unique in its design and aids and supports the homeless. The idea came after observing the growing number of petitions to banish the use of plastic bags (Petitions – UK Government and Parliament, 2017) and understanding that the existing tote bags sold by supermarkets and retailers lacked creativity and a stylish design. With this in mind and having decided that we wanted the good tote to aid and support the homeless population of Fife, we chose to partner with Trust in Fife. We wanted to go one step further and do more than just financially contribute towards their betterment. Wanting our tote bags to be unique and appealing, we thought it might be a good idea to have them be designed by the homeless people that work with Trust in Fife. This not only gave our tote bag the edge that needed to disrupt the market, but it also provided the homeless with a platform to showcase their talent. Therefore, our bags had two main aims: to tackle the superfluous amount of waste produced by plastic bags and their effect on our environment, and to deconstruct the stigma around homelessness by broadcasting the art and voices of people affected by it. Hence, we would be solving a consumer need while adding value through the environmental and social aspects of our enterprise, making our product innovative and desirable to customers.
Once we decided upon an idea it was important to research the market and industry of our product. The tote bag market is a growing market (Future Market Insight, 2017) in Europe which means there is a proven and growing demand for the product. In this market competition is fierce and thus it was crucial for our product to stand out from the others. Our goal was to sell to a local market segment, this way we would still have a significant number of potential costumers – the university students and the local population of St Andrews – without all the infrastructure and investment required to conquer a wider market (national or global).
Through the good tote’s Facebook page, we shared all the steps taken to produce our tote bags, from partnering with Trust in Fife and selecting the designs made by the homeless people to finally launching our Fixr pre-sales link. The posts were shared by us in the University of St Andrews student groups and in less than 3 weeks our page had over 4000 views and over 1000 engagements, successfully building brand awareness. Apart from the online channels we also decided to physically sell our tote bags in stands outside the Union where we would reach students and a higher number of locals. Trust in Fife also shared our Facebook page, which not only legitimized our partnership but together with a geographically targeted Facebook advertisement (we won a £15 advertisement credit from Facebook) helped to attract more local customers.
Opportunities don’t only stem from business idea’s and we were able to capitalize on one such opportunity that came in the form of the Enterprise Week Pitch competition that was held on the 11th of October 2018 at the University of St. Andrews at which we managed to win an investment of £350 for the good tote. We used this investment to put in an order for our first round of 200 tote bags, out of which we managed to sell 81 through Fixr pre-sales and stands outside the student union in just under two weeks. This resulted in us being able to make a profit of £419, the whole amount of which was donated to Trust in Fife.
In the end, we were selling much more than a tote bag, we were selling the idea that if customers bought our product they would not only be getting a high-quality cotton-made environmental-friendly tote bag, but they would also be helping an important social cause. In regard to what our future looks like, Trust in Fife have asked us to send them the un-sold bags so that they could be sold in their charity shops. Not only that but they also want to continue working with us and are willing to invest £400 in the production of more tote bags. Entrepreneurship is all about innovating and accepting risks in order to move resources into areas where you earn a higher commercial or social return (Burns, 2018: 7) and this is exactly what we did. By using the concepts learnt in our Enterprise and Creativity class we were able to make our idea desirable, feasible and viable which contributed to its success.
Reference List
Burns, P. (2018). New Venture Creation: A Framework for Entrepreneurial Start-Ups 2nd ed. London: Macmillan Education UK.
Future Markets Insight (2017). Tote Bags Market: Global Industry Analysis and Opportunity Assessment 2017-?2027. [online] Future Markets Insight. Available at:<https://www.futuremarketinsights.com/reports/tote-bags-market> [Accessed 1 Nov. 2018].
Petitions – UK Government and Parliament. (2017). Archived Petition: Ban all non-recyclable/non-compostable packaging in the UK. [online] Available at:<https://petition.parliament.uk/archived/petitions/167596> [Accessed 2 Nov. 2018].
Tennyson Flint
My name is Tennyson Flint, and I am a Third years undergraduate doing a Joint Honours English and Comparative Literature Degree. I composed an essay for my Comparative Literature Class, Contours and Constellations I (CO3001). At the beginning of the module we were asked to consider the topic of Intermediality and then to present a proposal as if we were presenting to the Scottish Arts Council to earn funding on an adaption of a novel of our choice. I developed a proposal to adapt Mikhail Bulgakov’s, The Master and Margarita, into symphonic form. This presentation was not graded; however, we were given the option to do our final project at the end of the semester on the presentation we did on Intermediality. I was very excited to be able to go further in depth on the symphony and the text I had chosen. My tutor was very excited and interested in the idea and supported me completely in my research and inclusion of the compositions I had written for the presentation. I was incredibly interested to first, explore the topic of musical adaptation of texts, something I am very interested in and intend to continue to research and understood in my school career. Second I wished to research and discuss how the symphony and the art of composing symphony was in danger of dying out due to a changing demographic The choice of a symphony was also important as I felt it was important to explore the old tradition of Russian symphony, which, during the Soviet Union, was at its height, despite the intense oppression of artistic freedom, used as a way to adapt a text, which had also been repressed by the government. Therefore, I was careful to choose a text that was interesting to me and might be interesting to an audience because of the fantastical elements relevant in the text, and in fact, the text appears in a second-year Comparative Module, making it more well known to a younger generation. The Master and Margarita is an incredibly fantastical novel. The main premise consists of a character, Professor Woland, later revealed to be the devil, who comes to Soviet Moscow to find a Queen for his Summer Ball, whom he finds in Margarita; thus, revealing the corruption of the government and causing havoc. Along with the fantasy element, is the romance or fairy tale element of the Master and Margarita’s romance, two lovers who have been separated due to the corruption of the government. I composed four main themes, which would make of four movements of a symphony, based on the characters and events of the novel. The First Theme and movement is based on Woland and his followers. The second, introduces Margarita’s theme while the third combines hers and Woland’s theme to represent the ball. The last movement calumniates with Margarita’s theme translated to mix with The Master’s theme representing their reunion. I transcribed the themes onto paper and played and recorded them on piano to play for the class. I found some difficulty in transferring the score to electronic form, but my tutor was able to find a Professor who suggested the online database, Muse score and I was then able to include passages of the score in the essay as an example of how the work would look and appear, within the analysis. While the symphony does not appear in full in the essay, I am still working on composing the movements and intend to present in some form to be performed. As a whole, the experience was incredibly rewarding as it helped my confidence in the chosen areas and encouraged me to move forward, giving me the opportunity to develop the idea.