EXPO.015

The Helsinki Virtual Village in Arabianranta is both a cybercommunity and a physical community. This new sector within Finland’s capital city is both the site of Helsinki’s original founding some 500 years ago, and the home of the famous Arabia pottery factory. Arabianranta is a mixed-use development centered on themes of art, design, and culture.

The population within the area, including students, residents, and daytime workers, is linked by the Helsinki Virtual Village (HVV) network, a state-of-the-art wireless infrastructure incorporating the very latest services. Community members can access the seamless, ubiquitous system using cell phones, PDAs, digital television, and personal computers. Features still under development will use location-based data retrieved from mobile handheld devices to help people in Arabianranta coordinate their work and social lives.

The HVV network is the result of collaboration between several ITC companies including Nokia, Ericsson, Matsushita, Psion, Motorola, and the Finnish telephone company Sonera. These companies are using Arabianranta as a real-world experiment in community networking. Research related to the Helsinki Virtual Village focuses on the social effects of this new technology and on the usability of the applications. Residents have been very active in organizing groups and engaging in discussions via the HVV web portal. Since all the residents within the project are newcomers to the area, they have a specific interest in meeting and building social networks with their neighbors. Website

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Ha aperto a Milano un ‘Alzheimer Cafe” itinerante e gratuito per malati e familiari. La struttura è stata inaugurata da Aima (Associazione italiana malattia di Alzheimer) Milano Onlus a fine giugno. 

La struttura si propone di essere ‘un luogo per non dimenticare di sorridere – spiegano i promotori in una nota – dove, con tecniche e metodi adeguati, familiari e malati recuperano insieme il piacere di stare con gli amici, fare quattro chiacchiere, ascoltare buona musica, ballare il tango, mangiare una fetta di torta o giocare a carte o a tombola”. 

E proprio per essere piu’ facilmente raggiungibile da ogni parte della citta’, da settembre il primo Alzheimer Cafe’ milanese si spostera’ in quattro diverse zone del capoluogo lombardo. Gli incontri saranno organizzati dagli operatori Aima (psicologi, educatori, volontari e altri professionisti amici dell’associazione). 

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People who love cooking use their skills to cook for a larger group.

Solution
The ‘Living Room Restaurant’ scheme is way for people to get a cheap dinner and meet other people, in a home setting. After reserving a place via email or phone, people can literally come and sit at the host’s dining table. After a short chat between all the guests, dinner is served, comprising two appetizers, main course, dessert and unlimited drinks. Guests can choose the background music and help with clearing the table between each dish. The hosts sit on the ends of the table and switch places between courses so they can talk to everyone there. The evening lasts as long as the guests and hosts want, and costs 15 euros.

Background
Many older people are cut off from society, and often miss being able to cook for and entertain their children and family, once the children leave home. The people who started the scheme want to make friends, be socially active and create a support network. They love to cook and want to offer a cheap alternative for people who like to go out to dinner.

Current state of development
The scheme started in February 2005, and other similar networks have also set up recently.
The members will keep going with the project while it is still fun, and quite happy with the current set up and are not looking for any changes or expansion.

The benefits

Society
The Living Room Restaurant’s benefits are mainly to individuals, rather than groups, as it enables otherwise lonely people to make new friends. The evenings are arranged so that the almost nobody knows each other at each party.

Environment
There are no significant benefits to the environment.

Economy
The hosts make no profit, but nor do they make a loss. Most of the benefit is on a social level. They shop in regular supermarkets and they do not need a restaurant licence as it is so small-scale.

The quality of the experience
Demonstrating one’s own skills and capabilities. Meeting new people with an open attitude in a cheerful environment. Being pleasantly surprised by the culinary ability of neighbours, and discovering their home.

Future development possibilities
Finding buildings large common areas and professional kitchens for social events. Ensuring hygiene in the cooking and dining equipment.

Authors:
TU Eindhoven, The Netherlands
Ivo Stuyfzand, Eric Toering, Mathijs Wullems

http://sustainable-everyday.net/cases/?p=44

RED was set up in 2004 by the Design Council to tackle social and economic issues through design led innovation.By 2010, one in ten of us will have diabetes.

By 2030, the incidence of chronic disease in over 65s will more than double. Current NHS spending on diabetes alone stands at £10 million every day. And yet about 90% of healthcare takes place in the home. Chronic disease and conditions related to an unhealthy lifestyle have reached epidemic proportions and are rising still. This presents a momentous challenge for our current healthcare system. More 

REPORT Open Health

Designing new public services

The new co-created service Activmobs harnesses the power of existing social networks. Mobs are small groups that carry out an activity on a regular basis. They are connected by the Activmob system, simple web based tools, which help people find or start a mob, a coach, a space to go to and child care if necessary, monitor their progress, set goals and reward commitment. The wellie mob for example developed from a group of mums who walk their dogs after dropping their children at school, the provision of an occasional personal trainer has provided the encouragement to up the tempo of their activity.

Activmob is all about making physical activity part of everyday life. Anyone can get together a group of friends, family or colleagues and start and ‘activmob’ providing the activity improves wellbeing. You may want to start a running mob, a walking mob, a get-off-the-bus-two-stops-early-mob, a lunch time yoga club or a pram pushing mob;  activmobs don’t have to do things that would traditionally be called ‘sport’.

The nature of the health problem has changed. The 20th century problem of infectious disease has given way to the prevalence of chronic disease, problems such as diabetes and obesity. 12 million (one in five) Britons suffers from a chronic disease and these numbers are predicted to rise, threatening to financially overwhelm current health services, which were not designed to address these issues.
The challenge is not to build more hospitals or streamline administration practices to reduce waiting lists, but rather to understand what will support individuals and communities in changing their behaviour and sustaining lifestyle changes. It is motivation, not medicine that is required.

In 2004 Charles Leadbeater and Hilary Cottam published a paper “Health: Co-creating services” outlining what we thought might be the principles that would need to under pin a new approach to collaboratively developing new services with service users and professionals, that would be distributed across communities and households, rather than solely located within institutions. “Open Health illustrates the way we work: our transformation design methodology”. Key components are the anthropological tools that help us understand individuals and their motivations and our rapid prototyping which helps us move rapidly from ideas to models that can be tested in action, improved and then rapidly scaled. More

PDF:  “Health: Co-creating services”      

“Open Health illustrates the way we work: our transformation design methodology”

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Se buone prassi, servizi, mobile e wireless è l’integrazione secondo gli addetti ai lavori, esperienze, nuove tecnologie e partecipazione sono i tre argomenti su cui verterà Handimatica 2008, la mostra convegno sull’informatica e la telematica per l’integrazione delle persone disabili che si svolgerà al Palazzo dei congressi di Bologna dal 27 al 29 novembre. Il risultato è che dalle esperienze concrete esistenti sul territorio nascono le buone prassi da esportare anche nel resto del Paese, che mobile e wireless sono la vera sfida del futuro da accompagnare all’alfabetizzazione informatica di chi ancora non ha accesso alle tecnologie e che qualificare i servizi, anche solo per alcune categorie di persone, rende migliore ogni pubblica amministrazione. Qui di seguito riportiamo un estratto delle tre interviste.

“Negli ultimi due anni abbiamo assistito all’accelerazione della crescita dell’uso di Internet e al vero e proprio decollo della larga banda in mobilità con i sistemi cellulari 3G di tipo Hspa (High speed packet access). E nei prossimi anni il fenomeno del “mobile browsing” tramite telefonini del tipo iPhone e pc portatili con chiavette Usb/Hspa diventerà dominante. Per quanto riguarda lo sviluppo delle applicazioni in rete, invece, i due fenomeni più rilevanti sono stati quelli del Web 2.0 e del Software as a service (Saas). Ma il diritto all’accessibilità da parte di tutti fa fatica ad affermarsi in un mondo tecnologico in tumultuoso progresso, soprattutto per le persone disabili, anziane e per gli ‘analfabeti informatici’. Nel futuro poi i telefonini avranno una funzionalità in più rispetto a oggi: saranno dotati di sensori capaci di interagire via radio con l’ambiente, con le cose, serviranno per pagare bollette e parcheggi e per ricevere informazioni locali. Mobile e wireless rappresentano la vera sfida del futuro per l’inclusione delle persone disabili. Ma la strada è ancora lunga”. More

“Europèdia, cinquant’anni di sogni cinquecento milioni di protagonisti” è un’ iniziativa di ambiente interattivo itinerante in cui esplorare e sperimentare l’idea di Europa unita attraverso i linguaggi e la sensibilità dei nuovi media. Europèdia è uno scenario live ludico e partecipativo; è una palestra di cittadinanza creativa che mette in relazione gli ambienti reali delle piazze pubbliche, le agorà di importanti città italiane, con il nuovo spazio pubblico virtuale di Internet e le piazze, virtuali e reali, europee. Tutti possono partecipare ed entrare in relazione con le visioni e i sogni dei padri fondatori, Spinelli, De Gasperi, Schuman, … attraverso grandi schermi sensibili, interactive mirror( http://www.interactivemirror.net ), geoblog ( http://www.europedia.it ), sagome audio interattive e matrixcode ( http://www.semapedia.org ).

Numerose soluzioni di interaction design caratterizzano questo nuovo format di comunicazione pubblica:
WI-FI : per offrire l’accesso alla piattaforma web di http://www.europedia.it e al suo geoblog (una mappa interattiva dell’Europa su cui scrivere messaggi in relazione a un luogo significativo che viene così geo-referenziato).
BLUETOOTH : per la trasmissione continua di contenuti su mobile. Un’ambient music mixa la Gymnopédie di Erik Satie con altre sonorità europee, come la pizzica salentina e il rebetiko greco.
MATRIX CODE : per “agganciare” ai luoghi significativi della storia europea, visibili sulla mappa interattiva, le diverse interpretazioni-emozioni che i cittadini vi annoteanno scrivendo, fotografando, inserendo video, linkando altre risorse del social web (YOU Tube, Flickr, Del.icio.us) grazie ai codici a barre bidimensionali capaci di essere letti dai camera-phone come link verso pagine web pertinenti.Ripreso da un camera- phone trasmette automaticamente al web. Per utilizzarlo va scaricato il software da http://www.europedia.it.
AVATAR : per ascoltare le voci degli “spiriti guida” della grande avventura europea: sagome dei Padri fondatori, sculture sonore interattive.

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People from a variety of cultural backgrounds have for many years contributed to our society, both in terms of wealth creation and in enhancing the rich cultural fabric of the UK. In recent years, skills shortages and the expansion of the European labour market has lead to an influx of migrant workers. If we are to realise the full potential of their contribution, it is essential that they are given support to become better equipped to adjust to life in this country. Today, many organisations are exploring new ways of providing information, advice and support to non-native English speakers. The Life-Guide is a unique, online resource which allows all organisations to deliver up-to-date information and support on a wide range of topics in any language. It enables pre-determined and translated ‘core content’ to be merged with ‘user-defined content’ and can be downloaded as a complete document either to a desktop printer (for immediate delivery to end user) or as professional ‘printer-ready’ artwork. Ultimately, organisations can deliver a complete and precise support pack tailored to their area or their business, in any language, at the press of a button. More