Haiyan Zhang of Microsoft Research and BBC's Big Life Fix, speaking at the first Digital Disruption event |
Those of you of a certain age will remember a time when you arranged to meet your friends on a weekend, and if you had some trouble on route or had to cancel last minute, you couldn’t let them know and had to leave them looking lost at the planned meeting point. If you had relatives on the other side of the world, keeping in touch had to be part of the monthly budget. And most inconveniently of all, if you wanted a take away, you had to ring up, and go and collect it yourself!
Technology has transformed many of our day to day activities, delivering convenience, time saving, cost efficiencies and, in some cases, enrichment. Of course, it’s no longer just our personal lives that are improved by technology. Digital has hit the workforce in a big way – transforming existing organisations as well as giving rise to new and disruptive businesses like Airbnb, Uber, Deliveroo and many more.
As the Co-Founder and Research Leader of the Mobile Life VINN Excellence Research Centre in Sweden, I was in the exciting position developing the technology at the heart of this revolution. For instance, we invented the world's first mobile social network, The Hummingbird, which was a portable device that would tell you when your friends were nearby (see right). It was designed to solve just the kind of meet-up problems we had before mobile technology became widespread. Of course, now there is an app for that! The Mobile Life centre was designed to facilitate the transfer of knowledge from long term research into the development of mobile technology and its application. I would like to see industry and universities in the North East take the same approach, and invent the future together. After all, just like mobile social networks, many inventions, technology or otherwise, are initially conceived in research labs decades before they actually come to market.
Technology has transformed many of our day to day activities, delivering convenience, time saving, cost efficiencies and, in some cases, enrichment. Of course, it’s no longer just our personal lives that are improved by technology. Digital has hit the workforce in a big way – transforming existing organisations as well as giving rise to new and disruptive businesses like Airbnb, Uber, Deliveroo and many more.
Mobile social networking, anno 1999. |
Demonstrations and research posters at the first Digital Disruption day |
That said, 84% of companies still fail at digital transformation. With global spend on these initiatives set to hit $2trillion by 2022, a massive amount of investment could be wasted in the process. At this event, we will bring together organisations including Google, Home Group, DWP and Accenture to explore how they design digital products and services with the user in mind – spanning both workforces and consumers. We will also hear from the rapidly growing immersive tech sector in the region, centred around the PROTO Emerging Technologies Centre in Gateshead. They will be joined by academic colleagues at from Northumbria University’s large community of Human Computer Interaction researchers, NORTHLab, to explore collaborative ways of working that see innovative ideas go from the lab, into the real world.
I am looking forward to meeting you on May 17! The event is free - just sign up here!
Lars Erik Holmquist, Professor of Innovation, Northumbria University School of Design
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