Todoo

As part of the CHIC project, we are multidisciplinary students that travelled one week in Hong Kong and ten days in Shenzhen. During this trip, we had the occasion to discover the start-up and entrepreneurship environment which is also called the “Ecosystem”.

In this document, we would like to explain our vision of the makerspaces in China. More specifically, we had investigate on the difference between Hong Kong and Shenzhen in term of maker/hackerspaces. First of all, we need to clarify the definition of this kind of place. A makerspace is a workspace open to all. This space usually includes a rapid prototyping workshop with different types of machines, as well as a co-working space. These places are generally dedicated to young professionals with the aim of carrying out research, prototyping or small-scale production. They bring people from different backgrounds together in one place.

The guideline of our microstudy will follow our trip in China. First, we will explain what kind of Maker/hacker-space we have found in Hong Kong. Then we will explore the subject for Shenzhen and underline the differences, common points and interactions with Hong Kong.

Hong Kong

It was on arriving in Hong Kong that we realized that a particular dynamic emanated from the city. Through participation in various events and conferences, we were able to discover the world of incubators and start-up.

Search for funds, creation of economic models and search for visibility. These start-ups have more or less all the same objectives, they find themselves in this city with the objective to take advantage of the opportunities and the resources in order to develop their product to the best. The economic part is an essential aspect of the development of these young companies. But what about infrastructure? How do they find the space and equipment needed for their research and prototyping?

As visits continued, we were able to discover that few locations in Hong Kong offer the possibility of renting workspaces and make available rapid prototyping workshops.

In every makerspace there is an atmosphere of sharing, innovative and creative. In the midst of this creative atmosphere, nevertheless reigns a desire for success and grandeur. Most makerspace welcomes professionals and start-up who develop innovative products in order to be able to market them. For example MakerHive offers, in addition to their co-working space and their workshop, private offices more suited to small companies. They are also part of a large network of entrepreneurs, accelerators and incubators. Unlike these commercial cravings, Dim Sum Lab has attracted our attention in the growing dynamic of Hong Kong.

Like the chinese food, Dim Sum Lab is a place that brings together people around a table to share something they like. At Dim Sum Labs, everyone is welcomed to come, gather and make, hack, build, share, collaborate, educate, encourage, grow and achieve. Dim Sum Lab organize several workshops or HackJam[1] and are open to everyone. The Lab is a part of the global Hackerspace movement identifying with the idea of “Not For Profit”[2]. What was the most surprising for us, especially in Hong Kong, was to discover a place where they didn’t talk to us about money, profit and start-up: this place is all about creating and sharing.

By discovering a place so small and space so optimized, we feel strongly the very high price of the square meter in Hong Kong. By analysing this space, we can largely imagine the physical and economic challenges associated with the city[3].

Shenzhen

As we arrived in Shenzhen, the environment varied compared to what we have seen before. The first impression was that there is a lot of space compare to Hong Kong with larger road and sidewalk. The cost of living in Shenzhen is also strongly lower. During the week in Shenzen we have worked at X.factory which is a makerspace that will open its doors in September 2017.

The first makerspace in the city was set in 2010 and today there is more than hundred hacker/makerspace[4]. Such an increase may have been possible as the makers believe that physical spaces such as makerspaces will bring innovation and social changes[5]. When we arrived at X.factory, our first impression was that the space is not a problem. The workspace was much larger compared to what we saw in Hong Kong. Therefore, there is different room for each application. For example, a room is specially set for machinery on metal (drilling, cutting, etc…) while another has been set up for the work on the wood and a last for the 3D printing. Looking more closely at X.factory, we noticed that there were a lot of gadget or little funny prototypes on the shelves. It made us think of the Dim sum lab that proposes workshop and has this spirit of Do-It Yourself. This DIY-culture is fuelled by workshop with basic courses on microcontroller with for example Raspberry Pi, Arduino or Seeeduino[6].

While the craft based participatory methodology was developed in china by the creative community[7], we totally felt this desire for sharing and mutual help in the makerspaces like X.factory. The spaces are open and people can share their ideas on whiteboards or around a table to come up with a new concept or a design.

Mains ideas

To conclude with the mains ideas, the manufacturing costs of a prototype in Shenzhen is certainly lower than in Hong Kong. In fact, many of the start-ups incubated in Hong Kong will go to Shenzhen to do the hardware part. In fact, the space in Hong Kong is very expensive and hardware needs place for its development. Compare to software which requires less space, hardware is also less profitable. Another advantage of being a Maker in Shenzhen is the accessibility of electronic resources.

With the electronics market and PCB manufacturing companies that are implanted in Shenzhen, prototyping become very fast. Today a big community of maker is implanted in Shenzhen with over hundred makerspaces.

We must not forget the larger-scale production that is China’s strength. Thereby, the “accelerator” offers their services to the start-up to take advantage of the ecosystem and make manufacturing on a larger scale. We have also seen that there are several differences in terms of space, language, culture but the DIY-, Maker-culture remain a strong cooperation between Shenzhen and Hong Kong: Shenzhen providing the hardware while Hong Kong provide the service and business part. This are some reasons why the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen is so particular with an ecologies merging from two complex ecosystems.

References

• Justin Marshall and Catharine Rossi (2017), “Making with China, Craft-Based Participatory Research Methods for Investigating Shenzhen’s Maker Movement”, DCS | Digital Culture and Society | Vol. 3, Issue 1, pp. 127-138
• Lanyon, Charley (2013): “At HackJam, Great Minds Tinker Alike.” In: South China Morning Post, 2017 July 18 (http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/technology/article/1262979/hackjam-great-minds-tinker-alike).
• Michelle Poon and Wilhelm E. J. Klein (2017), “Identity Crisis in the Pearl River Delta, A Conversation with a Hong Kong Hackerspace Community”, DCS | Digital Culture and Society | Vol. 3, Issue 1, pp. 159-184
• Silvia Lindtner (2014), “Hackerspaces and the Internet of Things in China: How makers are reinventing industrial production, innovation, and the self”, China Information Vol. 28(2), pp. 145-167
• Wen Wen (2017), “Making in China: Is maker culture changing China’s creative landscape?”, International Journal of Cultural Studies 00(0), pp. 1-18

[1] Weekly meetings, see At HackJam, Great Minds Tinker Alike.”

[2] See Identity Crisis in the Pearl River Delta (2017).

[3] Ibid.

[4] See Making with China, Craft-Based Participatory Research Methods for Investigating Shenzhen’s Maker Movement (2017)

[5] See Hackerspaces and the Internet of Things in China (2014).

[6] Ibid.

[7] See Making in China: Is maker culture changing China’s creative landscape? (2017)

Hong Kong posses a really special status within the world but also regarding Mainland China. It is clearly separated from the nearest Chinese cities, like Shenzhen, by customs. In fact, if the entrance to Hong Kong is easy and does not necessitate excessive administrative processes, a visa is mandatory to go to china. Thus a clear frontier separate Hong Kong from the mainland china. If some aspects of this frontier directly come to mind such as the difference in money, language and culture, we could wonder what is the real extent of this border. Is the food safety also impacted and handled differently in the two opposite sides? If differences exist at the borders, are they the same when we consider the hygienic aspect of food or the nutritional one? Both are relevant when we speak about food safety: if the hygiene lead, in most of the case, in a short-term impact, a bad nutrition can lead to disastrous long term problem (weight problems, diabetes…). During our two weeks trip in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, we had the opportunity to investigate the similarities and differences about food safety.

At first sight, Hong Kong and Shenzhen seem quite similar. Maybe this is due to the dependant-like relationship between Hong-Kong and Mainland China. Because of its geographical situation, Hong Kong imports more than 95% of its food from aboard (1). Its main provider is Mainland China since the prices are relatively cheap and the geographical proximity allows a reduction in transportation costs. The consequence is that the food in Hong Kong is really like the one in Shenzhen. Especially the nutritional composition of the food is likely to be the same, and sometimes it appears not to be the healthiest. Even if all the packaging integrates the nutritional composition of the food, the traditional Chinese food incorporates a lot of oil and frying. In addition, people from both Hong Kong and Shenzhen frequently eat instantaneous pasta which incorporate too much salt, carbohydrates and lipids.

Instantaneous pasta alley of the Shenzhen Carrefour

What appeared even more worrisome is the emergence of occidental fast-food: because of the presence of many foreigners, occidental food can be eaten everywhere in Shenzhen and Hong-Kong and MacDonald is widely implanted. It will surely not affect affluent people who can afford expensive and healthy food, but the poorest part of the population could suffer from excessive fast-food, especially since MacDonald is “one of the cheapest meal” in Hong Kong. In fact, the occidental food lifestyle is responsible of an increase of obesity in the rest of China (2). The other concern about food composition is the presence or not of pesticides and chemical products. Here again, because most of the Hong Kong Food comes from China, the problem is almost the same in both sides. Nonetheless, Hong Kong may appear stricter in term of the admissible limits and it then acts as an “hygienic filter”.

In both side of the border, the food safety concern seems present and even of growing interest. We found many government’s placards : in Hong Kong the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department (FEHD) and Centre for Food Safety (CFS) and in Shenzhen the FDA (U.S. Food and Drug Administration[1]) are present even in the MTR. In addition, every restaurant of Shenzhen is graded and classified within 3 categories: excellent, good and general.

FEHD and CFS placard in the Hong Kong MTR.

Notation of one of the Shenzhen restaurant

According to their grade, the safety visits will be more or less frequent. We even found recurrently webcam in Shenzhen restaurants’ kitchen to be displayed in the client dinning room. More anecdotally, in Shenzhen peoples wear plastic gloves when they have to eat something with the hand (it could be either to not dirty their hand or avoid hand’s bacteria).

When we look closer on the food safety, some differences may appear more or less clearly. As China is way bigger than Honk Kong, it seems obvious that the hygienic controls are more difficult in the mainland. Adding to that the fact that the number of farmers needed to feed the population is consequently huge, a unification is highly difficult to reach. In fact, the food safety system is centralized in Hong Kong whereas in China the responsibility is more complex to understand (1). In addition, even if some foreigners work at Shenzhen, most of them still live in Hong Kong because of the occidental-like lifestyle. It results in a higher concentration of foreigners in Hong Kong who are often more preoccupied by the hygienic standards (like we probably were). Thus the restaurants in Hong Kong may seem safer. In mainland China it happens that some foreigners are suspicious about food hygiene. When we considerate all the precautions evoked before: camera, gloves, notation, it may seem to be more a way to reassure the consumer than simple hygienic measures. In fact, from an European point of view, China is not reputed for its hygienic food condition, while, on the contrary, Honk-kong benefits from its special status. We even encountered a French expat in Shenzhen who went to the toilets to wash its chopsticks before the dinner started.

Another observation is that even the markets in Hong Kong are air conditioned and sustained by the FEHD, whereas in Shenzhen food street stands leave their meat under almost 40°C.

Air conditioned and FEHD supervised Hong Kong market

Street Food in Shenzhen

Thanks to the “one country, two systems” politic, Hong Kong currently benefits from a certain liberty compared to mainland China. As this politic is temporary, in the next years, the dilemma will be to accord the different systems and organisations for food safety. Comparing the efficiency of this two and the better food hygiene of Hong-Kong, China would certainly benefit from an application of the Hong-Kong food safety system. But would it be really possible to centralize the food hygiene organisms for the whole china? It would be even more complex to standardize the tolerances when not every Chinese feel concerned by the nutrition. Considering that food preoccupation decrease with the diminution of the revenue and absence of education (3), in the Countryside, where people tends to be poorer, the Honk Kong standards and obligation would probably be rejected.

In any case, if a visa is required to enter Hong-Kong after its change of status, the foreigners could be more reluctant to work in Hong Kong. In this case, as the food hygiene seems correlated to the number of expat, maybe the Hong-Kong standard will decrease consequently. If we add the fact that customs will no longer exist between China and Hong-Kong, the importation regulation will probably be more complex. Only the future will tell if that suppositions are true.

References

1. Food safety assurance systems in Hong Kong. Xuli Wu, Ye Ye, Dongsheng Hu, Zhigang Liu, Jijuan Cao. 2014, Food Control 37, pp. 141-145.
2. Obésité : les jeunes Chinois accros à la malbouffe. franceinfo. [En ligne] 04 27 2016. [Citation : 25 07 2017.] http://www.francetvinfo.fr/sante/maladie/obesite-les-jeunes-chinois-accros-a-la-malbouffe_1425159.html.
3. Chinese consumers food purchasing behaviors and awareness of food safety. A. Liu, R. Niyongira. 2017, Food Control 79, pp. 185-191.

[1] The mission of FDA’s China Office is to strengthen the safety, quality, and effectiveness of food and medical products produced in China for export to the United States. https://www.fda.gov

As the CHIC students crossed the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China onto Shenzhen, we experienced firsthand China’s online policy regarding Social Media. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Google, among others, were no longer usable.

Hong Kong’s wide-ranging autonomy gives the territory the right to its own internet regulations. In its relatively largely free internet environment, Hong Kong differs staunchly from Shenzhen. However, in its use of China’s own social media, Hong Kong acts, once again, as a bridge between the West and China, connecting both social media worlds.

Social Media in China’s Online Policy

According to Chiu et al. (2012), China has the world’s largest population of internet users, totalling more than 500 million. Out of these, social media users are around 300 million, and they spend on average 40% of their time online on social media, a share that continues to rise.

Chiu et al. also underline that this has given the Chinese an incentive to go further in their social media innovations, and users in China were able to embed multimedia content in their posts more than 18 months before Twitter users could do it. Indeed, having used WeChat to communicate during our trip, we all noticed that it had many more advanced functions than what is supposed to be its equivalent outside of China, WhatsApp. The latter is not banned in mainland China, but is seldom used, whereas WeChat is in widespread use, not only for chat, but also for payments and sharing of posts like one would do on Facebook or Instagram, among other functions.

The authors then point out that China has the most active social media users out of any country worldwide. That creates a very competitive environment for social media. However, the authors have not mentioned that the Chinese government has pruned out the western social media out of the competition. For instance, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has both received Chinese officials in his company’s HQ and made an official visit, but failed to convince the government to lift their online ban. The authors mention that Sina Weibo, China’s most popular microblogging website, was opened in 2009, but they forget to correlate this event with the banning of Facebook and Twitter on the eve of the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy student protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing.

In stark contrast with China and its 2-million-strong internet police, the largest of its kind by far, Hong Kong has stayed clear of any censorship of social media. It even hosted a workshop organised by Facebook in the 2017 RISE conference. We attended the workshop, with speakers from countries like the US and Singapore. It was mainly technical and about user analytics, and the speakers did not talk about the Chinese government’s Facebook ban.

In this regard, Hong Kong has a clear border with mainland China and by extension Shenzhen. However, the borders fade out when seeing Hong Kong’s mixed usage of Chinese social media and Chinese-banned social media.

Hong Kong’s social media usage

According to data compiled the Hong Kong-based design company Go Globe in May 2015, 96% of Hong Kongers are daily internet users, and 64% of them have at least one active social media account. They also listed social media by their share of active users in the territory. WhatsApp came out in first position at 41%, ahead of its Chinese rival WeChat at 23%. Facebook also has a large following at 33%. Twitter and its Chinese rival Sina Weibo are respectively at 10% and 6%. We therefore see the social media landscape of Hong Kong is a mixture of the ones in China and outside of China. Here, Hong Kong lies once again as a door to the mainland.

This is confirmed by data compiled by the statistics website Statista for the 4th quarter of 2016, which has ranked social media by their penetration rate, meaning the percentage of the population that has an opened an account there. It is worth noticing that the two most used websites, Facebook (72%) and Youtube (69%), are banned in the mainland. Twitter (24%) and Sina Weibo (20%) are again shoulder to shoulder. WhatsApp (64%) is again ahead of WeChat (33%) which seems to be rather rivalling Facebook Messenger (42%). We went to visit the Shenzhen offices of Tencent, WeChat’s parent company, and their representative, answering our question about WeChat’s competitiveness in Hong Kong where Facebook is authorised, confirmed that they did not enjoy wide popularity there.

The societal power of social media in Hong Kong

Due to Hong Kong’s free online policy, social media users can communicate without censorship, unlike their counterparts in the mainland. The events of 2014 in Hong Kong are a clear demonstration of that.

The Umbrella Revolution of Hong Kong was a student-driven civil disobedience movement aimed at blocking dramatic changes in the territory’s electoral system, changes that would mean Beijing would get to screen candidates for leadership of the autonomous territory. Students gathered on social media and organised « Occupy » protests where they would sit under tents or covered by umbrellas in major areas of the city, most notably Central, disturbing public traffic and thereby putting pressure on the Chinese government. When the protests were cleared, mobile street protests were organised via social media.

Eventually, this movement did not result in a retraction of the electoral reform by China. But it made the Chinese and Hong Kong governments put more effort into tightening their grip on media. This pushed more Hong Kong youngsters towards social media to get news, whereas in Mainland China, censors on Sina Weibo blocked searches on these protests and posts on them.

Conclusion

The Chinese government has succeeded in building the « Great Firewall of China » by censoring large parts of the internet, including major social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. Hong Kong, as a special administrative region, escapes from these measures and differs from Shenzhen and by extension the mainland in this regard. China has its own social media like WeChat and Sina Weibo, that Hong Kong also uses, thereby acting as a door to China. Because of their diverging online policies, China can contain the societal power of social media, whereas Hong Kong has witnessed major protests organised via social media.

Penned by Khalil Mrini and Thomas Faucheux

References:

(1) Chiu, Cindy, Chris Ip, and Ari Silverman. “Understanding social media in China.” McKinsey Quarterly 2.2012 (2012): 78-81.

(2) Go Globe, https://www.go-globe.hk/blog/social-media-hong-kong/

(3) Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/412500/hk-social-network-penetration/

(4) Chen, Hsuan-Ting, Michael Chan, and Francis LF Lee. “Social media use and democratic engagement: a comparative study of Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China.” Chinese Journal of Communication 9.4 (2016): 348-366.

Today, we woke up early to take our private bus for the day at 7.30 am. After a two hours ride, we arrived to the HQ of the first company we will visit, Huawei. Their HQ are situated on the other side of the Pearl River Delta. You should know that Huawei is a Chinese multinational networking and telecommunications equipment founded in 1987 by Reng Zhenfei who is still the CEO. This company has more than 170’000 employees worldwide. We directly felt that we were in a multinational when we passed the entry. We have been welcomed by an Audi car that we followed to reach our destination and most of all, a digital signaler displayed our welcome just in front of the entry.

We started this visit with a presentation given by the VP for international operations at Huawei. He made an overview of the company. It was interesting to learn that Huawei have 16 research centres around the world, which is the proof of their globalization strategy and their choice to make R&D a key part of their business. In fact, 76’000 employees work in this sector of the company. Also, the R&D budget is higher than $6.4 billions.

Anyway, Huawei is present in Switzerland since 1998 in Bern and have now two other offices quarters in Zürich and Lausanne as it’s a country well known for its R&D dimension. They also the 3rd in the Swiss smartphone market. Another interesting point was their will to be present in the IoT market with their first project in collaboration with Schindler to improve the elevator systems. Once the VP was done, a designer explained us how the design was integrated and realized in Huawei. We learned that the CEO have a say even in the design decisions. We finished the presentation with an intense Q&A but I can’t tell you more about it ;).

After that, we all dress up; blouses, caps and slippers in order to visit the wireless network manufacture. Even if we had the feeling to visit a museum, it was still intriguing to see with our own eye how such a big manufacture works. From the components warehouse to the CQ, we saw all the major steps of the production line.  During the visit, the guide explained us, for instance, the system used to award the good employees (quite different from what we can observe in western companies) and the 6sigma method – developed by Motorola – used for QC.

No picture authorized about this manufacture visit, sorry!

After the lunch, graciously offered by Huawei, we jumped into the bus again for two more hours. The second destination was Star Rapid, a company specialized in rapid prototyping, rapid tooling and low-volume manufacturing of custom parts. In few words, they propose rapid prototype processing to take a project from a concept stage to a manufacturable stage. It means that they are situated just before a massive production. To give you an idea, it corresponds to a maximum production around 10’000 units per month. Their USP differentiate them from their competitors (because they told us that in the Shenzhen area, it exists a thousand of similar companies) is their flexibility related to the customers’ requirements.

The short presentation was followed by a visit of the company.  We saw the different part of the manufacture from the injection mold to the vacuum mold. We also saw the polishing, assembly and QC parts. We were impressed by the high-level standards for the manufacture which seemed to be no different from the western ones. The atmosphere was serious but relaxed. The employees were always open to answer our questions during the visit. Moreover, in the CNC machine hall, we could find some mottos representing the mood of the company (very similar to American spirit) – Do what you said you would do: that’s the STAR way.

Once we were done, Jonathan Ross, the Chief Executive Officer closed the visit with a little speech and we headed to the Sino-Swiss (European) Industrial Park (SSIP) which is located in Zhongshan. SSIP is a platform which designed for investment from Switzerland and other European countries including Healthcare and Medicine, Precision Manufacturing, Ecological Demonstration and Finance & Education.

After a presentation of SSIP and different speakers like Singou, an intelligent robot accelerator, all teams were invited to make their pitch. It was the first time that we heard the speeches from the CHIP teams. We were really impressed by their quality and by the evolution of the CHIC pitches compared the first ones we made in Hong-Kong, even if some technical issues appeared, the speakers were not disturbed.

After that, the SSIP invited us after the conference to a typical Chinese restaurant looking like a banquet. We were lucky to try several traditional dishes. Some of us were really troubled facing a chicken leg in their soup for example, but that’s part of the Chinese experience! Anyway, the food was delicious and I’d like to thank both the SSIP and the CHIC staff team for this day!

Finally, after a long ride home, we got back to the hotel around 11pm, exhausted so we went directly (well at least most of us) to bed to get some well-deserved rest.

Hong Kong (HK) and Shenzhen (SZ) have both experienced an enormous growth throughout the last decades. In this process, public transports is one very important piece of the puzzle, since it ensures an efficient flow of people. In HK today 5 mio people use the Mass Transport Railway (MTR) every day, while in SZ it is 4 mio people. These numbers are actually very similar to some of the biggest and most famous metro networks in the world like New York and Paris, although the former are much more recent than the latter.

In HK, the first metro line has been built in 1979. It’s planning and financing is built on a system called Rail and Property (R+P), which ensures a very efficient space use and at the same time, allows a financial sustainability. In fact, The Hong-Kong metro, unlike most of others metro around the world, makes profit ($ 1.5 bio in 2014) while having one of the cheapest metro ticket. That is thanks mostly to the R+P system which is called a win-win-win operation.  Basically,   The government gives rights to MTR to buy the land, on which it builds the stations. Then, MTR partners with developers who build properties  around the stations and take a percentage of the developers profit. With this smart system, MTR in HK doesn’t need government subsidies and makes enough profits to fund the development and maintenance of their railway system.  Moreover, our opinion is that this solution offers an integrated and sustainable development in a country where the place is worth gold. Everything is well thought out, from the housing just above the station to the different shops near of it, and this can easily be felt when displacing with the metro.

In Shenzhen, the whole system is very recent. Indeed, it has been opened in 2004 and experienced a strong and incredible growth that accurately mirrors the growth of the city itself. Today, it transports 3.9 million people a day, in average. Shenzhen Metro Group decided also to introduce the R+P system to fund the construction. Currently, they are the unique metro in the Mainland of China to have implemented this system.

At first sight, the two systems might seem similar. However, looking at it more closely, a number of substantial differences can be noted.

For instance, the funding arrangements aren’t the same.  While HK have a clear and holistic guiding principle, SZ haven’t one. We can imagine that the government did it to keep a certain control on the metro growth and room of manoeuvre.  Moreover, while the government funding arrangement in SZ is dominated by the R+P system, in HK, it’s more varied with also direct government capital investment, and Public-private partnership (PPP). The result of this is, for HK, a less risky model against markets’ fluctuations and a more solid basis in case of projects failure. Even if Shenzhen has the chance to test new ideas (e.g. R+P), they have still some national legal and institutional barriers to fully take advantage of the HK R+P model.

Another important difference is the security system. Every station in SZ is equipped with a security check at the entrance, where all the bags and backpacks are scanned by the police. In HK, this system is completely absent. Independently, in both cities, traveling by public transports feels very safe.

Moving further towards the platform, it strokes that people do not behave in the same way. In HK people are very calm and ordered, reminding of the swiss diligence. Everyone stays on the right side of the escalator, properly holding the bar, and people wait for people to get off before walking into the train. On the other side of the border, in SZ, people are much less patient and structured, resulting in a more chaotic displacement experience. A point that also struck us only in SZ concerning the user’s behaviour was the priority gave to kids to seat inside the metro. It was at this moment that we understood the way that Chinese children are treated and consider – as it said in French “petit empereur chinois”.

One of the biggest differences, however, is the flow of people. While in HK the metro is always quite crowded, at any time of the day, in SZ the system is not balanced as well. There are lines that are much more loaded than others, resulting in lines that are seldom full and others that are strongly loaded. This is also very dependent of the time of the day. This can be brought back to the efficiency. If we look at the table, we can see that the MTR in HK, which transports 22’857 pp/km per day, is far more efficient and used than the one in SZ, only transporting 13’636 pp/km per day.

One last difference can be seen in the space use, which is directly correlated to the availability, and hence the price, of land. In HK the space is scarce. Accordingly, metro stations are accurately dimensioned and efficiently planned. On the other side of the border, the space does not represent a problem. This also results in very wide metro stations, that give a large margin of increase of the flow of people, but at the same time, implies long distances between connecting lines.

To consider these differences it is very important to keep in mind that, although being both very young systems, the city of SZ has opened its first metro line only in 2004 and it has to satisfy the needs of a city growing at a crazy rate of about 40%. A fast growing city implies a visionary planning and foreseeing of the of the future developments and the rapid adaptation of people to changes and new technologies. This last point is very relevant and has a strong presence in the SZ metros. In fact, the metro is also used as information and education space: there are videos that are shown in loop, educating people about the safety procedures, usage of train and escalators and even about waste recycling.

It was interesting to make this research and analyze the differences in the public metro system. Particularly interesting thing, however, was to find the root of these differences in cultural aspects, geography or the political system.

Dimitri, Luca, Nicolas, Pierre and I had the opportunity to have a tour of the HKDI (Hong Kong Design Institute) !

The building alone is worth a visit: we were welcomed by a huge escalator that allowed us to enter the school, designed by french architects Coldefy & Associates. We were explained that the four “towers” are each dedicated to one department, and a top floor (representing a piece of paper), where the towers connect together and also give space for a huge library.

The rules of the library are special but refreshing: in one part, silence is required (just like in every other library), and in the other, people are encouraged to speak out loud, in order to create a space for sharing and discussing ! Oh, and the view is amazing too…

Then they took us to their material library: us product designers were super excited to see all those crazy materials on display, and I think the others enjoyed it quite a lot too ! Unlike in our school, they have more technical materials and samples from specific suppliers, which is pretty cool too !

We then moved to the rooftop, situated on the “piece of paper”. Again, we were amazed by the view from there ! Surrounded by huge buildings, we felt very small… It looks like a pretty cool place to have a break, but with that heat we were happy to run back to the A/C !

They took us to the workshops and classroom to have a glimpse of what being a student looks like here. We were quite relieved to see that they are as messy – or more ! – than us in Switzerland !

It was a really nice opportunity to have people show us around, it’s always funny to find differences and similarities in our studies all around the world. All in all, HKDI gave us the same impression as the city of Hong Kong itself: everything back home is so tiny compared to here !

Yesterday, we met the Shenzhen Autism Association (SAS). The challenge we had (we learned it by phone) was communicating with the people of this association as nobody spoke English. So, a big shout out to Nicolas from the Livelo team who accepted to go with our Luca to be our official Todoo translator🙂. Nicolas did a really good job and we certainly couldn’t do it without him.

When we arrived, we discovered a 6-floor building mostly dedicated to autistic children. We discussed during one and a half hour and learned a lot of things. Our wishes were to know more about autism awareness in China and how they proceed to help autistic children.

So, let’s recount a little more what we heard. First of all, they told us that they are the only association making research about autism in Shenzhen. There are other ones (public and private) that help autistic children but SAS is the biggest one. Moreover, it is the only one that helps children after 14 yo (between 0-38 yo actually). It was our first surprise. China seems to be making efforts to help the autistic community but only for children, while we know from our research in Switzerland that autistic people need almost lifelong assistance. Indeed, the autistic Chinese receive this assistance in so-called “rehabilitation centres” and they seem to be services to ensure they get the required elements to get autonomous instead of providing them with long-term assistance. However, it’s also good news to see that something is being done to support this community. To be honest, we thought that we would not find any kind of place dedicated to autism in China.

SAS was established in July 2001 by 12 families with autistic children despite the lack of professional service in autism at the time in Shenzhen. At present, they have the help of the Chinese government that, for instance, gave them for free a ground to build their centre and give the needed funds to ensure that some older autistic children may learn in an ordinary school. The condition that ordinary schools gave to the association to accept autistic children was: If we accept autistic children, we will have to do nothing more from our side. This model (asking funds from the government or other institutions to allow autistic children to go to school) was developed by SAS and are now expanded around China.

One thing that stroke us is that resilience from the ordinary school. Compared to Switzerland where they do everything to ensure them an ordinary life and give them the maximum they can to integrate them in the society, in China we feel that making money out of helping autistic children is more important than actually helping them. Another point that confirms this feeling is the creation of different private autistic centres that cost up to 2’000 CHF/month for a child which is definitely too expensive for most of the people in China. We had this feeling from an SAS member’s explanations that some private institutes have the mission to make money more than helping with to the best of their capacity this community but it would be really interesting to make some further research about the system in place.

Then we talked more about the features of our watch and they gave us some good feedback. The most relevant was the suggestion to implement a GPS in our watch. When it sounded not very useful during our interview in Switzerland, it makes sense to introduce it in China as the cities are gigantic with millions of people. Actually, they explained to us that they lost one child a few days ago and it took a long time to find him. So, it could be very helpful for them.

Then, we wanted to test our mobile app but it was impossible to make a usable test as they didn’t speak English. However, they will be delighted to make future tests if we decide to add the Chinese language on our app. It could be even possible to do it remotely even if it’s something that we have to think more about in order to get relevant feedbacks and good quality usability tests.

At the end, we made a small visit to the different children classes and we kept a wonderful memory of this moment. The children were all happy to meet us and gave us a very warm welcome.

We left this centre with a lot of new elements and we enjoyed it to be more aware about autism in China. It gave us some new directions to explore and how we could help the Chinese autistic children and give them the chance to live an ordinary childhood. This meeting allowed us to keep in touch with the most important autism association in Shenzhen and we hope to stay in contact with them for the future. 🙂

Time to make some updates about our last two days in Shenzhen. On Tuesday, we started to visit the major electronic marketplaces of Shenzhen – Huaqiangbei. Imagine buildings all around you with minimum of five floors of dozens of stands for each of them. From 2 To usb keys to every component you need to create your own hardware, you will find everything (electronic) you want and there you can negotiate almost everything. Definitely, you should go there, even if you aren’t working on a device right now. It may be an inspirational place to find ideas about a future project.

During this 3 hours of visit, we split our team in two groups. Hélène, Lucie, Khalil & Anthony had the objective to find a new FPC connectors for the LCD screen (the one on our PCB was in the wrong way). Manon & Luca tried to find some watch bracelets with different textures. We got lucky because we found it quickly. We followed a guy to the 22th floor to his warehouse and he gave us 3 connectors, yeah! The bracelet team didn’t have as much chance: it took more time. After 2 hours going different directions suggested by sellers, we finally found a place with thousands of bracelets. The difficulty was finding out one that did not look like an apple watch design. And we did it! Actually, we found two different textures: Woven and silicone.

After this findings, we went to the HAX accelerator offices in the same district.  Anthony & Lucie did a great pitch (each member tried to do it). We got really interesting feedbacks from three HAX members. What we noticed is our ability to better justify the choices made for our watch. They understood why our watch is not an apple watch (more robust and cheaper) or the need to keep together the app and the watch (remember: complexity and organisation part on the app side and simplicity on the watch side).

To finish the day, we returned to x.factory to attend a presentation on “how we make a prototype” from Makerpapa design studio.

Wednesday was a free day to progress on our project. Hélène & Khalil worked together to develop further the mobile app. Hélène was working on the design while Khalil coded it.

The others were at Seeedstudio. Lucie & Anthony tried all day to initialize the screen with determination, they will succeed, we are sure. Manon worked on our functional prototype and the 3D design of it, to be printed the following day. Finally, Luca tried to contact an autism association. Thanks to Elle from SeeedStudio, we got an appointment the next day at 10:30 am with Shenzhen Autism Society. Everything go really fast here in Shenzhen! After that, he adapted the questionary and the testing script to eventually used them during the next day meeting.

At the end of day, we had a new pitch at SimplyWork, a coworking space in Nanshan district. 50-60 people were attending so we were excited to look how people will react to our device. After a little moment of stress, we got on stage and did our pitch. We think that they appreciated it, as several people came to us after the presentation to congratulate us about it.

Moreover, we didn’t have questions about the functionality of our watch. It means that our pitch becomes more and more clear. That’s why it is crucial to practice!

Small stuffs to share. Like the chinese food, Dim Sum Lab is a place that brings together people around a table to share something they like.

Dim Sum Lab is a small space in the neighborhood of Sheung Wan. The size of the room was not a surprise for us. Space in Hong Kong is very rare. What was the most surprising for us, especially in hongkong, was to discover a place where they didn’t talk to us about money, profit and startups: this place is all about creating and sharing

Dim Sum Lab is a part of the global Hackerspace movement identifying with the idea of “Not For Profit”.

At Dim Sum Labs, everyone is welcomed to come, gather and make, hack, build, share, collaborate, educate, encourage, grow and achieve. Dim Sum Lab organize differents workshops or HackJam and are open every thursday evening.

To allow members to build their ideas. There is differents machines in the space, like laser cutter, 3D printer, milling machine and a lot of tools. Dim Sum lab is the only place like this in the city but essential in the development of a city like Hong Kong!

Thanks to Michelle and Syabid for having received us and continue to create beautiful things.

On Saturday we had the chance to participate to a scavenger hunt in Hong-Kong in order to discover further the city and its culture. Our team was composed by members from different projects – Valérie (Troback), Dimitri ( Ilanga) and Luca (Todoo).

We started by going to Mong Kok which is a square of Hong-kong situated in North-West of the city. Our first impression was about the architecture of the place. It was far different from the Hong-Kong island with their more typical buildings and less futuristic. And one of the most interesting point was the contrast between the traditional market and the official store that we can find in Europe.

From there, we walked through the Ladies market which is the most touristic market in HK where you can find every gadget that you want. The aim was to negotiate the prices and it was very fun to do it. The first try was a total fail but we were luckier on the second round. We bought a super cute princess manicure set.  140 $HK was the starting price and we succeed to lower it to 40$HK, so proud of us. 🙂

After this effort, it was time to lunch, so hungry ! By going on the next spot on our planning (Sham Shui Po) we found a typical chinese restaurant. The challenge was to translate the menu as it was only in chinese character. As we were lazy, we used the random option. We point one meal and fortunately it was miam miam miam delicious !

We took the opportunity of this moment to ask to the waiter some chinese expression but it was more complicated than we thought.  Even if we didn’t understand each other, the waiter was so kind with us. He asked to a client lunching behind us if she could help us as she was speaking a little bit English.  After 20 minutes of research by her (so friendly), she gave us a wonderful chinese expression in pin yin and chinese characters: Chengdu and Chongqing. As you can imagine (we hope), it was in fact two cities of China. Even if we tried further to explain her our request, we stayed with this, never mind.

After a short visit to the Sham shui po markets which are mostly dedicated to electronic equipment, we took the Star ferry to reach the Hong-Kong island. And big surprise, on our way we catch up Spiderman who was visiting also this wonderful city, lucky no ? 😉

So happy that we took the ferry as we had a wonderful view of every huge HK buildings, each of them more impressive than others.

To finish our scavenger hunt, we showed the secret destination to our taxi driver (yes, the name of the place was in chinese) and we arrived to this beautiful beach on the other side of the island. Of course, we decided to swim a little (we deserved it no ?) as it was so cool ! 🙂

After quite an immersion in the startup and incubators business’ world, the design activity was an opportunity to discover another aspect of Hong Kong. Rihab, Thomas, Nicolas and I went to the Jockey Club Innovation Tower with Bérénice and it was super-cool ! The tower is a modern building designed by the architect Zaha Hadid and located on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in Hung Hom . Every floor is different one from another which creates some beautiful perspectives on the stairs.

On the first floor, the final works of the industrial/UX/Advertising designer students were exposed. We saw a new kind of portable scene for outdoor music players, spatial decor for movies or even a new packaging for medicines.

When the visit ended, the student who presented the building to us made a really interesting remark. She highlighted how cooperation between engineers, designers and HEC could be beneficial and an innovation vector. As CHIC students we feel really connected to this affirmation. Moreover this Tower, because of the proximity of all the university faculties could help acting this way.

Bonus: The view from the girls’ restroom is pretty nice !

Today we moved for the first time to x.factory which is a hub that provides a prototyping workshop with production-level equipment and co-working space. We like the place and it’s a good news as it will be our offices during all the week.

You can see below some different workshop (e.g. Metal, Wood, or 3D Printing). Pretty cool no ?

We start the day with an introduction about x.factory. Afterwards, we make a meeting with our team in order to create our week plan and our Todoo list 😉

We planned many things like finding an autism association in Shenzhen, developing our functional prototype, having a first transfer of a picture on our watch, agreeing on the final app design or thinking about new materials for the watch straps. It was an important task to do to be able to create a great coordination between us.

During the afternoon, Anthony went to Seeedstudio to see their offices and also their welding machines that we are going to use during the week.

The others stayed at x.factory and start to work in a very serious way. The proof below 🙂.

During this first day we discovered what means to be flexible and that nothing is going on perfectly as we expected. Indeed, we found that the FPC connector between the screen and the PCB wasn’t in the right way. Consequently, we hope to find tomorrow a new FPC connector in huaqiangbei (area with a major electronics manufacturing hub and electronics marketplaces).

We are especially looking forward to visit this place tomorrow.

看到你明天

It’s been almost a week since we left – time goes by and we have plenty to tell you about our experience in Hong Kong.

After this very busy day (post here), we went to the HKSTP (Hong Kong Science Technology Park) to visit the site. It’s a place designed to locate in close physical proximity university, government and private research bodies involved in particular fields like Biomedical Technology for instance. This one brings together companies of all sizes that benefit from synergies thanks to the proximity of these players gathered in the same place.

During this visit, a surprise pitching was organized and Manon perfectly took up the challenge that was not obvious. Presenting one’s idea in 60 sec can be more complicated than you think, believe me;).

There were more unexpected events as Manon had the right to a second round during our meeting with Blake Larson, Managing Director of International at Lalamove which is an on-demand logistics company in Asia that matches users and drivers to provide same day delivery and courier services. It is a real plus to be able to make these pitches in order to receive a maximum of feedback always constructive but also sometimes hard. Indeed, we ended on Thursday with a visit to the Brinc locals and a last Pitch (from Manon – never two without three 😉 ) with investors and those who deal with the Brinc accelerator.

The Q&A session was not at all relaxing. For the first time, we faced people who thought above business and viability of the project and it was not at rest to defend our ideas. The main challenge was to justify our choice to create a connected watch from scratch when it would have been more accurate to use what already existed in order to be present with our product more quickly on the market. This was a key and enriching moment because we had a glimpse of what to expect when we present a start-up to investors.

On Friday we were in the MakerHive offices which is a coworking space for designers and makers. This time it was Khalil and Hélène’s turn to pitch. In order to prepare, we were in a café to review our pitch and add elements. After the pitch, we had the right to a new Q&A session with a new batch of issues highlighting, for example, that we may need to further analyze the potential market of China. We realized that these pitch sessions bring us a lot because we have justified our choices better in our answers compared to the last ones. Of course, we can improve even more with each question raised that highlights aspects of our project that we had not realized until today.

If there is a lesson to be learned from this week of pitching, it is that we must make the most of it because it is by presenting and discussing with others that we can improve and discover other horizons for our project.

We leave Hong Kong full of memories, lessons, meetings and advices and we are now eager to advance our project in Shenzhen. Follow us regularly this week because a lot of things will happen See you soon !

After a first night where many of us had sleep problems due to jet lag, we attended a presentation by HKUST’s Dean of Students, Dr. Robert Wessling. Wessling holds a B.A. from Princeton University and a PhD from UC Berkeley. He is the former Associate Director of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies at Stanford University. Wessling first stepped into Asia as the University of Macau’s Associate Master and Chief of Students at Choi Kai Yan College. He has moved to HKUST in August 2016 as its new Dean of Students.

During his talk, he has compared the San Francisco Bay Area and China’s Greater Bay Area (the Pearl River Delta, or also in a more geographically accurate name, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Bay Area). Wessling stressed the international character of the two regions, as “areas of contact” where different cultures from around the world meet, be it with Spanish and Russian interest in the San Francisco area, or the Portuguese and Britons in the Pearl River Delta.

Likewise, Wessling drew a comparison between Stanford and HKUST. Stanford was founded in 1891 on farmland. His alma mater UC Berkeley was founded in the 1860’s and was isolated as well from urban areas. HKUST, which is celebrating 25 years of existence this year, was built on an area isolated from Hong Kong’s central urban areas. It was imagined as an engine for economic and academic growth, as an “MIT of Asia”, as put by HKUST’s first president, Chia Wei Woo. The University is supposed to be an engine of transformation for the young people of Hong Kong, attracting top students and academics and offering top curricula. It follows EPFL, world’s best university under 50, in second place.

Hong Kong’s education system is an agent participating in cross-border cooperation across the Chinese Greater Bay Area, Wessling said, with the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s campus in Shenzhen. The Guangdong region has attracted universities from further north in China, as the Beijing Institute of Technology (BIT) has opened a campus in Macau’s northern Mainland China neighbour, Zhuhai (BITZH), called the Sino-US College.

Dr. Wessling’s talked was followed by a talk from Dr. Jan Engels. Engels has studied first in Aachen, in his native Germany. In 2012, he moved to HKUST as an exchange student and decided to stay and start in PhD starting 2013. He finished his PhD in 2016 and has joined a startup at the Science and Technology Park (STP). He stressed the importance of a business outlook, business ideas, plans and team building. He recalled that his first clumsy steps into the startup world, once blanking out 30 seconds into a 60-second pitch and not being able to speak.

Engels then talked about student startups and HKUST’s startup resources such as HackUST and the entrepreneurship center. He was glad to move to Hong Kong, a lively, high-tech city offering a favourable tax system, rule of law and access to huge markets. This was emphasised by a map Engels showed, in which a circle wrapping India, China and Southeast Asia contained more population than the rest of the world combined.

He then ended by talking about his own company: Sonikure, which offers Ultrasonic, an Ocular Drug Delivery Device, replacing needles. They have won many awards and have decided to settle in Hong Kong. The teams were then left alone to rehearse their 60-second pitches.

During the afternoon, we had the opportunity to attend the RISE 2017 event. The exhibition took place at the Hong Kong convention and exhibition centre (HKCEC). We have seen a lot of startups that had an exhibition stand to present their products and concepts. To have an image of how it was, you can imagine the Forum from EPFL but only with startups and companies giving talks. That was a great opportunity to discuss with entrepreneurs about some innovative ideas. We tried to see the most important part of the tradeshow as fast as possible because we don’t had a lot of time.

Eventually, we left for the IoT night at 5pm. This event was a conference gathering entrepreneurs in IoT and people interested in it. The event was in KPMG’s offices at the 22nd floor of a skyscraper called the Hysan Place with a beautiful view on Hong Kong. The presentation was like a show, very dynamic and interactive. We learned some important points about Brinc’s accelerator and how this program can help to make a startup. Brinc co-founder Bay McLaughlin praised us for participating at such an early stage of our lives to a China discovery experience.

Hello everyone !

After several months of research, creation, coding, welding and so on, we were able to advance our project. So, we are ready for the big start in Hong-Kong and Shenzhen.

But before we left, we participated in a Pitching training (which will be very useful during these two weeks 😉 ). We learned several techniques (e.g .: keep eye contact with the audience or use the hands) to be taken into account during a presentation. We will have to assimilate them quickly as we will have to put them into practice already on Wednesday at the HKUST (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology).

After this rewarding morning, we started our journey to Hong Kong. Bus > Plane > Plane > Bus and here we are. This first evening was free, some decided to visit the campus and others went to the city center to get a first overview and also to celebrate Helene’s birthday 🙂.

Voilà  ! We are going to live two intense weeks and we will share with you our daily experiences so stay tuned !

Zàijiàn !

After this little break, it was time to keep you informed of what has happened in recent weeks.

To begin with, last week, we had the third and last milestone of the semester which gave us some long days ( and nights 😉) of effort before this final presentation. This was an opportunity for all team members to present the latest project progress to the CHIC supervisors.

On the business side, we made a preliminary estimate of the potential market for our device. After selecting Switzerland and its neighboring countries as a test market, we realized that this choice was not optimal and we should not limit ourselves to geographical limits. We will therefore carry out a new market analysis before leaving for China.

In addition to this, we have also proposed a first costs estimation of the watch. It was a complex but interesting work because we mixed the calculation techniques used by the students of EPFL and HEC. This collaboration was important in order to, for example, estimate the price of production and assembly for the PCB or know the price of the raw materials used for the watch and the bracelet.

Thus, without going into details (and without giving you the numbers 😉 ), we have made an estimate of the profit per sale and the number of units to be produced to reach the breakeven point – the first results are satisfactory but we will also review them before China.

For the application, the feedbacks from parents on our second version has been positive. Thus, Khalil did not have to make changes (at the moment 😉) about what he had already coded.

Concerning the engineers, they have just received the PCB and they are, at this moment, welding it. The good news is its size which is smaller than what we imagined at the beginning. We look forward to it working !

Manon, as for her, continues her 3D modeling for a better fastening system for the strap. Do not worry, we will keep you informed on the results before our departure 🙂. She also realized new 3D that we could use for …

….

our landing page ! Yes, it is FINALLY online (see here) and we are super happy with the result ! We invite you to consult it, share it and leave us messages if you have a question, a comment to share or if you simply wish to contact us. We will be happy to answer you 🙂.

Well…despite all the good news, we still have to pass our exams. Therefore, we will be back in 2-3 weeks to share the latest news before the big departure of July 10 for Hong Kong and Shenzhen!

See you !

Last week, we made breakthroughs in UI and Software coordination. Our Software Engineer Khalil, UI designer Hélène and Business Manager Luca sat down to settle on the app’s format. They have had to meet constraints by Software to make a viable Database system, and had to think about what best is for the parents of autistic children based on our discussions with them. Hélène has since came up with a full interactive mockup and Khalil is working with it round the clock to code the app.

Moreover, some more modifications have been suggested after consultations that Lucie, Hélène and Luca have made with parents based on the interactive mockup. Luca and Hélène have informed Khalil of these suggestions, and they have worked out what modifications can be realistically achieved.

Whereas Khalil is advancing on the app at fast pace, Lucie and Anthony have been doing the same on the watch. All of them realised they had to meet halfway to figure out how the app and the watch are to communicate. They gathered for a long afternoon meeting under the watchful eye of Hélène, who first listed the settings that the synchronisation should have. Khalil then presented the state of the database system and Anthony and Lucie presented how the communication protocol functions. Khalil, Anthony and Lucie then agreed on how many bytes should be exchanged and what they should contain. They are due to initiate the first communication trials next week.

Stay tuned as Todoo comes alive!

We just named our baby ! We went for something pretty self-explanatory but also playful: Todoo ! We chose blue because it symbolizes autism and red to represent the time-timer. Once it was chosen, our interaction designer Hélène could get to work to find us a cool logo and identity (which you can see above). She also worked a lot on the app, along with our coding-machine Khalil 🖥, it’s amazing to see everything take shape ! With a new name, new logo, new identity, Luca had to work on our brand too ! It’s so useful for all of us to consider where we are placed on the market, what are our goals, who are our customers,… It’s super helpful to think about all those factors every time a decision needs to be made.

For my industrial designer part 🔧, I continued (and am still and still and still continuing 🌀) to research different options to make the watch as suitable for our children as possible. The most important is to make the straps changeable (for sensitivity and taste matters) and/or removable in order to put in on a little stand that can be placed on a desk. Here is what it looks like so far !

About the electronic development, Lucie and Anthony just made us our first prototype ! They showed us how they managed to transmit info from a smartphone to display it on the screen.

It’s getting realer every week !

The Easter celebrations are over and it’s time to get back to work. Two weeks ago (here), we faced several questions as to the turn of the continuation of our project. Following the feedback and discussions we had with the team, we agreed on the direction we wanted to take. Thus, we made the choice to develop two prototypes in parallel: a functional and a visual.

You may wonder why ?🙂 Well, there are several reasons. First, as we mentioned in a previous post, the engineers warned us that they will not be able to integrate by July a battery small enough to fit in the format of a watch. As we have seen that the watch was probably the most appropriate format for our product, it would have been difficult to turn to a larger and less suitable object for our future users.

Secondly, we found that the important thing for China was not to necessarily have the end product but to have a prototype in order to carry out with our future users the necessary tests on the functions present in our product. It is quite possible to carry out tests in parallel on the shape of the final product by using cardboard mockups. However, it is important to note that the functional prototype shall not be totally different from the final product. For instance, we will use a screen size corresponding to the one we will have in the end and we will arrange the exterior elements (led and buttons) in their right places.

What we must remember 👁 is that thanks to our functional prototype, we are less restricted on the components to be integrated inside the object but that the external components (visible to the user) will be close to the final product in order to be able to carry out effective tests.

Thirdly, it is important to develop a visual prototype to share the final shape of our product (the watch !⏱). This will make it easier for everyone (including you 😉 ) to have a concrete idea of what they can expect from our product. It is important for us that people project themselves into our product and that they want to be able to get it. Manon will make 3D visuals and certainly 3D prints to satisfy your curiosity 😉.

Now, you know more about the reasons for our choice regarding the next project and what we have todoo ☺️.

Otherwise, we are advancing on the identity of our product. We already have chosen a name but patience…. we will unveil it very soon. For the impatient and since we finish Easter, we are informed that you will find the name of our product on this post. We don’t tell you anything more 😉.

From the engineering point of view, we worked on the altium schematics. Discovering the software, it took time to find the right libraries and commands but the altium tutorial we had helped a lot. We also had to adapt a little our strategy concerning the controller to fit our needs. Now we should start to draw the PCB and continue the firmware.

Finally, the milestone 2 is approaching (Friday, April 28 🗓). So we will spend this week preparing our presentation. We will keep you informed on the progress this next weekend.

See you soon !

This week, our blog post will take you through what UX designer Hélène and Software Engineer Khalil have decided to do for the project’s app.

The app is an essential part of the project. Whereas the connected product that we are preparing is to be used by the person with ASD, the mobile app is the interface for the caretakers. Having discussed with parents before, we decided that there will be two types of accounts: a parent account with admin rights and a guest account. Some parents have said that they would like professional caretakers to participate in drafting their child’s schedule, with limited insight into what the parents plan, and no right to modify what the parents have set up, hence the guest account. Once their offspring are old enough, parents said that they can modify their own schedule with them using the parent account. The ultimate decision-making for the schedule remains at the hands of the parents.

This far, Hélène and Khalil agreed on a simple, easy-to-use interface that would show the user first their profile after signing in with their username and password. Then they are shown the days of the week and can chose which day of the week to modify the schedule for. For now, there will be a schedule for each day of the week. At a later stage, we may reconsider this scheduling scheme and make it more customisable. Each schedule element is shown with an image, a title, duration and starting time. The image is an icon that can be chosen among the user’s gallery or a predefined icon gallery. Challenges include how to organise and craft icons for our UX designer, and how our Software Engineer will build his first mobile app with a functioning database.

The app is to be connected with our product via Bluetooth. Khalil will have to coordinate with Electrical Engineer Lucie and Mechanical Engineer Anthony to go through the very first trials for communication between the app and the product. The schedule defined in the app must be transferred to the product to show it to the youngster with ASD. The communication protocol is something than none of our engineers have ever dealt with and it is another challenge that we aim to surpass.

As of now, we are at the early stages of the app and are trying to give it a database. We will keep you posted as we move forward!

This week we became aware of what a project like CHIC is, with moments of doubt but also reflections and teamwork in order to find a way to cross the barriers that are on our way.

As a reminder (Right here), we explained last week that we had to pay particular attention to the size of the battery that seriously compromised the realization of a watch.

It’s therefore on this problematic that we have activated last days. At first, we all met on Monday so that everyone gives their opinion. Should we rethink a bigger object ? Should we think of two versions developed in 2 strokes ? Do we have to carry out simultaneously a functional prototype and a visual prototype ? These are some questions that we have addressed without a definitive answer.

On Tuesday, we went to the ECAL to meet Michel Charlot (Professor of Industrial Design), Vincent Jacquier (Resp. in Visual Communication) and Cyril Diagne (Resp. in Media Interaction Design) in the hope that they give us some answers. And we were not disappointed. This discussion has been fruitful because we have put a finger on an interesting element: Why not first introduce a battery less efficient but smaller size ? It would be possible to make a watch to carry out our tests and show our product. Then, in a second time, the watch could be improved in terms of autonomy. So, it’s with a smile that we finished this meeting.

However, this moment was of short duration 😉. After reflection, the engineers warned us that they didn’t have at the disposal a battery small enough to go on a watch. Let’s go ! We have to think about another alternative !

So we finish this week with interrogations but, be sure, we are very far from conceding defeat 😉. With this team, it’s certain that we will very quickly find a way to circumvent this technical constraint. We have also asked for the expert opinions of Marc Laperrouza and Alexander Wayenberg and we look forward to their feedback.

We start this week with many hopes and we will come back to you in a few days with a clear direction for the continuation of our project. So stay connected and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have proposals, we are takers 🙂. See you soon !

Until now, we had the opportunity to meet with specialists working on ASD. However, we realised that it was necessary to also focus on the parents in order to understand their everyday life and their needs as they raise their autistic children. So we took advantage of this week to get out of our premises in order to meet them.

But, how to get in touch with parents of children with ASD?

Well, we were able initially to meet the association Autism Association of French-speaking Switzerland. Following an informative discussion, the association invited us to contact Mrs. Carole Snoriguzzi, of the Association of Parents of Autistic Children, which holds weekly meetings on Saturdays. The delay was relatively short to propose our participation in this Saturday’s meeting. Fortunately, our project attracted the curiosity of Mrs. Snoriguzzi and we were fortunate enough to be able to participate in this meeting.

At the meeting, in the western Swiss town of Yverdon-les-Bains, we met the people who are going to be benefiting from our project: parents, whose autistic children have changed their lives. Many of them have followed seminars in Paris, France, to get to know about ASD. One of them had hired an Israeli team flying from Tel Aviv for three weeks of intensive daily exercises to get their physically-impaired autistic child better. The horrendously high cost was the responsibility of the parents, with a Valais-based NGO helping with half of the expenses. A parent, who had lived in Belgium for the first eight years of their 14-year-old son, contrasted that experience with their own: they never had to pay for medical expenses or therapies for their son, as the state provided for any autistic care. All parents agreed that Switzerland is lagging behind in terms of state-sponsored healthcare for people with ASD and to help their caregivers. Two of the parents have said they had quit their jobs to take care of their autistic offspring. One of them said their autistic 2-year-old son had a tremendously pleasant personality, and presented us with apps they used to communicate with pictograms and help their son speak. The parents displayed an enthusiasm towards our project and answered openly all of our questions. Because of their enthusiasm and expectations for what our project may bring to them and to other parents of autistic children, we understood that it behoves us to do our best to suit their needs.

We would like to warmly thank the Autism Association of French-speaking Switzerland and the Association of Parents of Autistic Children for their precious cooperation.

Luca has focused on highlighting the most risky assumptions for our value proposition. It is important to know which assumptions we must verify and validate first. If these assumptions are not validated, it will surely be necessary to rotate (a little or sometimes even a lot :O). The sooner this process is done, the quicker it is possible to modify our value proposition to suit the needs of our users. Imagine that it turns out that children have no trouble managing their daily activities? We should quickly adapt our idea … (hopefully this is not the case 😉 )

He also wrote a script for the interviews that we will be performing shortly. Maybe you wonder why we want to do it? It’s simple, it’s still necessary to know more about the potential users of our product. For example, we want to know more about children’s everyday life and how they relate to the objects and people they meet or how parents organize and manage their days. These are important points to know in order to refine our value proposition so that it corresponds as best as possible to the needs of our users. (Again and again yes 😉 ).

Concerning the hardware part Anthony and Lucie looked at the components that could be used for the product and especially the microcontroller and the various displays ( TFT display seems to be the best choice ). They first thought about development board ( arduino, raspberry…) but as our idea of the final product becomes closer to a watch, it appears that it would probably be necessary to search for simple microcontroller in order to make our own PCB. Next week is going to be important because the whole team has to do a lot of choices. Our next meeting is tomorrow so we will inform you very soon.

Manon made some research about existing connected devices for kids as well as smart watches and other small electronic equipment, to become familiar with different materials and esthetics used. She also started discussing choice of materials with Anthony, but it’s still early to take decisions, as we first need to validate whether the object is going to be a watch or another kind of object.

Khalil refined the Software Engineering choices. For now, the team is headed for a connected device synced using an Android app. A first sketch of the app was established, that is yet to be validated by UX designer Hélène.

Hi everybody !

The third edition of CHIC has officially begun. It’s hard to find the words to express how happy and excited we are to be a part of this !

Let’s start by introducing ourselves, shall we ? We are the « Learning with disabilities » (name still in construction…) team, composed by Manon 💁🏼 (ECAL), Hélène 🙋🏼  (ECAL), Lucie 🙆🏼 (EPFL), Anthony 👦🏻 (EPFL), Khalil 👦🏽 (EPFL) and Luca 👱🏽 (UNIL). With a multidisciplinary approach like this, we can only create cool stuff !

Before presenting our project a little bit more, let’s look back at the first official CHIC meeting, a few weeks ago: the ideation weekend. What a busy weekend ! We started by getting to know each other (break the ice, as they say) and then the serious stuff begun. We followed some presentations, took part in different activities (the famous marshmallow challenge, to name one) and each of us imagined different ideas of connected devices. On Sunday, 4 themes, based on the best ideas of objects, have been chosen. That’s when the four teams started to form and that ours emerged ! Tadam ! 💫

Then we met for the first time to try to have a more precise idea of our project. Our theme is very wide and -let’s be honest- not very appealing, so we quickly decided to meet as many people as possible that worked in that field. By groups of two, we met a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, child psychiatrist and a specialist teacher, to deepen our knowledge a little bit. And that’s just a start ! The good news is that they all accepted to meet us, let’s hope it will be good luck for the future ! 🍀

The first interviews helped us to focus on a more precise subject: helping children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We studied different problems, created different value proposition canvases (which was used and understood by everybody in the group, good job 👏🏼) and created different hypothesis to try and understand their needs better.

Thanks to that, three ideas grew 🌱:
-An object that would helped kids with ASD plan their day (based on an object called Time-Timer’s)
-An object that would help them communicate (based on the PECS – Picture Exchange Communication System)
-An object that they could play with and would also evaluate different skills

Those are the three ideas that we presented on our first presentation, on November 25. That was our first stressful moment: will they like them or not ?! 😱
The feedbacks were rather positive: phew ! We are on the right track 😎

Today, we decided to focus on the communication device and on the planning device (which is our favorite so far). We would like to integrate pictograms, an audio system, possibilities to mesure date automatically, a way to check and share this date and a time discipline system, but we won’t say more for now ! Hoping that this is making you a bit curious… 😏

Next step: February 19 for the kick-off weekend ! Until them, we will keep you posted of the next evolutions of our project, which will be more and more exciting for us (and for you) !

See you ! 👋🏼