My Digital Space of the Future - Live brief with Orange Telecommunications (2014)

Introduction

Annually Orange Telecommunications pick only four Universities from around the world to work with for a student design competition that explores themes that are important to them. In 2014 they chose Northumbria University and some of our students were a natural choice for this exciting project.

The Challenge

My digital space is formed every day based on our own routines and experiences or those of others:

How should it be designed and managed to make it both tangible and fluid?
Can it become an object that transforms our lives?
Will it be the reflection of my own physical existence or represent some new digital reality?
Working with Orange

Over a six-month period, Neil Churcher, Head of Orange’s Design and Usability team in London and Françoise Escoffier Manager of User Experience Improvement (Paris) regularly travelled to Newcastle to meet with the students to review their work. This was a great experience for students to work with top industrial professionals over such a sustained period of time. All 15 participating students were then flown to Paris for a celebration of their work before moving on to St. Etienne to exhibit their final pieces in a public exhibition.

Adapt - Orange (My Digital Space of the Future) from Northumbria University on Vimeo.

The Results

Five of our students chose to work collaboratively on the project brief: Oscar Chiu, Krista Mavrohannas, Alvin Tze Ng, Tylen St. Hilaire and Catherine Watt. They designed a concept called ‘Adapt’, which is a cloud data service that allows your information to be combined and adapted for use in different situations, wherever and whenever you need it, to make your applications more useful and personal.