Reporting back from the #interactivism weekender

Lucy Watt | June 21, 2011 | Events, Features

On Friday and Saturday, a diverse bunch of energetic people came together in the basement of LBi in Brick Lane, East London, for Interactivism – Google’s Accessibility Hack Weekend.

Some of those present – the student developers, Google developers and social innovators – were regular attendees at hack weekends, but it was those who had never even heard of a hack weekend – the members of the Gransnet website – that turned Interactivism into a hack weekend to remember.

The event kicked off with Andrew Eland (Google) and Dominic Campbell (FutureGov / Simpl) outlining the challenge that lay ahead of the teams, working together on ideas submitted through Simpl ahead of the event and using their creative, design and coding skills to turn these ideas into working prototypes by the end of the two days.

We were keen to kick things off in style and asked two inspirational speakers to step up to the mic. Mike Bradley was first and shared his experience of all things accessible through his current job as Senior Lecturer in Product Design and Engineering at Middlesex University and previous job as Accessibility Engineer at Ford. In short, listen to what people need and do that. Simple right?

Then came the star of the show, Peter Oakley, otherwise known by his renowned YouTube name: “Geriatric 1927“. Peter spoke about his inspiration for joining YouTube, his love of all things web related, encouraged others to just give it a go as “you can’t break it” and then demoed his YouTube skills.

Getting down to business, the people behind the ideas were then asked to present a quick outline of their proposals to get people motivated and moving into teams to start to get them developed. Most of the teams gelled really quickly and stereotypes were quickly dispelled. Ideas were swapped and different perspectives respected. Gransnet members later commented how impressed they were that the student developers really took time to listen to their ideas and everyone remarked on what good fun and great value the Gransnetters were. Some teams worked through challenges such as being asked to merge two ideas into one prototype, the skills and willingness of the team members helping to get things straightened up.

Many of the students, and even some of the Gransnetters, worked until late on the Friday evening and started back again early in the morning so that they could make as much progress as possible in completing their prototype in time to present to the panel of judges at the end of the Saturday.

Despite some healthy competitiveness, designers, developers and Gransnet members were bartered between teams, helping with sought after skills like logo design, understanding a complicated piece of coding or posing for a photograph or two to jazz up their final presentations. As the deadline drew closer, the team members all mucked in to produce and rehearse the presentations and to make sure that the prototype was ready to take for a spin.

So those final projects presented to the judges Andrew Eland (Google), Michael Norton (UnLtd), Margaret Goodwin (AgeUK Internet Champion), Mark O’Neill (Skunkworks) were:

1. Our Town: a location based site with user generated content about local volunteering opportunities and ideas for projects.

2. Go for Local: a portal for people to locate the services that are around them, including the user reviews of the services, such as a pharmacy. (A combination of Older People’s Local Portal, www.useyourcommunity.com and Carebay)

3. Gene Pool: an easy to use and fun genealogy game (a bit like Foursquare Family History).

4. Timetag: using the web to show patients if their hospital appointment is going to be delayed because of an overrunning clinic.

5. TV Mate: an easy to use remote control made from a computer tablet that can be personalised with photographs and sounds.

6. EZPZ: a simplified web browser that removes all the clutter and makes internet browsing clear and straightforward for the inexperienced user.

7. Echoing: helping people in care homes connect and add value to the outside world by recording memories specific to local places that can be accessed by people visiting those locations.

8. Spotted: an app for sharing likes and dislikes related to accessibility through photographs and individual profiles, for example a photograph of something that impedes good accessibility. (A combination of Accessify Places and On the Go.)

9. Milly and Jake: an interactive story that can be read by grandparents and grandchildren regardless of their location, for example by using Skype.

10. Face to Face: simplified video calling, using a telephone number as identification instead of a username. (a combination of Face to Face and Stupidly Easy Video Chat for Elders)

11. I Was Here: A way of collecting and sharing memories about times, places and historical events, for example about Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp that two of the team members had attended. Users can comment on other’s memories. (This team was formed from Memories and Retrospective Life Streaming for Elders)

After tough deliberation, the expert panel of judges awarded EZPZ as the Interactivism – Accessibility Hack Weekend winners. The students from this team received a sought after Google Interactivism Award. Our Gransnetters were also invited to form their own judging panel and voted for Spotted as their favourite idea.

The photographs from the weekend are available on the Interactivism Flickr group.  Please add your own to the collection.  And finally, a big thank you to Google, Gransnet, all of the judges and everyone who came along and worked so hard – we hope you all enjoyed it as much as we did.