Innovation finalists: cloud recording studio, model kit and educational toy

In the first of our profiles of the finalists in this year's Irish Times InterTradeIreland Innovation awards we look at the three of the cutting edge ideas that won over the judges. It was an impressive achievement by the three in what was one of the strongest categories of the competition this year.

Creativ

ity Hub:

The Extraordinaires Design Studio introduces children to the world of invention, design and creative problem-solving. The “sandbox” style experience encourages children to design wildly imaginative solutions while building empathy with the characters which come with the product. It is a toy product that focuses on what happens in the creative process before the making – the thinking.

This is the "real design process", according to Anita Murphy, director and co-founder of The Creativity Hub, the company behind The Extraordinaires. "One retailer described it as the first product to really take children's creativity seriously," she adds.

The box comes with profile cards for 15 characters from beyond our world. These include a superhero, one called Ninja, another called Evil Genius, and a giant. Along with these are sets of project and other cards which set design projects for the children playing with the toy.

“It might be as simple as designing a drinking utensil for the superhero but they have to design it with the character’s needs and the needs of their world in mind,” says Murphy. “For example, the superhero might fly upside down so it couldn’t be opened at the top. We break the design process into its three elements of research, design and improve. So the children think about what they have to design, then design it, and after that keep improving it. This helps children understand that it’s not done when it’s done and introduces them to the whole idea of iterations, which is really important. They are encouraged to make things bigger, better, more eco-friendly and so on.”

The idea for the new toy came about as a result of a previous product produced by the company. “We were visiting educational conferences and trade fairs to promote Rory’s Story Cubes and we kept hearing people saying the same thing – that we needed to educate children in more than the three R’s, that children needed to be taught thinking skills, how to ask the right questions and how to think of new ideas. Teachers were saying this and they were also saying that they didn’t know how to teach these things.”

Murphy and company co-founder, her husband Rory, realised that these were things already being taught in art and design college. “This is the different kind of critical thinking we learned at art college”, she says. “We asked ourselves if we could come up with a different kind of toy to teach it to children. We knew that the education system would be slow to change but if we could come up with a product to sell direct to parents we could let the schools follow.”

The result was The Extraordinaires which was launched in the US in 2013 to immediate success. It was successfully launched in Europe the following year and has won eight separate awards since.

“It’s going very well in the market,” says Murphy. “It’s a very innovative toy and this is appreciated. We have just come back from the Nuremberg Toy Fair and the toy retailers loved it. They said we were creating a new toy category of creativity with a purpose. It really is unique.”

More importantly, the children playing with it are enjoying themselves. “Players are enjoying inventing objects like chairs for the Evil Genius, music players for the Giant and remote controls for the Ninja,” she says. “More importantly they are discovering their ability to stretch their imaginations, to design and problem-solve and to understand the needs of other people. We hope they will apply this to solving problems in their everyday lives.”

While the market is potentially enormous for the product she acknowledges that building sales will be a long process. "We are still very much at the beginning of a long journey. This is not going to be a fad, it is something that is here to stay. It is going slow and steady at the moment. We had good success on Amazon over Christmas and they have ordered again. A major US book chain has approached us to produce an exclusive premium product for their 2016 range. This will add credibility to the product and become the basis for a wider-reaching education product. We will also be working on different ranges to address different markets like education."

The overall goal for the future is what Murphy describes as big and crazy. "We hope that a future James Dyson or Jonathan Ives will turn around and say that getting The Extraordinaires Design Studio as a child got them started as a designer."

WholeWorldBand:

Conceived by 10 CC legend

Kevin Godley

and backed by former U2 manager Paul McGuinness, WholeWorldBand is an innovative new music platform which has created a global recording studio in the cloud. It allows any musician with an internet connection to easily collaborate with others anywhere in the world to make music and videos that can be shared and enjoyed worldwide.

A multitrack YouTube is possibly the most accurate description for the app. WholeWorldBand allows fans to enter a virtual recording studio where they can pick a video and insert themselves, contributing a vocal, instrumental or anything else they feel like adding. The ultimate aim is to help shape how music is created, shared and monetised in the digital era.

The initial concept goes back as far as 1990 as WholeWorldBand chief executive John Holland explains. "Kevin had made a documentary for the BBC to highlight environmental issues and it featured a song which opened with Sting singing in New York and then moved on to various other A-list artists performing in different locations around the world. They idea stayed in his head and around 2007 he started looking at using the internet to do the same thing without the need to move around."

That led Godley to begin work on the app using the services of some Irish developers and this is where Holland came in. He was working as chief technology officer with Ericsson Ireland at the time and met Godley at the Hot Press awards in 2012. "I knew the guys who had developed the prototype and they were telling me that I should go and work on it. Initially I started advising the company and then joined as CEO a few months later."

Development work continued and the beta version of the WholeWorldBand app was launched on iPad at the end of 2013 and released on the iPhone and iPod touch in May 2014. It now has users in 107 countries around the world and Android and web versions are scheduled for launch in the near future.

The attractions of the service to aspiring musicians who wish to collaborate and share ideas with others around the world are fairly obvious but Holland points out that it offers benefits to established artists as well.

“The days when big artists recorded an album every two or three years are well and truly dead,” he says. “In the internet age they need to constantly engage with their audience. They can’t just go away for two years at a time. The artists see WholeWorldBand as another way of engaging and communicating with their fans. It also offers them new creative possibilities and new was of collaborating on song writing.”

He explains that the app can also provide a means for artists to exploit the potential of unused material. “A lot of artists have songs or unfinished pieces of songs in their bottom drawers that they would like to get to the next stage. They can share these on WholeWorldBand and get them finished. They can also sell recording sessions with fans. A fan can use the app to rent a session for a month and during that time go into the virtual studio with the artist of their choice and put on their own vocals or music.”

And it could lead to a lot more than just the fun and sense of achievement to be had from working with one of your heroes – contributors can also earn money if their work is subsequently used on a commercial recording.

“If a fan records a killer vocal or puts down a really good keyboard part it could end up on a recording that is sold commercially. We have put a lot of work into rights management to ensure that everyone gets their share. A fan can read an artist’s terms and conditions before working with them – it is all very transparent.”

With web and Android launches to come this year, the company is now focused on marketing and business development efforts to extend its reach and user base. "We are currently working on a deal with a major media partner in the US which could transform our market position," says Holland. "Our ambition is to do for professional music editing and creation what Instagram has done for photography."

ArcKit:

When it comes to communicating exactly what a new building will look like and how it will fit in with its environment there really is no substitute for a physical model. No drawing or animated computer graphic no matter how well prepared or presented can compare to the touch and feel offered by a scale model.

However, architectural model-making has been in decline for some years owing to cost and other factors and this inspired Irish architect Damien Murtagh to create ArcKit, an entirely new and more cost-efficient model-making system.

“When the digital era came about, model-making kind of stopped”, he says. “It was quite dramatic. It was just not cost-effective any more. But we are real people and while we have adapted to digital technologies we still like to feel, see and touch physical objects. What was needed was something which would be as fast to physically build as it would be to digitally draw the equivalent on screen.”

The result is a free-form architectural model-building system comprising 26 component parts which uses no glue and is made from high-quality parts. The system allows designers to quickly build accurate robust models with a 100 per cent reusable material, saving money and time.

“In essence, it’s very sophisticated Lego,” Murtagh adds. “Architects can now easily construct physical models and are no longer constricted by the difficulties associated with traditional card and glue methods. Anybody can now build high-quality models and articulate their design ideas.”

The potential goes beyond what comes in the standard ArcKit set. “The possibilities are limitless. Designers also have the option to create bespoke components particular to their build requirements and make them on a digital printer. This is the one occasion when 3D printed components can be reused as they become part of an adaptable Arckit model-building system.”

The product took four years to develop from first concept in 2009 to having an investor-ready concept and marketing plan. This quite lengthy process was required due to the need for the ArcKit system to look and feel wonderful. “It had to be incredibly detailed, faithful to modern building techniques and intelligently scaled. It includes walls, floors, tiles, doors, windows, stairs, trusses, balconies and roof panels – everything that can be used to build a real structure,” Murtagh explains.

The market opportunity for the product was clear. ArcKit offers a better alternative to traditional cut and glue in terms of reusability, precision and savings in time and material. “One needs to remember that all the ArcKit components are interchangeable and can always be used on any given design unlike cut card or foam where each cut is particular to just one design or even just that one section of wall. Architects are able to start their collections today and will still be using and reusing their ArcKit components to construct designs well into the future.”

The other option in model-building is to have professional models commissioned and this has been the preserve of larger corporate projects or one-off houses. The costs here are prohibitive with models costing anywhere from €2,000 up to €10,000 and higher, depending on the size and complexity whereas an ArcKit set costs about €200 on average.

Not surprisingly, the market reception has been very good since the product’s launch in May 2014.

“Sales have been really good and were fantastic in the run-up to Christmas and this has continued. The response of the education sector has also been very encouraging. We’ve just come back from BETT 2015 in London, probably the most important educational technology show in the world, and we had great interest from schools at all levels from primary right up to universities. We also have some very serious distributors around the world interested in the product.”

The all-important US market has also been cracked. “A school in Manhattan has bought 10 boxes and Barnes & Noble will shortly put it into 12 of their major outlets in the US and this could expand to more than 100 in 2016 as the company rolls out new toy departments in its stores.”

The company’s aim is to continue to grow sales across all areas including the professional, educational and hobbyist markets. This will see the product range being extended with the ArcKit Go variant showcased at the Nuremberg Toy Fair in January, for example.

“ArcKit Go introduces children to the system and gives them the option to build several items from the one kit,” says Murtagh.