Focus by Kinneir Dufort: Connected

CONNECTED

A snapshot on future influences around improving healthcare

contributors

DAVE BAKER SNR DESIGN ENGINEER

JAMES HOLMES HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY

ROB PEART HEAD OF DIGITAL

IAN BINDER HEAD OF INDUSTRIAL

CHRIS WHITE SNR HUMAN FACTORS CONSULTANT

KELLY O’CONNOR GRAPHIC DESIGNER

KELLY DAWSON HEAD OF STRATEGY

RUSSELL BEARD HEAD OF DESIGN

THANE HALL GUEST WRITER

FOREWoRD At Kinneir Dufort, we’re privileged to work on a fascinatingly diverse range of challenges in the industrial and B2B sector, with product areas including voice and data communications, vending, scientific diagnostics, environmental monitoring, industrial process control, defence and security.

What connects all the work we do, is a desire to leverage technology to add value to product solutions and to use design to humanise that technology and make it work effectively for end users of those solutions.

The ever-increasing pace of technological change brings new challenges and new opportunities. In this issue of FOCUS, our team explore the key factors affecting the design and development of tomorrow’s products and experiences.

We hope you find our collection of features enjoyable and stimulating, and if you have any feedback regarding ideas for future editions, please get in touch!

Craig Wightman Chief Design Officer craig.wightman@kinneirdufort.com 2

04

Future Interactions Voice & Haptics

Future opportunities for voice and haptic interactions to create a more immersive experience.

08 Humans Make or Break the World

Human-Centred Design

14 Next Generation

CONTENTS

CONNECTED

Millennials & Gen Z

How to design for your next generation of customers.

Designing a world where people come first.

10 Uncovering the Value of Human Factors Reducing Risk

Bringing in the human factor for the future workplace. What is it and how can it help projects?

12

Agile Product Engineering

Digital vs. Physical Engineering Development How to resolve conflicting demands of innovative design, rapid development and robust engineering.

16 Workplaces Get ‘Smart’

Technology Influences & Enablers Exploring the future of the workplace.

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Blockchain Industry Business Value Creation From cryptocurrency hype to industrial business value creation.

3

Future Interactions James Holmes

Rob Peart

Over the last decade, tapping and swiping glass touchscreens has become second nature to many of us in our interaction with technology, but an increasing array of new interface systems are vying to replace our touchscreen tapping.

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Google Home Mini

CONNECTED

© Kevin Bhaga Stereo Dev Kit for Amazon Alexa Voice Services

Cortana-Powered Invoke Speaker

© XMOS VocalFusionTM

© Harman Kardon

01 LIKE THE SOUND OF YOUR OWN VOICE? Voice interfaces are one technology looking to disrupt our reliance on the touchscreen with Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft all pushing their voice assistant platforms as a means to control devices or gain access to information; all without ever having to touch, or even look at, the technology you’re interacting with.

Consumer feedback suggests that these interactions range from convenience bliss to awkward frustration, but it’s clear that the voice interface isn’t going away. Voice interactions aren’t going to replace all of our interactions with technology, but they are finding their place. Recent research conducted by Adobe found that growth in sales of voice assistants were up 103% year on year [1].

where large colour touch screen interfaces are not practical, or where hands or eyes-free operation is a real user benefit such as in the car.

The development time and costs associated with voice interface technology is also rapidly falling as large platform companies such as Amazon and Microsoft try to entice developers to create ‘skills’ for their platforms. This has created a wealth of opportunity for companies of all sizes to voice enable existing products or to create entirely new product categories which simply couldn’t have existed before. Two areas where this is particularly relevant are

A key challenge faced by designers when confronted with the question of whether to consider voice interaction as part of the interface for a product is understanding which scenarios work well and which scenarios will feel awkward or out of place to users.

Rapid-prototyping these interactions can quickly help to identify what is likely to work well and where alternative interfaces may work better.

Where voice solutions need to be more tailored to a specific application, an increasing array of hardware and software tools make possible the development of entirely bespoke solutions.

Voice technology specialists such as Bristol-based XMOS are developing next-generation signal processing tools to enable a whole new range of smart, connected products with enhanced levels of accuracy and voice capture functionality.

1. http://www.cmo.com/adobe-digital-insights/articles/2018/1/8/the-future-of-consumer-electronics-is-voice-activated.html#gs.fhBIMZs

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The Microsoft HoloLens Headset

© Microsoft Intel Vaunt Smart Glasses

© Vjeran Pavic Google Project Soli

© Google Ultrahaptics

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Big Belly Bins: Smart Bin

CONNECTED

02. HEADS UP Voice interfaces are great for triggering an action or retrieving basic information such as the weather, or the system status, but they aren’t well suited to conveying lots of information or keeping a user regularly updated with information. For these use cases, the display is still king.

Google Glass may have given head-worn wearables something of a bad reputation, but this type of heads-up display is seeing renewed interest with the increasing capabilities of VR and AR systems. For example, Intel’s Vaunt system uses retinal projection to display information within the user’s field of view from a device no larger than ordinary glasses. In a factory setting, Microsoft’s HoloLens has been used to demonstrate augmenting reality for workers to provide useful information overlaid in front of their work environment right when they need it. This type of technology has the potential to get users ever closer the information they need, seamlessly and without the need to stop and pick up another device.

03. GET OUT OF THE WAY Whilst some devices look to persuade us to interact with them in new ways, other technologies aim to reduce our need to interact with them at all. Andy Rubin, the cofounder of Android, believes that the next big platform will be Ambient, a platform which draws on AI and assistant technologies fed with data from a huge array of sensors to create the smart environments of tomorrow. Applications could include smart homes which can collect information from sensors, then connect with smart lights, door locks, TVs and speakers to predict when you will return home, put the heating on, unlock your front door, turn on the lights and start music playing without you ever flicking a switch or launching an app.

The internet of things continues to enable a wide range of connected devices which can monitor themselves and only prompt user interaction when necessary. Examples include: connected bins, which only alert maintenance staff when they are full, to machines which monitor wear and inform engineers only when there is a potential problem. This leaves more and more in the hands of sensors and algorithms, and reduces the time we spend interacting with systems which don’t need our attention.

04. GET PHYSICAL We can’t talk about new forms of interaction without discussing gestural interfaces, although it’s not really a ‘new’ form of interaction at all. People have been exploring how to use gestural information to control software since the 70s, with early pioneers experimenting with musical and artistic performances.

Throughout the 80s and 90s early interest in virtual reality systems spurred development in this area, and in 2002 we got a compelling vision of what gestural interfaces of the future might look like with the release of the movie Minority Report. Since the launch of the Microsoft Kinect in 2009 and its subsequent hack, technologists, artists and designers have been exploring how gestural interfaces might come to influence our daily lives. In the decade since, gestural technology has failed to stick. Compared to the rapid uptake of voice-controlled systems since consumergrade technology has become available, it’s been a complete flop.

So, what’s the problem? Anyone that has trialled a Minority Report-style interface will immediately grasp the issue. Gestural interfaces are tiring. The use-cases to which the technology has been deployed means we’re often trying to use larger parts of our body to control what we’d normally do with fine motorcontrol, and without the positive haptic feedback of having a mouse or keyboard in-hand. It’s difficult and frustrating, and the visual design patterns that we’re used to don’t lend themselves well to this kind of interaction.

Recent breakthroughs in haptic feedback and hand-tracking might be set to change the fortunes of gestural interaction, with companies like Bristol-based Ultrahaptics combining both technologies into one tidy package. The haptics provide the user with much needed location awareness and confirmation feedback for otherwise difficult interactions. In the worlds of VR and AR where interest is surging, hand-based interactions are desirable for their natural feel—they don’t break the illusion and mean that additional controllers are not required, saving on hardware costs. Leap Motion’s hand-tracking system has re-focussed its efforts on VR applications and similar technology is already built into some laptop and desktop computers.

Breakthroughs like Google’s yet-to-be-released Project Soli look like they could address the accuracy issues in gesture recognition, allowing tiny hand movements to trigger interactions.

The future could be looking brighter for gestural interfaces, but the issue of finding appropriate use cases outside of VR and AR still remains.

SUMMARY It seems that so many devices and technologies have been billed as the next big thing ready to replace the smartphone as the centre of our digital lives. Every year, however, we interact with more and more technology sometimes in very obvious ways and in some ways far more subtle. It’s not a question of what will replace the smartphone rather a question of what we will be using as well as the smartphone. From the screen on your wrist to a display built into your glasses, the voice assistant to The internet of things device which anticipates your needs; product designers have never had a broader canvas of technologies to help us design the interactions of tomorrow.

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Humans Make or Break the world

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RUSSELL BEARD

CONNECTED

Each year, the great, the good and the sometimes misguided, all convene in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show to either launch, sell, purchase or report on the global pulse of up-to-theminute technology from every brand and business you could ever care to mention (and thousands you can’t). It’s a proverbial bear pit of innovation and not for the faint-hearted, but what it does do, is allow us as consumers and professionals to gauge the tempo of world consumer technology at a particular moment in time. In truth, it is no longer limited to ‘Consumer Electronics’ and tends to span the full bandwidth of technology advancement.

This very specific week in January blends utter brilliance and bonkers absurdity in equal measure. Some of it will genuinely improve things for the better, be it smart self-care, security and safety, relevant AI, or genuinely ubiquitous home technology. Others will just be more of the same we have come to expect; even bigger TV’s, more elaborate gaming ‘realities’, fridges that speak and spell, or ever more fragmented transportation categories….oh, and drones. Don’t forget drones!

What is ably demonstrated at an event like CES is the exponential rise in technology application and its perceived relevance to us as consumers by those wishing to sell it to us. These will inevitably all be at differing points on the Gartner Hype Cycle Curve but the people behind these technologies will all attempt to convince us that we can no longer possibly exist without it – however tenuous.

This is not to suggest that technology advancement is not brilliant and necessary, nor that it should be slowed down. Indeed, the proliferation of technological advancement, only inspires greater faith in being able and empowered to improve this little blue sphere we all inhabit. Bit by bit.

However, many brands leverage what they deem to be a technology step change as the sole reason to engage, and whilst this is entirely reasonable, it is the humanisation of that technology that is the pivotal element in ensuring true engagement rather than transient interest; humanisation meaning the consideration of, or access to, the implementation of technology enabling it to be used by humans effectively and easily.

Designing for Humans if you will.

So what’s the relevance of consumer electronics in the context of our Industrial FOCUS publication? Simple; because, no matter how industrial the application or how adverse the circumstances, there will always be some element of human interaction – be it in use or at point of interrogation or installation. It is the elevation from merely functional to ‘human-usable’ that marks out a product that succeeds from a product that exists.

“No matter how industrial the application or how adverse the circumstances, there will always be some element of human interaction”

“A new tech may well have the cleverest algorithm known to man, but unless it makes a human connection it remains unfulfilled” Humans are not binary creatures and we judge interfaces and new user paradigms with cautious suspicion and benchmark them against our existing ‘knowns’. A new tech may well have the cleverest algorithm or the most sophisticated processor chip known to man, but unless it makes a human connection its potential will remain unfulfilled. We need to ensure that we extol the benefits of technology but within scope of human acceptance. By all means, we can stretch the boundaries of human expectation to ensure the interactions feel new and exciting, but there has to be an essence of familiarity or the means to semantically connect the user to the interaction.

Within our industrial client portfolio we have, arguably, some of the most interesting and challenging opportunities to address human usability – particularly as technology looks to labour save, risk manage and data collect. The blurry battlefield of autonomy and control that was the hunting ground of traditionally industrial clients is converging on the home and workplace. Similarly, consumers are becoming more responsible for managing their own interactions with surroundings so the typically ubiquitous ‘industrial’ products of old now require additional levels of human empathy, usability and – dare I say it – desirability. New generations, be it Gen Z or Gen Alpha (yes, there’s more…), are accepting, and developing new ways of living and interacting that differ significantly from those before. Expectations of accessibility, convenience and affordability are all changing and the product landscape we design for is shifting beneath us as we work. It is exciting and unnerving in equal measure but like a game of Frogger (or Crossy Road for those under 30) we need to keep on our toes and adapt to the changing landscape and constant sideswipes of societal shift if we are to stay relevant.

Despite the multitude of skills at our disposal, ‘humanising’ is the critical essence of what we as designers can do to ensure success and robustness in this sea of human-object interactions.

Human facing technology is only as brilliant as the relevance and application it serves, and the only way it can live and breathe is in the connection with the people who come to use it, however that may be. It may be utterly utilitarian and pragmatic, but what will set it apart is the human-centred nature of its origination and consideration.

At Kinneir Dufort, we consider this humanising aspect so critical to our process that we balance our creative and technical delivery against a wider awareness of the need for holistic experience. Our bandwidth and in-house skillsets afford us the luxury of working across the creativity and technical spectra in whatever split best suits the specific challenge. It is what anchors us in our approach and ensures that everything we do is grounded in a genuinely human centred experience.

Humans make or break the world. Let’s ensure that we help them make it.

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Uncovering the value of

HUMAN FACTORS Human Factors (HF) is known by multiple names across different industries. It is commonly referred to as ergonomics in automotive design, Human Element in marine engineering, Human Machine Interaction (HMI), usability engineering, user experience…the list goes on. All these disciplines are fundamentally the same and involve designing products, systems or environments to be in tune with the physical and cognitive capabilities of the end user.

This user-centred design approach ensures safe, efficient and enjoyable interactions with the devices we use every day. When Human Factors is done well, the result is a seamless, effortless and enjoyable experience for the user.

In fact you probably won’t even notice good HF but you’ll almost certainly spot when the user has not been properly considered during the design process.

In a busy, time-pressured environment such as an airport security hall, Human Factors can make a real difference helping passengers navigate with the minimum of delay and anxiety, and help staff rapidly, accurately and safely interact with scanning and diagnostics equipment. This challenging environment is one which has parallels in many aspects of equipment and system design on which the Human Factors team at Kinneir Dufort collaborate with our clients.

So where else can good HF work be seen? Here are three examples of ‘undercover’ HF at work:

Packaging Design: Considering the user at every design phase.

Tamper proof packaging of consumer electronics such as moulded clamshells have reduced theft from stores around the world but also infuriated consumers who need to find a stanley knife before they can get into their exciting new purchase.

Consumer electronics companies have invested in ergonomics to explore alternative security methods and improve that all important ‘unboxing’ experience.

Similarly, clever HF needs to be adopted in cap designs for medical and chemical products; legislations mean that some products need to be child resistant – and rightly so. The difficulty, however, arises when such designs also prevent elderly people with limited dexterity from accessing their medication. The Nicorette Quickmist, a hugely successful smoking cessation product, is a neat example addressing this dual challenge. The mechanism that locks the device preventing accidental use by inquisitive children, provides a “fiddle-factor” function appreciated by adults looking to replace habits of smoking.

Careful consideration of the real end-user during the design of packaging can be key to user satisfaction; promoting brand loyalty and user safety.

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Chris White

CONNECTED

Operating Rooms: Improving safety and efficiency through system, environment and job design.

Keeping an eye on trends and learnings available from other industries is a key way of pushing the boundaries of design and Human Factors.

A great example of this can be demonstrated in the world of emergency life-saving surgery which involves teams of skilled people working together towards a singular goal. This is an obvious area where money and time has been invested into product, system and environmental design to ensure that modern operating theatres are optimal. There was however, one vital part of an emergency surgery patient’s journey that was often overlooked – the transfer from the theatre to intensive care unit. Vital systems need to be unplugged, disconnected, transferred and then reconnected in the correct order and within a tight time frame to ensure that the successful surgery is not wasted by a simple mistake in this process. Inspiration to improve this process came from an unlikely source – the world of motorsport. The F1 racing industry invests millions of dollars into pit stop efficiency where every second counts; precision, speed and team work are all vital. This expertise has been transferred to the healthcare industry to ensure that, during this key patient transfer stage, roles are clearly defined, products are designed to enable quick and error free operation and hospital environments facilitate swift patient transfer.

Signage and Navigation: Understanding human behaviour and decision making.

Around the globe there’s evidence of good (and bad) Human Factors when it comes to helping people navigate spaces. We’ve all seen it, airports, museums, even cities but the best signage design is something you don’t notice.

Where HF can influence design here, is in understanding how, why, and importantly when, people will make decisions. It’s not just about designing signs to be in a clear font at a legible size, it’s also vital that the sign provides the right message and is positioned in the right place. Human Factors can help designers understand what information someone will need to reach their destination and where they will stop to look for cues to help them make their journey decisions.

This approach doesn’t just apply to spaces; ‘navigation’ Human Factors can be applied to instruction manuals and even products themselves, using design cues to guide the user to the correct next step.

Effective integration of Human Factors in the design process, can not only improve the final product but also has the potential to save money along the way. HF methods and tools can and should be applied to any design process – the earlier the better, as demonstrated in the graph here.

In many high-risk industries such as health care, transportation, defence and power, the influence of HF has been focussed on safety.

At Kinneir Dufort, we argue that HF tools and techniques should not just be used to support risk management but can add significant value during the design process, from increasing efficiency and product adoption to enhancing enjoyment, comfort in use and customer loyalty.

(Graph showing position in design/development cycle against cost of change and opportunity for influence)

Whenever a human interacts with a product or system, Human Factors can play a role in improving the design, but appreciation of the benefits that HF brings to the design process is often lost. When done well, and innate in its very nature, you will never even realise that good HF methods have been adopted. This is HF at it’s very best…unseen and undercover, yet playing such a critical role with any user interaction.

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AGILE PRODUCT

ENGINEERING How to resolve conflicting demands of innovative design, rapid development and robust engineering.

Left hand side of screen: Simplified model of a unit side view prior to vent hole size optimisation.

Right hand side of screen: A study to show how a basic form can be converted into an efficient turbine blade profile through iterative CFD Modelling in Solidworks.

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Dave baker

CONNECTED

As industry demands faster and cheaper routes to bring products of increasing complexity to market, the methods of the engineering design teams must adapt and evolve. Here we consider some recent developments in the available tools and their place in the product development process.

Product development is typically approached in a staged system; establishing strategy and ideas before screening, detailed development, testing and finally commercialisation. The fundamentals of this staged process remain as relevant as ever, allowing the designer to become more knowledgeable at each stage and to make a better assessment of project risk. However, advanced tools for the visualisation of new ideas, the virtual proving of a design and rapid prototype verification allow engineers to drive down risk and accelerate progress at each stage. For example, can a functional 3D print prototype be used as a means of verifying a basic idea the same day as its conception, as a sketch on a piece of paper? By proving aspects of an idea at such an early stage, improved screening decisions can be made and development risk reduced.

“Does handing control to less specialist users make the results of this process sufficiently robust to have a meaningful role in the product development process?”

One of the great attractions of virtual prototyping is the ability to perform detailed sensitivity analysis during development at reasonable cost. Repeated iterative design changes can be made and their impact on the system performance assessed, opening the possibility for a design to progress from ‘good-enough’ to truly optimal. The most striking example of this high-speed iterative process is the computational optimisation of structures. The example illustrated here, from Dassault Systèmes, illustrates a part created by a computer algorithm that removes any superfluous material to create a super-lightweight structure. Just over a decade ago, this process was the preserve of university research programmes; now it comes packaged for routine use, by non-specialist design engineers.

By identifying and solving problems in the early stages of product development - so called ‘front-loading’ - it becomes possible to reduce development time and to become more ambitious in the degree of technical complexity within the product at an acceptable risk. The methods identified to achieve this are typically categorised as:

Project-to-project knowledge transfer:

The influence of team experience and post-project learnings.

Rapid problem solving:

The application of technology to reduce the cost and time of solving a problem.

This article considers tools for rapid problem solving, exploring some benefits but also examining their constraints. However, it is important to note that project post-mortem reviews, that carry learnings from one project to the next, can be just as effective as the most advanced virtual prototypes in early stage problem solving.

An apt definition of virtual prototyping for the design engineer is: a software based visualisation of a mechanical system under real-world conditions. Advances in computational power and the availability of previously specialist simulation software to the hands of the design engineer allows early stage feasibility assessment of a design. The use of virtual prototyping, such as thermal simulation and structural analysis, allows the design to be progressed without resorting to iterative physical prototype and testing.

© Dassault Systèmes

Figure 1. Here a computer algorithm creates a lightweight part (right) by removing all superfluous material from a user supplied starting point (left) This poses the question of whether handing control to less specialist users makes the results of this process sufficiently robust to have a meaningful role in the product development process. Take the example of the optimised bracket with its lightweight slender elements. Does the designer, in this case a computer algorithm, consider the new possibility of buckling failures? The virtual prototype may predict a high strength, stiff structure; the reality could be one that folds and collapses in operation.

One response to the pitfalls of virtual prototyping is the manufacture of experimental prototypes using metal and plastic 3D printing methods. Continued advances in materials and processes mean the performance of printed prototypes can approach that of real parts, making them useful for proof-of-principal testing. However, their use as a means for final design verification, particularly where combinations of high strength and toughness are needed, remains an ambition rather than reality.

In summary, new tools available to the product development engineer can provide substantial benefits: accelerating time to market, reducing risk and opening the door to greater product capability.

However, the fundamental process of robust product development remains, particularly in light of the present inability to fully replicate, either virtually or in low cost prototypes, the performance of many production assemblies in their intended environment. As technology continues to progress, it will be increasingly important to continue questioning these norms as greater possibilities emerge.

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Next Generation How to design for your next generation of customers

Understanding how Millennials and Gen-Z differ is important, to prepare your business and stay relevant for the future. Millennials are digital adopters, born into a world where digital technology began to emerge.

Gen-Z are digital natives, born into a world where digital technology has always existed. Both readily embrace new technology.

In 2018, Millennials are between the ages of 23 – 37 years, and Gen-Z are between the ages of 9 – 23 years.

There is, of course, no easy way to arrive at a single point of view for these generations with such a wide age range and many other variables in their lives. Media headlines have been quick to label Millennials as one homogenous group, incorrectly

characterising the generation with bold stereotypes.

What is important when considering these generations as your target demographic, is to understand what is happening at a macro level.

The impact of a rapidly changing and uncertain world is defining a shift in patterns and life events of Millennials and Gen-Z. Combined with their readiness to embrace everevolving technology, this poses big opportunities for future innovation. It’s this combination that is influencing new demands and drivers.

At Kinneir Dufort, we have identified two areas that we believe have particular significance for each generation.

Millennials

© Google Inc.

Home Ownership:

Modern Family:

The UK is a culture devoted to home ownership, which has never been so costly. In the 1990s average house prices were five times the average salary. Today prices are ten times that and rising.

Consequently, people are buying much later in life.

As a brand you should no longer assume you’re just talking to Mum. It’s important to remember that being a parent is just one part of a Millennial’s identity. Roles in households are shifting significantly.

Naturally, balancing a career is equally as valuable as making time together as a family.

From Entertainment Out, To Entertainment In

Our Perspective

We believe that buying later in life will naturally lead people to invest more in making the most of time at home. Spending the disposable income they have on in-home investments, activities and experiences.

The Opportunity

Embrace the shift from entertainment out, to entertainment in, and identify future home experiences. How might we create a sense of investing in experiences rather than a product, looking beyond the function products provide and towards the moments or memories they create?

Take for example screenless interactions with Google Home, Amazon Echo and more recently Apple’s HomePod. How might technology and propositions develop to create meaningful screenless entertainment?

1. UCAS 2. The Guardian – PWC report generation rent to grow over next decade

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From Time Apart, To Time Together

Our Perspective

We believe that Millennial parents will continue to balance work and home, as more workplaces offer greater flexibility to make that possible. However, with time being so precious, product simplicity and purpose has never been so important.

The Opportunity

Explore and create simple ways to feel more connected to family. How might technology enable time apart, to feel like time together?

For example, Kinneir Dufort developed the In-Touch product concept, to demonstrate how a tangible connection between parent and child can be enabled when apart. The product encourages keeping in touch using tactile and visual senses.

Millennials

CONNECTED

Gen Z

Gen Z

© Microsoft HoloLens

© WeLive

Education:

New Independence:

While the eldest of Gen-Z have recently graduated from university (and a significant proportion of younger members of Gen-Z will embark on higher education over the coming years), enrolment to university in the UK is in decline, with UK applicant figures decreasing by 5% to a total of 469,4901.

Gen-Z have a new level of independence ahead of them, they are set to leave home for university or enter the workplace. Unsurprisingly, Gen-Z have been labelled generation rent, with more than half of Gen-Z and Millennials (aged between 20-39) locked in the rental market2. The likelihood of Gen-Z being able to achieve the goal of property ownership has never been tougher. The number of those renting homes is set to rise to 7.2 million by 2025.

New Learning Dimension

Our Perspective

We believe that if the decline of applicants continues, this generation will look to alternative ways to learn, such as ‘Massive Open Online Courses’ (MOOCs). These have potential to revolutionise education, although currently they offer no formal qualification. We believe this could be set to change if demand continues.

The Opportunity

Embrace the shift from traditional physical learning to adaptive learning. How might we identify future solutions beyond a duplication of the classroom? With emerging technology and a pull for more flexible learning methods, will we move away from books or screen learning to mixed reality learning?

For example, Microsoft Hololens enables immersive experiences, allowing students to access a whole new dimension of learning. Could this create a new avenue of remote online learning?

Flexible Living

Our Perspective

We believe that mirroring the emergence of co-working, the housing market will see a rise in co-living, which could hold both financial and social incentives for this generation.

The Opportunity

Explore and identify solutions that offer flexibility and scalability, to suit the living styles of the future. How might services and the sharing economy offer greater flexibility for generation rent?

For example, We Live (the sister company of We Work) is a co-living space in New York and Washington DC that offers young professionals an all-inclusive approach to renting a home. Built upon community and flexibility, included in the package is room rental, furnishing, laundry, housekeeping, Wi-Fi and utilities, and even refreshments such as tea and coffee.

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Workplaces

get ‘SMART’ Ian Binder It is estimated that almost half of all jobs could ultimately be lost to automation, with 7% of those losses coming by 2025.

Whilst this prediction may sound worrying, we need to consider that these changes are more likely to take effect within more repetitive work environments.

With increased automation and improvements in efficiency, we 14 16

should see humans being able to free up productive time to focus on things machines can never drive forward, such as pure creativity and helping find better solutions to the problems facing our society and the planet we share.

As technology and innovation leapfrog us into Industry 4.0 and an ever-changing workplace, we look at the implications for the future workplace, what this means for ‘smart’ factories, and the technology enablers that are driving these fundamental shifts in the way we work…

Future Workplace As the factory of tomorrow evolves, so too will the office workplace. The future workplace may no longer need to be a physical place of work and we are starting to see companies thinking a little differently about how we work optimally, to help establish a competitive edge.

More companies are building on the seamless communications and IT infrastructure that, increasingly, allows people to work from somewhere other than the traditional place of work. Of course, this may only suit certain types of businesses, but this new kind of workspace thinking, which is no longer restricted to 9-5 or physically being ‘at the office’, can create a competitive edge in terms of a reduction in overhead costs, alleviating employee transport costs and winning back valuable commuting time.

In a 2014 study by PGi – a leading provider of software services – found that 80% of remote workers reported higher morale and 82% said it helped lower their stress levels with a 69% reported lower absenteeism.

We are increasingly seeing organisations that no longer operate out of premises and simply source space when required, with global teams collaborating in new and novel ways. This type of approach, offering flexible working for staff, will increasingly help attract the most talented employees, from a global pool of potential resource. With the prevalence of mobile devices, remote management and storage, it is a logical next step.

The time is right to start to revaluate the status quo and look for opportunities to improve the way we work and the lives of our workforce.

Technology Enablers

CONNECTED

Below are a few of the key technologies we have identified as being able to help shape our future:

Next Generation Battery Technology

This is the pacing technology that is playing catch up with other advances.

Beyond today’s lead acid batteries and lithium-ion batteries is where massive investment is taking place to advance solid state batteries to power electric vehicles. These could be more efficient (up to 5 times), cost effective and safer (especially for transportation). Dyson is investing £2bn, and BMW have chosen this route along many other car manufacturers.

Connectivity (IoT)

The productive use of big data and analytic services for continual improvement and building of historical learnings. This is at the core of M2M learning and only increases in value when linked to the wider smart factory and smart city.

Sensors & Interfaces

Augmented reality is a true collaboration between technology and human interface to achieve a new level of skills and value in the factory. It offers a genuine step change and becomes very powerful when coupled with asset performance (embedded sensors with real time data) and environmental measurements.

3D Printing

The revolution in 3D printing machines and materials continues to gather pace. Applications range from printing houses out of concrete to high end metal parts for the aerospace industry. This industry keeps adding innovation and value in key areas of flexible, low volume production.

Robotics/AI

The investment and advancement in this area is massive and was one of the main headline items at this year’s CES show. Chinese demand and advances in human–robot collaboration will increase their adoption to 25-45% of production tasks by 2030. Be prepared as this new generation of robot workers are already knocking at the door. It is estimated that 1.8 million industrial robots are in use in production today.

Smart Factory Continual improvements and further automation is normal in the modern factory, but with the advancement of embedded sensor technology and real-time data, the drive for improvement accelerates. Machine-to-machine learning and analytical algorithms ensure that as more time passes and large data is amassed, then the improvement progress is exponential. As the connected world links smart cities with homes, travel and workplaces, the learning potential is enormous.

A new study from Capgemini, a global information technology consulting company, says 76% of manufacturers either have an ongoing smart factory initiative or are working on formulating one. More than half of them, the study says, have designated $100 million or more on these initiatives. It estimates that smart factories could add $500 billion to $1.5 trillion in added value to the global economy in five years. These manufacturers predict overall efficiency will grow annually to 2022 at seven times the rate of growth since 1990. But it’s not just automation; many manufacturers invest large amounts of resource and cost to continually improving performance and reducing waste using tools such as Kaizen lean manufacturing initiatives. Just imagine a factory floor that was able to drive these initiatives itself through advanced machine learning; the productivity rewards would be huge!

Futurists have predicted that machines will match human intelligence in as little as 12 years. The evolution of technology in the smart factory will of course impact jobs for both white and blue-collar workers, but there will be new opportunities and many roles will evolve with the technology. The decision to put so much investment into technology is demonstrated in China where a 2025 programme will invest $3bn in advanced manufacturing, and in the European Union, where €7bn is being dedicated to a Factories of the Future initiative.

In summary, there is work to be done in developing our trust in AI systems and the decisions they make, as well as adaptive security that promotes confidence. The level of technological change in industry is exciting, and will be game-changing over the next 10 years, but it is important to be able to sift through the noise and hype in order to focus on value and genuine improvements to productivity and efficiency that technology can deliver.

KEY TAKEOUTS

Technology - Easily accessed and more affordable than ever, it can be tailored to suit business needs and user requirements.

Technology enablers are revolutionising the future of production and the factory floor.

Value - Finding value is key for the individual, society, industry, firms and the factory itself.

Technology drivers feed the thirst for data and with large data analysis comes value.

Machine to Machine Learning - Connectivity boom and machine-based algorithms take big data and knowledge based systems to a deep learnings level.

New Opportunities - With huge investment comes huge change; driving a vision of growth and innovation to open up a world of new opportunities.

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BLOCKCHAIN industry From cryptocurrency hype to industrial business value creation Thane Hall, of aerospace, space, defence, security and transportation group, Thales, outlines how this digital phenomenon will add security, robustness and efficiency to their products, processes and logistics.

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Thane Hall

CONNECTED Technologies come and technologies go. Some are adopted quickly, some slowly. Blockchain technology, after a slow beginning, is now following a ballistic adoption curve that closely matches the profile of the Eiffel Tower. It’s quite astonishing what a small technology step forward can have. At its core, blockchain technology is not much more than a secure database that can’t be hacked, and is what corporations like Google, Amazon and Microsoft have been building for years isn’t it? Well maybe. The large delta is that these databases have ‘trust’ baked in; they don’t live behind fortresses, they live in the wild, accessible to all, hiding in plain sight. Yet try as people may, it has, so far, not been practicably possible to hack them. I’m careful with my words; it’s not impossible, but it is, for all intents and purposes, impossible.

Blockchain technology is the underpinning technology of Bitcoin, albeit a necessary by-product of the intent to develop the world’s first globally decentralised currency requiring no banks or central authorities, just a consensus of people to operate it. Blockchain is the jewel in the crown of Bitcoin, a technology so secure, yet accessible, that it has the ability to manage cash amongst people worldwide that inherently don’t trust each other not to run off with it. So, in a lot of ways, solving the harder problem of money first has given everyone the confidence that it can deliver trusted databases for all manner of applications.

Blockchain technology was invented in 2008 by an unknown individual or group going by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, and is the combination of pre-existing technologies such as PKI, hashing and linked data infrastructures, but with the added magic sauce of consensus (the method by which infrastructure nodes agree on the blockchain’s true state, steering it away from untrusted bad data) and an economic incentive based on ‘mining’ which incentivises the necessary infrastructure to exist and implement the security ‘trust’ protocols.

For sure, there is hype around the technology; this technology is not immune from the Gartner Hype Cycle. But like the internet, it very much has its place. Start-ups and existing players are now fighting it out. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM are toeing the line with small blockchain focussed start-ups who have raised, in many cases, hundreds of millions from nothing more than ideas for the next Bitcoin captured in whitepapers. What’s more, they raised this capital by smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain, the second largest blockchain by market capitalisation after Bitcoin. Whilst the gold rush investments might have peaked, they’re not over and the race to bring revolutionary new products and services to market is very much full-on.

There are lots of blockchain businesses now setting up, and it’s not hard to see why; that little bit of trust goes a long way in enabling digitally function-rich currencies, token based societies and secure data stores for things like identity, land rights and a wide array of other assets. Coins in the most part aren’t just money or shares, they’re a new asset class that obscure the boundaries between cash, shares and value; it’s understandably hard for governments and legislators to keep up.

One of the more interesting potential benefits of blockchain is the tokenisation of society. By this, we mean the ability to create circular economies around aspects of society such as mobility, social media and help in the community. By sharing your mobility data you could earn mobility tokens that you could transfer and spend to consume a social media service. Perhaps you help in the community which provides you with tokens to travel. It will be exciting to see if this new way of delivering and consuming benefit will catch on.

The United Nations are running a programme, ID2020, to give every refugee an identity so they can access aid and services without the need for documentation; just a password and an iris scan checked against the identity blockchain is enough. Additionally, many people in the world can’t prove they own the land they live on so there are multiple projects to capture this data to protect their way of life.

But what of industry? In Thales, we’ve been using the technology to develop a way of tracking goods through a supply chain so that collectively, the community of interest can trust what it’s receiving and the end customer can be assured in the provenance of the capability they purchased. The key enabler is being able to share information, and trust in it. Don’t think solely about physical things though; software and documents can also be tracked with the fingerprints of all these products being held in the supply chain blockchain. On system start-ups, equipment, be it on a manufacturing line or in critical mission system, could check that it’s running the correct software, comprising the right parts, and is following accredited procedure and processes. Trust in this information reduces uncertainty which makes everything more efficient and safe. In fact, blockchains can’t only store information and fingerprints but executable code similar to the way smart contract rules are stored on Ethereum. Perhaps in the near future, with a few tweaks, blockchains will store, track and advise assets in real-time, such as autonomous cars on our super-highways and aircraft in the sky.

So what of the future? There is little doubt that blockchain technology is here to stay, and Governments around the world are excited by the potential efficiencies they can bring. Imagine the efficiencies that could be achieved by having blockchains covering identity, benefits, work and pensions, health and the ‘cross-chain’ ability to cut out fraud and ensure those who need help, get it. Simultaneously, however, governments wrestle with the country-independent nature of cryptocurrencies played out against the backdrop of personal privacy and banking independence versus the need to monitor illicit behaviour.

Blockchains aren’t a magic bullet. For sure they can realise many benefits and offer a great step forward, but not all data is open and you need to ensure you know who all the players are so aspects such as end-point security, data protection and identity verification will be important. The next few years could be very interesting indeed!

Thane Hall is Account Manager at Thales and founder member of Bristol Blockchain meetup group.

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What’s on…

KD on tour: Mobile World Congress

We recently attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, catching up with some of our clients, including Virtuosys, XMOS and Airspan as well as the latest trends in mobile technology. Keep an eye out for our ‘best bits’ takeouts on our News page, www.kinneirdufort.com/news

KD Hosts Eurekaha

On the 8th February, we invited the Eurekaha group here to Host St. Eurekaha is not for profit organisation, aiming to inspire young people to utilise design thinking, in addressing social challenges; enhancing employability and social awareness of tomorrow’s workforce. We asked five of our team, from engineers to prototypers to marketers, to explain what they do, why they chose their respective careers, and tips on how to nurture those ‘soft’ skills.

Craig Wightman to Chair a Panel Discussion at the Digital Health Technology Show

Join us on Tues 13th March at 10.30am, as Craig Wightman discusses the “Increasing Impact of Emerging Technology” at the Wearable Technology Show.

From developing new life-saving techniques and virtual surgical training, to personal health management and behaviour change, Craig will discuss biometric sensing, VR, artificial intelligence and other emerging innovations that are helping to revolutionize the way healthcare operates and how these are transforming patient care.

Explore London Tech Week

From June 11th – 17th, all things tech take over the city of London. With over 55,000 attendees visiting some 300 events, the show headlines its annual conference, TechXLR8, from the 12th – 14th. We are looking forward to seeing some exciting new tech developments.

Rob Peart joins KD as Head of Digital

Say hello to our new Head of Digital, Rob Peart. Rob will be supporting the growth and development of our integrated digital offer, and we look forward to introducing him to many of our clients in the coming months.

10 Years of UX London

UX London has been bringing together world leading UX London has been bringing together world leading design experts and practitioners for the last 10 years. This year, it returns May 23rd – 25th, with a speaker line-up including names from the likes of Google, Microsoft and Netflix, it’s sure to be one for your diaries.

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