ToyGether

Hello dear friends,

during this third semester of our CHIC-experience you received less constant updates from your team Toygether. However, when you do, you already know it’s only for positive news!

The development is advancing without breaks behind the scenes. The MassChallange demo is coming very soon and we will need to be ready with a functional prototype (version 2 this time). Simone is designing a brand new PCB with a whole new set of functionalities that we would be able to implement in the future. Chloe is working on the mechanics of the object by preparing both the new blackbox and a very user-friendly connector to attach it to the rest of the toy. Lastly, I have fully moved the communication system to the cloud, enabling both the plush toy and the Android application to connect from anywhere in the world and play together. In the meantime, the toy is getting “on steroids” lately with the implementation of a fully parallel dual-core firmware architecture that can manage all this engineering magic we have put inside it!

One slide for one pitch

However, while from such perspective our path is heading towards its conclusion with the final demo, a new adventure is starting at the same time as well. For us, it’s a re-START (wait a moment to understand this capitalization…), under a completely different light. Toygether is participating in the “START Lausanne ” (oh, now it makes sense), a known start-up competition that every year takes place on the Dorigny campus next door.

The first selection took place yesterday: an Elevator pitch of 2 minutes to present our product and convince the judges to keep us in the competition. Out of 60 teams joining this year, only 18 would be accepted to continue and… we are pleased to share that we did it 🎉 🎊

I guess that all the pitching we did in Switzerland and China eventually paid off and we have finally got used to it 😉
While we get ready for the upcoming milestones of the competition, check out our pitch if you are interested in it!

See you for the next update,

Yann for Toygether

P.S. Congrats to our dear friends in the Flowlin team to have passed the pitch selection of the START competition as well 💪

Dear CHIC followers,

if you recall the last couple of posts from this summer, we left our story hanging between pitches, prototyping and culture-exploring activities in Hong Kong and Shenzhen. We are now back in Switzerland and the new semester has officially started for all of us for a few weeks already. Toygether continues to be an important portion of our time and we are focusing on developing a new functional version of our product to demonstrate at MassChallenge during the DemoDay organized this winter (stay tuned for it!).

In the meantime, we are going to proudly showcase what the experience CHIC allowed us to create at the ForumEPFL. We are pleased to share with everyone that the widely known job fair will offer us a stand during the Start-up day (Tuesday, October 9th). It will be a perfect occasion to discuss and illustrate our product in a “real-world context”, and put to practice what the project taught us so far.

Therefore, do not hesitate to come to see us tomorrow afternoon at the SwissTech Convention Center. We have already printed posters and many flyers for the occasion. We are only waiting for you!

Introduction

During the whole CHIC experience we were working in or visiting places called Makerspaces. Makerspaces are places where people are allowed to make a bit of mess, it’s a very creative environment and it’s made for people who want to create, try and build new project without any pressure. Or that’s what we had in mind before coming to China.

X.Factory hosted us during our stay in Shenzhen for all the prototyping phase. We had our offices there and access to all the tools and machines to build our prototypes. We also went to visit TroubleMaker in Huaqiangbei to get another vision of Shenzhen makerspaces.
Then, once in Hong Kong, we visited to two of the most well-known makerspaces of the city: Dim Sum Lab and MakerBay.

Shenzhen

We came to Shenzhen with an idea of makerspaces from western countries: a messy workshop buzzing with crazy projects, tools and machines all over the place. We were more than surprised to discover Shenzhen’s so called makerspaces: clean, neat and organised co-working spaces, covering massive office space and with relatively small workshops.

The Chaihuo/x.factory makerspace, where we spent 2 weeks bringing our projects to life

After spending two weeks at x.Factory and discussing with various makers and accelerators, we realised that our Western ideal of a “hobbyist maker” doesn’t exist in China: people simply don’t have the time for that. Quite on the contrary, Shenzhen’s makerspaces were focused on pushing projects from the prototype stage to production; a running joke among the makers is “what about your business model?” as not being able to make profit means not being able to survive in this extremely competitive environment.

The makerspaces in Shenzhen operate as co-working spaces where “makers” can rent a desk or an office for a given amount of time, and benefit from the makerspace’s facilities and coaching from “tech gurus”. Some makerspaces aim to bring projects from prototype to production, others hope to teach the newcomers about the Shenzhen manufacturing ecosystem, and some will just help if needed or even provide freelance engineers or designers as needed by budding startups.

We also visited the Troublemaker makerspace in Huaqiangbei, in the neighbourhood of the famous electronics market. They host many individual makers or start-ups in private offices and a few common working spaces, and have a couple of small workshops with laser-cutters, 3D-printers, soldering equipment and more. They do not receive government subsidies and have to run on a profitable business model to survive. They do not have “rules” for the people they host, and do not push them to go to the market with their projects, although many come to Shenzhen for this purpose. Troublemaker has some freelance Chinese engineers who offer their services to teams in need of some specific expertise.

The Troublemaker offices, closed spaces common in Shenzhen makerspaces that challenged our Western conception of “hobbyist” makerspaces

In Shenzhen, makerspaces are common as there are more than a hundred (but this is a difficult number to evaluate) all around the city, creating a great makerspace community. The reason why makerspaces are so popular is that the government is investing a lot of money to open makerspaces and support innovation. Companies benefit from tax rebates and government subsidies for opening creative and makerspaces, which are opened by dozens by real estate and tech companies, which also means they are not really for hobbyists and aim to be profitable in some way.

Makerspaces in Shenzhen seem to be “professional” more than “hobbyist”, operating as co-working spaces, startup accelerators which help start-ups with business models and large-scale production in the Chinese environment.

Hong Kong

Under the “one country, two systems” governance of Hong Kong, the state is free to set its own laws. Hong Kong also has a government pushing for innovation, however, this can be seen through “official” organisations such as the HKSTP (Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation) rather than through makerspaces. In fact, makerspaces are quite new to Hong Kong with Dim Sum Labs, the first makerspace of HK, created in 2011.

Hong Kong posses few makerspaces, those places are community-driven hubs for anyone who wants to make something. It’s places for people that want to start their business, some artists that want to express their art, designers that want to transform their vision into reality or even some activists that are making some activities. We have visited two of most well know makerspaces Dim Sum Labs and Makerbay and have heard of a third one Three Key Craft Space.

Dim Sum Labs is a tiny makerspace (compared to those in Shenzhen) which focuses on building projects, taking things apart, and educating people and children about technologies. In this sense it felt familiar with Western makerspaces, as they had no focus on production or profitability. We went there to pitch our projects, and the team had some very interesting insights and suggestions about our projects, from a different perspective than from the investors or accelerators.

Dim Sub Labs, a tiny and fun makerspace in Hong Kong

Conclusion

When we chose the “Makerspaces” subject to study between Shenzhen and Hong Kong, we didn’t expect to run into such a great divide from one city to another. We finished our adventure with the impression that Hong Kong have makerspace dedicated more toward hobbyists and students while it looks to be more about working in a professional way and launching start-ups in Shenzhen. If you want to prototype and iterate hardware it is definitely more adequate to do it in Shenzhen. However, if you would like to launch then a real business it can be good to move to Hong Kong.

Finally, we want to thank Hank and Hans from troublemaker, Violet from X.Factory, Brian and the team from Dim Sum Labs and all the other people who introduced us to the making environment in Shenzhen and Hong Kong!

Chloe&Victor

Hi everyone,

Here we are again, for another “Border ecologies” blog post. The text that is following will describe some of the differences Amandine Gini & Simone Sanso spotted during this journey, beginning in Shenzhen and ending in Hong Kong, around public spaces.

To understand better how different those two cities are from our well-known Swiss environment, the blog post is structured by themes.

Ready to discover more about Chinese public spaces?

• Street indications

Let us start with the different symbols and signals we saw in China.

First of all, one main difference between Hong Kong and the rest of China is that cars drive on the left side of the street. In fact, until 1998, Hong Kong was a british colony, before becoming part of China, but still keeping their regulations. This is the reason why Hong Kong is also known as “one country, two systems”.

In Shenzhen, another point that stroke us was how organized the subway stations were organized. To ensure that everyone taking the subway would respect the same rule, many visual symbols are used to teach how to behave. For example, in front of every door entrance of the subways, there are yellow feet showing where the people should queue, to leave some space to the persons inside the subway to leave.

• Behaviours

A common behaviour that we noticed in both Shenzhen and Hong Kong was the utilization of smartphones. Various situations could be surprising, when different people could interact together in a shared public space rather than staring at their screens.

This over-utilization of smartphones seems already well aware in Chinese minds, as even in the subway station, symbols like the following one forbid people walking in the subway to pay attention to their surroundings.

One stereotype about Chinese never ending working hours could not be more true than this photograph of police officer, falling asleep while standing.

A myth that we would also have liked not to be true is the Chinese habit of spitting. Even though it happened to slip on someone’s spit on the floor of the bathrooms, Chinese people take usually care of spitting inside a trash can.

• Displacement & transportation means

While segways seemed to be much more common in China than in Switzerland, the main transportation means used in China were more or less the same as the Swiss ones, i.e. car, bus, subway, etc. Surprisingly, despite the fact that a usual day in South of China is 35 degrees Celsius, people do not fear to use bicycles to go to work. We hope that they are able to take a shower before actually starting to work. Here is a photograph of very smart wheels, than do not need air in a chamber to be ridden.

If you thought that the subway in Paris was over-crowded and difficult to use, believe us, it is nothing compared to the subway stations in Hong Kong. The following picture was taken at 8:30 am. The entire station was congested, without air conditioning. Closing our eyes, this station looked more like a Swedish sauna, with people wearing clothes.

Another kind of taxi transportation was as interesting as dangerous to discover. As you can see in the following photograph, this taxi is nothing else than a scooter with an umbrella. The Friday evening, after the pitch at HAX accelerator, Simone & Marjane were blocked in the city center because of the subways, not circulating anymore after 11 pm. All of a sudden, heavy rainfalls began and everyone in the city rushed under protected areas and towards taxis. Therefore, this scooter taxi revealed itself to be very practical. Both places in the back stay of the scooter remain almost completely dry. We were not sure whether the driver had a valid license, though!

• Safety

With respect to the safety, the relationship with police officers was felt much friendlier in China, than in Switzerland. In Shenzhen, by night, they could be easily recognized with the blinking red and blue LEDs. The order was, thus, not ensured by using fear. Likewise, in the subway of Hong Kong, television screens were showing police officers explaining, in manga animations, how people shall behave.

Surveillance cameras invaded most of the public spaces in China. A large number of roads were able to track the Chinese citizens with facial recognition. A flash could sometimes be seen in Shenzhen, scanning every car number plate, similarly to the flash used to notice drivers exceeding the road’s maximal velocity.

Another bizarre tool, of about 2 meters long, could be noticed in Chinese subway stations, as illustrated in the following photograph. You might wonder what this large piece of metal would be used for. Apparently, it is used by the security to push away people.

The choice of placement for the emergency exits also intrigued us, because they were usually at the bottom of the walls in the subway stations of Shenzhen. One might think that it is easier to see the emergency exits from far, when they are placed on higher positions. Could this choice be due to the fact that, in case of fire, people would all lie down on the floor and would not be able to see much in high positions due to smoke? Or could it be due to the over-utilization of smartphones, allowing to daily catch people’s attention, staring at their phone while commuting from a subway to another?

• Pollution

While Hong Kong seemed to care more about selective sorting of trash than Shenzhen, both cities presented both sonor and visual pollutions.

The most annoying sonor pollution was in Shenzhen, because of the Chinese people trying to catch the pedestrians’ attention. Another stressful habit was that Chinese people riding bikes keep using the bell to alert that they are arriving, even if there is more than enough room for them to pass by. Soft music could be played to notify pedestrians, at Huaqiangbei (the Shenzhen electronic market), that the shops were closing.

One common point in both Hong Kong and Shenzhen was the visual pollution. Both cities present very high skyscrapers, with tons of lights, sometimes even working in phase with different buildings.

• Vegetation

In Shenzhen, almost all the trees had a security to keep them stable, because the city has been built very recently. For this reason, the roots of the trees did not have time yet to grow.

As WeChat users are used to scan and be scanned for any reason, even trees have their own QR codes.

• Fun facts

To finish this blogpost, we decided to show here a compilation of fun facts during our journey in China.

Similarly to phone boxes, small karaoke cabins exist, in case people would have singing urges.

You might meet some really curious companions…

You never know when heavy rainfalls can happen, and some people get seriously prepared!

And as this Chinese grandma’ taught us, make yourself comfortable to prepare a good meal.

As you can see, this CHIC experience was not only incredible professionally, but also very rich culturally… and we will leave with so many more memories!

Thanks to all the people, making this opportunity real. We hope this article helped you understand better the differences just like we experienced them and we hope that it will open up your eyes to check out differences with Switzerland too! We really enjoyed acting like detectives in both cities and we learned a lot thanks to those observations.

Let’s keep our eyes open!

By Amandine & Simone.

Dear CHIC followers,
we don’t know whether we are still influenced by the jet-lag or it’s the impact of the famous “Shenzhen speed” everyone talks about. However, it is already the second week in China and the prototype is due in less than 48 hours. Days have flown away between development, pitching nights and the immersion into the red dragon’s culture.

Two days ago, the main event was centered around the Sino-Swiss Innovation Conference in downtown Shenzhen, which aims to illustrate how the close relationship between Switzerland and China can generate huge benefits for both countries. Of course, the team Toygether was there along with all the CHIC program. The night’s plan included multiple speakers from both Switzerland and China for which their own story could be inspiring for our own path in Shenzhen. The general consulate of Switzerland in Guandong province was also with us. At the end of the night, the different team pitched and Simone was our “man of the night”. He delivered a very unique pitch by fully impersonating a kid playing with our toy, which effectively got everyone’s attention in a heartbeat. It was a long day for everyone and being the last team pitching required such performance to correctly deliver the message.

The night could not have been over easily without encountering another adventure. We went eating in the Huangqiang bei surrounding and chilled out after such a long day. However, we faced a “cultural critical incident” when realizing the subway to go back home closed way earlier than we expected. Moreover, another rain storm had just reached the city and fully exploded on us that night. Finding a mean of transportation, being a taxi or a “Chinese tuk-tuk” was a challenge!

The pitching schedule is very tight. After presenting in front of the Sino-Swiss center it was the time to showcase our project to the X.factory community, which has been hosting us for the past days. During the night, Luca and Marjane pitched in front of different Chinese makers. Moreover, the night finished with an interesting networking experience between us and them which helped us obtaining numerous feedback on our product. The general response is very positive and we feel more and more confident about the long path that brought us here.

At last, we got the pleasure to have the Swiss television with us which have documented our experience in China. It was a nice experience and it will, for sure, leave incredible memories for the future. We are all looking forward to turning on the TV and check it out!

It is the final day to finish our prototype. We are all looking forward to finally see the different components merged together in a working object 🙂

After this weekend and a sunday free of work, the five teams are back to work at X-Factory. The teams are very focused, as there are only 4 days left to finish the prototypes. We decided to ask each team 3 questions, to sum up their current situation and their daily plan.

1. Where are you now in term of advancement for the prototype?
2. What do you plan to achieve today?
3. What are the risks and challenges you might encounter today?

We started with team Guido, who told us that their main task of the day was to send the PCB into production. This is important, as it takes at least 2 to 3 open days to be processed and arrive here at X-Factory. Moreover, they also wish to finish a first stable firmware for their connected keyboard. Meanwhile, the product designer will send to the CNC machine a mould that will enable them to pour the silicone for their interactive surface. Guido team seems to be a bit overwhelmed, though, by the quantity of work to be done, but stays motivated and very concentrated. Keep on going!

What about team Flowlin? The engineers of the team are still waiting for the PCB to arrive, in order to start assembling the components and finally get to test everything inside the prototype. This morning, they finished and sent the second PCB for the light part. The other team members are working on the pitch for tomorrow and the UX designer is trying to make a prototype for the app, to better understand the possible user interactions. Finally, Sandra wishes to get some feedback from Chinese workers to be able to adapt their product to the Chinese market. To this aim, she will ask some people working at X-Factory.

The team Toygether managed to make the LEDs light up inside their intermediary prototype of plush toy. One of their big challenges still needs to be handled: the capacitive touch sensors must work through the fluff of the toy, to allow a full interaction between the children and the toy. The pin-out board for the electronic development kit has been sent and should be manufactured by tomorrow. The industrial designer works on adapting the mechanical box containing the electronics. Meanwhile, the media interaction designer focuses on the video rendering of the materials inside the plush toy, for presentation purposes with the upcoming pitches. The software engineer enhances the design of the application. Congratulations, you are almost there!

The team Seeki sent to manufacture the 3D casing of their connected device. The stencil of the PCB has arrived, allowing their engineers to go and mount their electronic components at the Seeed factory. The media interaction designer works on animations of the mobile app. Additional components have been ordered and firmware functionalities are being revised in the code of their microcontroller. Their main fear is the possible critical questions that could be asked tomorrow, during the pitch with Sino-Swiss students. Let us wish them all the best!

The last team, Core, spends time debugging their electronics. The 3D casing of their weighter has been completely changed and ordered. The final prototype is planned to be finalized on Wednesday. Some software functionalities remain to be tuned to their last prototype. Both business students focus on the next pitch, while three of the engineers need to finalize their bachelor thesis about their project. Their main risk is that their PCB does not work. But do not worry too much, because they actually have a plan B, in case the troubleshooting would not bear fruit. They would then merge their previous PCB version with a development kit.

In the end, as you can see, all the teams are on the right track to finish their trip in Shenzhen with a minimalist working prototype!

Stay connected for more updates,

Amandine and Simone, for the CHIC community.

Hi everyone,

Here we are again, to give you some more insights about how the prototyping phase of the Toygether plush toy proceeds!

After a very instructive feedback from the HAX accelerator, the team did not take a second to rest. All the critics have been taken into account, the most important one being that our prototype will need to be tested as soon as possible. In fact, our plush toy must be accepted by the children using it! To verify and prove to parents that the interaction is playful enough, a meeting with local Chinese families might be organized in the next few days. This gave our team extra motivation to keep on hard working. The final goal stays getting a minimalist fully working prototype by Thursday evening (July 19^th), to showcase our product during the next presentations that will take place in Hong Kong.

On the design and business sides of the team, Saturday has been used to meet young Chinese designers from the Artop Group (AG). The firm works with more than 2000 brands – Philips, Whirlpool, Microsoft, Intel, Qualcomm, Sony, Boeing, BMW, Bentley, Huawei, etc – (more information at http://www.artopcn.com/en/ ). Many wild ideas for the design of the plush toy have been suggested, together with some insight on how the Chinese market could react to it. The key suggestions from the Chinese designers were that the plush toy should be more customizable. The plush toy should allow for children’s cognitive development. To this aim, their advice was to keep strong interactions with the child, even when the plush toy was not connected with the parent’s application. Therefore, the plush toy could be eventually adapted to a more modular shape. Here follows an example of modular plush toy, using scratches to let the child enjoy reconfiguring its beloved toy.

The question of how to ensure the electronic connectivity between different detachable parts of the toy remains unanswered in the moment. In the end, the shape of the current Toygether plush toy has been found adequate, by the Chinese designers, for children aged between 2 and 6 years old. It was also interesting to discover how their products were looking, before advising them on how to eventually better adapt their designs to Western countries.

On the electronic engineering side of the project, Chloe went to the Huaqiangbei electronic market to find connection wires. Then, she has been able to assemble an intermediary prototype of the inner electronic skin of the toy, in order to test as quickly as possible the assembly of the soft electronic components.

For timing constraints, the development kit from Espressif (ESP-WROOM-32) has been decided to be kept for this prototype. A new pin-out board has thus been realised by Simone, in order to attach the wires fixed on the electronic skin, with the development kit.

On the software part of the project, Yann worked on adapting the design of the application, after having closely collaborated with Luca, our media interaction designer.

You might have clearly noticed that bringing a prototype to life mainly depends on close collaborations between different competencies within the team.

To be continued…

Simone, for team Toygether.

For this second blog post we want to talk about Friday July 13. The morning was devoted to hard work at the x.factory, with teams either working on their pitches or their prototype. We then left after lunch to Huaqiangbei, the world’s biggest electronic market, filled with electronic components and full of other objects or accessories related to technology. The idea was for each team to be able to complete the components that were missing for the manufacture of their final prototype.

We went team by team in each store, floor by floor to find the perfect parts or pieces to match with our final PCB. It is true that the place and number of spare parts that could be seen was incredible but we were also surprised by the quantity of counterfeiting that was present on the market. At first the product was totally integrate and almost to differentiate with the basic product that has been copied. 

Counterfeited SanDisk SD card

Our main challenge was to find the best component that corresponded perfectly with our expectations but also at the best price, because it was easy to get lost with the amount of products that was offered to us and this on each floor and each market. Moreover it was relatively funny because one of the team told us that she wanted to buy an on/off switch and that they had an infinity choices of different sizes and shapes for it, and after twenty minutes of debate on the choice of the component the seller was unable to find the exact component that the team desired. So all that to say that the amount of products each stall sells is almost ridiculous.

The second part of the afternoon was dedicated to the first pitching session in Shenzhen. This event took place at Hax, one of the most famous hardware accelerator in Shenzhen. All five teams pitched in front of Benjamin Joffe, general partner at HAX.

Trained engineer, he has been working in Asia as a strategy consultant for over 15 years. He has seen hundreds of pitches for a lot of different product, and has in depth knowledge of the Chinese market trends. Prior to our pitch, Benjamin described the activities of HAX, the kind of companies and products they help develop. 

Here is a highlight of what he explained. HAX focuses on 4 different segment of activities: consumer, health, industrial and enterprise. Benjamin explained that although a few years ago HAX was axed on consumer product, they are now focusing more on the other 3 segments. Indeed, it is difficult to make consumer product that really solves a need, with a reasonably sized market, and if the product is ever successful, then a lot of cheaper (and potentially) better « copies » start appearing. However, for the entreprise segment, if a company has a problem that can be solved by a service/product with a better return on investment (i.e. cheaper) than what they currently do, they never hesitate to pay for it. The health and industrial segment are also more interesting for investors, as they are less prone to be copied. As the product developed for these targets require complex technologies or advanced know-how, the startups developing these products have more time to secure their market and built there brand before they get copied. After Benjamin’s presentation, it was time for us to pitch. The teams presented their product in the following order: Seeki, Toygether, Guido , Core, Flowlin.

All pitches were very impressive, and we could definitely feel the progress made since the pitching workshop we had before leaving to Shenzhen. The critics were tough but extremely constructive, with interesting remarks on the features of the product, the marketing and business side, as well as the way we pitch it. Benjamin and one of his colleague from HAX gave us a lot of helpful advices to make our product better, and general advices if we ever want to develop another product. For sure all the teams will make an even better pitch the next time, the 17th in front of the Sino-Swiss platform.

I hope you enjoyed this blog post, and we will keep you updated for the next days !

What a journey we had! For the past seven months, our team has kept working and improving every single day. We started from late October by not knowing each other at all. During the so-called “Ideation Week-end”, we managed to foster our relationships and team NAPaC was born. Our team-name NAPaC (Not A Pasta Cooker) reflects both our Italian roots in the team (3 members out of six) and the tendency, that we will further explore later on, of never stop brainstorming on possible ideas. We are a team which has always wanted to make the best out of such adventure. How could we ever settle then? That day we eventually left behind us our first idea (a “Pasta Cooker”), but be assured it would not be the only example of not-product in our background.

Urban communities, refugees and kids: how did we get here?

Days began to get shorter while the cold winter approached. This year, however, such signals weren’t only anticipating Christmas. The very first milestone arrived as well! Our first idea was a smart lamp you could use to virtually donate lighting to refugee camps while yours was turned on. We really wanted to make an impact with this adventure. However, the lamp idea, as you know from previous blog-posts, turned out to be the second not-product of our journey. I won’t lie by saying that we didn’t fear to pivot at the time. We decided to completely reposition ourselves while keeping the insights obtained so far. Looking back at it, I think we all enjoyed the new direction of pivot.

The next milestone (a couple of months and university exams later) officially inaugurated our new domain: connecting parents and hospitalized kids with a smart plush toy. Pivoting from an idea (the “refugees lamp”) to a new one (the “smart plush toy”) does not imply restarting everything from the very beginning. On the contrary, we have expanded our vision without forgetting the main positive points we achieved so far. As already mentioned, we all loved engaging ourselves in an impactful project. Moreover, we have been growing a passion for “people connection” that our past project brought (connecting donators and refugees at distant), which perfectly matched our initial assigned topic: “Urban communities”. I won’t lie about how much we all appreciated to work with a plush toy for kids. However, February could not yet be the month of final solutions, as the journey was long ahead of us.

While a smart plush toy was well appreciated, focusing on the hospitalization issue felt, once again, to be too restrictive on a difficult domain. In fact, the idea of a plush toy that can detect when a child cries to alert nurses has a good potential. However, the implementation in such domain requires a very high effort due to the responsibilities in such a sensible context. Why not connecting children and parents then, distant for any sort of reason and duration? We aimed at giving access to young kids the power of communication that new technologies (smartphones for example) brought. On the other hand, we also cared to give kids, already over-exposed to screens, an experience as less intrusive as possible in terms of technology. Could young children benefit from such long-distant and unintrusive connection with their parents?

Here’s to you, Toygether

Have you ever felt like spending more time with your children? Toygether is a plush toy for kids that connects to their parent’s smartphone. It enables parents to interact and play games with their children, even when far apart. Our plush toy features colorful lights and sounds to enhance the playing experience with children from 2 to 5 years old. With ever increasing working days and commute times, parents might have less time to spend with their loved ones. Toygether aims to bridge this gap by providing a screenless interaction platform, enabling young children and parents to play together, even when they can’t physically be together.

Toygether is the perfect project that both merges each team member’s field of interest (Business, Design and Engineering) with the everlasting desire of engaging into an idea that could matter. In the past, we have always tried to enhance the best from each NAPaC team-member while working, and Toygether definitely allowed all of us to be fully engaged. We wanted to be 200% engaged in what development would bring during the months of working together. Fostering long-distance interactions between families have definitely been a touching topic for all of us. Thanks to such setup, the teamwork has shined on the NAPaC group brighter than ever which eventually led us to obtain the prototype presented last Thursday. Our plush toy has many features and many key points we have focused on as our “mantra” of developing during the different stages.

Everything in the toygether system is designed to be simple and intuitive. Children and parents can share moments at distant by playing together in a healthy and safe interaction. The moment is accompanied by colors and sounds, both on the plush toy (thanks to concealed LEDs) and the parent’s application. Your child can play with his/her new toy, and you can enrich the moment by joining him/her wherever you are.

• Interactive | The plush toy and the smartphone app are connected together, allowing user-friendly and meaningful interaction between the parent and the child even at a distance.
• Educational | The plush toy helps to develop all senses of the kid. The sense of touch is awakened with the different materials. The music feature provides a very rich experience for cognitive development. Finally, playing with the toy can help improve memory and coordination.
• Washable | The electronics are easily removable, which allows for washing the outside of the toy.
• Screenless | Z-generation’s children are likely to be over-exposed to screens. Toygether enables parents to stay in touch and play with their kids at a distance without putting a screen in their hands. With Toygether, your children won’t even notice the technology between their hands!

Next? 中国 ！

Five big Milestones have already passed, which brought with them a huge number of unforgettable memories. There have been stressful days as well as enjoyable ones. We surely have enriched our academic year with an incredible experience that taught us a lot of valuable skills, both in our domains of studies and, particularly, in the interdisciplinarity context. We have all joined this edition of CHIC on our own, but trust me when I share with you that we have now grown to be an inseparable group (both in the NAPaC team and the rest of the peers as well).
We are proud to have finally found the perfect project to mark this experience: a smart plush toy to foster interaction between kids and parents (at distant). While writing those lines, I can’t help recalling the huge work each of us accomplished to make this prototype come to life.

However, even though I made these last paragraphs feel like a “goodbye”, our adventure is far from being over. We have reached an impressive moment after five big milestones in Lausanne. On the other hand, the CHIC (China Hardware Innovation Camp) would not be named like so without the trip to China in one month!
As mentioned in the last blog-post, we are ready to leave for 3 amazing weeks between Shenzhen and Hong Kong. The experience will allow us to further improve our work and obtain a working and fully functional product to bring back home. The documents for the VISA have been filled, the flight has been booked and the hotel is waiting for us … July 9th couldn’t be more awaited 😉

But it’s a story for another time. For now, we will focus on the remaining details before taking-off and, of course, handling the upcoming Summer exams session as well. Good luck to everyone!

再见 👋

The final race that will bring all of us in Shenzhen has officially begun, and trust me it will be messy! While the semester is about to be over to leave room for the upcoming examinations, the CHIC schedule has no breaks planned. In less than a week, the team will face the third and last prototyping milestone (MS5). We will have the chance to show everything that has been achieved so far in business, design, and engineering. Everyone is fully immersed in polish each detail before the coming Thursday: while the form of the plush toy is further explored and tested, every electric component is finding its place on the PCB; the application interface is completely redesigned and at the same time the firmware is coded with new functionalities. It’s a very complicated routine that requires coordination of each of us, but it’s proving to be working!

In the meantime, we have all been busy to fill in the VISA for Mainland China. It’s not difficult to get lost in the paperwork, between passport to prepare, forms to fill in, insurances to updates, etc. Our journey approaches and with the examinations to take care as well, we won’t even realize days passing by.

CHIC is a challenging race occasionally. Moreover, it can even become a muddy one that needs cooperation to overcome stress and difficulties on the way

That’s all for the moment, just a small sneak peak before the big presentation. We will have to be ready and present the best our team has to offer. We have been working together for months now, learning and developing new skills with each other. We can’t lie and say we didn’ have periods where our race looked like a military resistance path. Mud and barriers made of every single challenge we faced during our adventure. But teamwork has always made such obstacle fall in front of us. Time for the last sprint before reaching our Chinese destination during the summer.

So… Get ready and start! After the upcoming presentation, the next stop will officially be in Shenzhen!

Team NAPaC

Hi everyone!

We’ve been a bit late on the blog updates, but we’ve been super busy with our electronics, design and more! We presented our first soft prototype at MS5: a plush toy that could connect to a parent’s smartphone to initiate a common play session.

However, our prototype my look cute and kid-friendly, but the electronics inside were way too fragile to let anyone play with it: combining hard electronics and soft design is no easy feat!

Right now we’re working on integrating everything together so that both kids and parents can have an enriching experience playing with our toy!

Stay tuned for more fluff,
Chloe, for NAPaC team

Dear chic community,

Milestone 4 is going to happen very soon and we are getting ready. Things are slowly coming together and engineers, designers and business are moving step by step to make sure we have a fit all along the way.

You will learn more about our advance at milestone 4 and by then, here’s a little reflexion over the CHIC experience. It is not that easy to work efficiently when our tasks depend on several other team mates work, as it is the case in an interdisciplinary project such as CHIC. Communication is key and we also need to rethink our organisation according to each other and accept to wait sometimes for tasks completion that we are not responsible for.

So far, this project really helped us to take a step back, look at the broader picture and appreciate how the project is evolving instead of being only focused on our own tasks and rush to get them done.

See you all soon !

Dear CHIC community,

Here we are, end of April and the project is starting to feel much more real. Things are evolving fast now and you know what ? Designers chose our magic number…8 ! There are 8 notes on a scale so there’s going to be 8 actionable LEDs on our plushtoy.  And by the way, our plush toy will look nothing like a cute little monster, but more like…something you’ve never seen before. Engineers are working just as hard  to make a working prototype that we can test. The next step ? A hand made connected prototype that may very well be as big as a pillow ! It takes time to scale things down and the sooner we have it the sooner we can put it in the hands of kids to get it tested. Talking about testing, we ran a few interviews already and a few more are waiting for us next week so we are looking forward to discover those new insights ! We’ll keep you updated ! 

Engineering SCRUM board

Hello followers,
we didn’t waste too much time after our MS3 pitch and demo to directly go back to work. We have received a big load of suggestions, comments and doubts from both supervisors and colleagues of the other teams. We really are excited to dive in even more in this prototyping adventure we are living 🙂

However, a lot of work of and stress waits for us as well. Each of us has a full plan of tasks in order to provide the team with concrete advancements as soon as possible. To help us in all this work, for example, engineers have prepared a SCRUM board in their lab @ EPFL. By means of some paper, post-its and a few (hopefully) straight lines, we have defined each ones responsibilities for the coming weeks.

Can’t wait to see each of those Post-Its on the “Done” column soon !
But not before a nice and deserved Easter weekend. See you next week, have some good holidays ^-^

Yann for NAPaC

Hooray!
We got a neat concept under our hands now.
The lasts weeks, we had grown more and more concerned by the complex nature of the hospital environment. And even more preoccupations arose when we had difficulties in finding all the medical advice we were needing.

We needed to get out of that tight corner!

What was our project about after all?
One of the main issues we got passionate about was helping children that were alone and distant from their parents. We also believed in the power soft toy over the nowadays omnipresent flat screen and touch interfaces.

Why then focusing only to the hospitalised children when we could make a more simple and humble toy-device that could benefit any child?

So a new clear idea took shape in front of us:
A connected toy which would allow distant parents to have little moments of play with their children, even when they can’t be physically present. The game will be direct and physical (non-verbal level) and aimed at very young children.

Electrical wires are being soldered to conductive textile, cardboard shapes are laying down being evaluated and an embedded circuit is blinking in the dark.

Everything is getting more concrete, functional, tangible, soft, fluffy, cute and huggable!

Hello followers, what a week we just had !
The semester’s first deadlines, the CHIC meetings and even an unexpected March snowstorm.

As mentioned in the previous post, the semester is officially on right now and our CHIC schedule follows without breaks. Engineers have collected the very first pieces of hardware while, at the same time, coding the basic blocks of both firmware and software. But things are not as smooth as they might sound…

As I write down those words, the team tries to merge advancements in each field while keeping the hunt for the perfect missing detail wide open. “Which features should we go with?”, “What do we want to achieve?”, and so on… without forgetting the MS3 clock reminding us we have less than 20 days. We will eventually find the right answers to all those doubts we have, but for the time being we can’t help but shout out for help: “SOS CHIC !”

Hi everyone!

Last week, we needed some rest after MS2 to rethink everything we’d been told. All the feedback was very useful, but we felt a bit pushed around and insecure about the environment we chose for our smart teddy. After a few days and some much needed sleep catchup, we met again and decided to go for it. The hospital is an environment that makes sense to us, and we have a good collaboration possibility here at the Hôpital de l’Enfance. Of course, we’ll have to solve some problems that were raised such as communications and useful features.

Now that the semester has begun, us engineers are starting to have fun! We received our microcontrollers yesterday and managed to make it say hello to the computer! Soon, we’ll start experimenting communication features and more, stay tuned!

See you soon,
Chloe – for NAPaC team.

Chill, take it easy and relax… It is the last weekend before the beginning of the semester …

Well, that was not really our plan, since a China Hardware Innovation Camp (CHIC) deserves to be prepared! As the rest of the students part of this adventure, our team dedicated this weekend to synthesize the important tasks that will be following.

The first step of this weekend was to show the current stage of our project to the supervisors and the other teams.

Then, several discussions have been led with experts from different disciplines involved in our project, such as business, software engineering, electronics, industrial design and user experience. Feedback from the most skeptical experts helped us targeting on which aspects, our idea of plush toy for hospitalized children needed to be further developed.

In fact, after having analyzed the constructive observations of the experts, the team aimed at defining the “minimum viable product”, which has just enough features to fulfill the most important user needs. In the end, it became clearer in our minds that several crucial hypotheses have been set and never verified, within the context of children in hospitals.

For this reason, all the resources of the team will focus on getting more insight from specialists on the field. This strategy will ensure that our assumptions are validated, before specifying the final requirements of our project.

Brace yourself, China is coming!

Stay tuned,

Simone Sanso for team NAPaC.

Dear CHIC Community,

Time flies and MS2 is coming soon ! As ou already know, many things have changed since MS1 if not everything ! We started all over again, and were a little bit of worried that things wouldn’t work out too well. We were afraid we’d end up with no concrete idea, wondering what kind of value we could provide to what kind of customer…but that was until a few weeks ago.

All of a sudden, things started to move quickly. In no more than three weeks, ou idea went from embryo to a reasonably well defined  project. With the many feedbacks that we got from the interviews and the forms that we sent, we realized that our concept, as blurry as it was, made much more sens than we initially expected ! These health professionals also gave us a lot of information that helped us tailor our concept into a relevant project. With that set, it was much easier to move on to more practical features and to actually start developing a real object, and not just an idea.

Just a few more details to go and our baby’s up and ready to hit the stage on MS2 !

Hooray crew!
We survived the pernicious waters of conjectures and we are now sailing on the sea of concreteness. MS2 island don’t look so far away anymore.

Our efforts are being repaid. We are now confidents that our product has a real place in the care for hospitalised children. As I’m writing these words other team members are laying down the specifics of our device latest incarnation. People (both specialist and not) had very positive reactions to the toy-concept and helped us flesh out what kind of help we can provide in the field of child-monitoring. This new device synthesise all the feedbacks we obtained from interviews and surveys.

Having a toy that can give a rough assessment of the child ‘s state (In terms of sleeping, playing, crying, resting, etc…) will provide a simple yet rich new tool to nurses and doctors. It will help them both in the evaluation and the management of the patients.

And our toy is fun looking too! It’s not of much use to describe its playful features with words, but we are hoping to give a more tangible demonstration soon.

Now that the foundation has been laid down, everyone in the team is excited to finally exercise their respective skill for the project. Everyone is crafting their piece of the puzzle. And with another round of interviews coming our way, we are feeling better than ever.

… and so did the children. But they can share the adventure together while staying at the Hôpital de l’enfance in Lausanne. The cute little plush toys are given by the hospital to kids in order to ease out the staying for them. Aren’t they cute with their little movable plasters?

Mascot of hôpital de l’enfance in Lausanne

We met the little toy last week when Estelle and Simone brought it back from their interview at the Hospital. They had the pleasure to talk with two doctors and a nurse, who all work around children’s care. We could not have had a better feedback !
The interview went very smoothly and offered to the team the foundations for the coming steps, in which we will enter deeply the project detailing phase. Their reactions, comments and suggestions will now be of great use! The fact they already provide those toys shown us that our intuition was right. How will a “Smart” version of those fit in? The possibilities are endless, be patient.

Moreover, as mentioned in the last blog post, we have as well prepared some online surveys for both parents and specialists. We have started to send them around and received already some first responses.

We are really happy to have some positives feedback. Truth must be told, those past weeks have been difficult and stressful in order to merge the focus on both exams and CHIC. But I feel confident now that we have found the right path to follow.
Right now, kids go back home from the hospital with these cute cuddle toys… but you might find a toy “made by NAPaC” next time. Who knows, right?

NAPaC Team

Dear CHIC Community,

The end of semester is coming and all the team napac is under the stress…

But our team does not let down !

We are on the way of the interviews…Currently we realized several forms as much for the amateurs as for the professionals, we made contact with different people and we started to meet them. We look forward to receiving all these feedbacks to concretize our object, validated or not our ideas and finally to make prototypes that we can test concretely. Because since the beginning of this adventure, the our team has had some difficulties to find the final idea. I think we are all looking forward to being able to focus on a project and to anticipate a maximum on a specific topic.

See you soon for more information !

End of the semester, Christmas, New Year’s celebrations, upcoming exams, holidays…So many reasons for slowing down on our weekly meetings, but we didn’t !

As Chloe mentioned in the last post, our pivot was quite radical. We liked the idea of « offline » technology and how it could be applied for kids. We came up with the idea of a toy, with no apparent technology. This toy would simply collect data about the health and activity of it’s little owner. The context was not very clear at the beginning, but after asking some questions to our friends and families, we concluded that hospital could be an interesting context.

Yann came up with a beautifully illustrated diagram so we could brainstormer over possible features of the toy. Since the toy would probably take the form of an animal, we listed what information each of it’s sense could monitor.

Of course, less is more and we don’t mean to keep all functionalities in the final product, but we thought it would be interesting to list them all, consider them and the remove the les convincing ones.

You will here from us again very soon, hopefully with more details about the features !

With Milestone 1 behind us, we needed some time to sit back and reflect on what we had done. The NAPaC One project was developed for a milestone, but none of us felt this project was something we were passionate about. During the past few weeks, we have been brainstorming individually and in groups about what we really wanted to do.

NAPaC One brainstorming

We reflected on what we liked and disliked about our first idea, and what was blocking our progress. For example, we loved the refugees help theme but felt like with our team and CHIC framework, we couldn’t find anything that would really help. After all most connected objects are expensive and refugees first have very basic needs (water, food,shelter) to be fulfilled. Our idea for charity was quite disconnected from the refugees reality and although we loved the idea of raising awareness and funds, it was still a difficult problem, especially for the business side. We had more ideas for refugees related to connectivity, medical relief, helping children, etc. but these ideas wouldn’t satisfy everyone in the team: after all if the designer or computer scientist couldn’t contribute it wouldn’t be a good project in the CHIC context.

We liked the ideas of having an “offline” technology, one that would not be seen as a technical object but would collect data or interact with users. We also liked the idea of working with kids in a useful way. Once again, we didn’t want to make a gadget. We thought of tools to encourage good behaviours in a community, classroom devices, a toy to comfort refugee children…

One week later, we met again to reflect on these ideas. Using the power of the What If? brainstorming card, we came up with an idea: What if our connected device could provide meaningful data about children, while being a normal toy for the kids? What about a context where the data could be useful, such as in a hospital?

Dear CHIC Community,

We’ve been a little bit shy for the past weeks, but we’re back again with a new blog article ! Let’s face it : MS1 was not easy peasy. Bad timing, bad organization, bad everything…but we made it anyways !

Things are moving fast now, and thanks to the feedback on our MS1 presentation and the precious advice from our mentors, we decided to come back on our idea. Don’t get me wrong, we’re not giving up on it…just brainstorming a little bit more !

After the rush of the MS1 we also realized that our organization could not exactly be described as “optimal”. Our meeting on Thursday was dense and long but very productive and we’re up and ready for next challenges !

Days became weeks and weeks became… time for Milestone 1 !

As we mentioned in previous posts, nobody realised how fast time could fly. It seems yesterday we all met, guys and girls from different universities and different personal backgrounds, but with one same objective: develop the next important connected device in this ocean of existing objects.

Everything we did in the past month was meant to fulfil this very important first Milestone. We did our load of brainstorming, meetings and interviews to tackle the “Urban Community” theme we started with.

Last Friday, the three teams gathered at EPFL to pitch what they achieved and what they will be developing next. It was a good occasion to listen to the other’s work and learn about own their path to this point. We pitched our 15 minutes as everyone. It felt like the big opening night of the newest Broadway show! We, the actors, spent the last period defining the act (what problem are we going to tackle? Which solution will we presenting?  and so on) and rehearsing the play.

I am sure you all are curious about it now, so here’s to you the very first result of all this: NAPaC ONE – Giving Light.
We realised the best way we could tackle the Refugees Crisis we started to focus on was by two important factors: raise awareness on the problem and provide constant donations to NGOs. By following this approach we aim to to have an impact that touches both the personal aspect and the resources on which those in need of help relate to.

At this first stage, our idea is to create a connected lamp that donates light to refugees when the user turns it on​. According to the usage of the light, the user could donate small amounts of money to sponsor the lightning of a refugee camp. Thus it will remind the users of the cause and their contribution, while also creating a physical link with the problem aimed to solve. Via your own smartphone you can always keep track of the impact you and your lamp made.

One of the many sketches for the object idea: a lamp that reminds the user about the cause he is engaged as it looks like a light used by refugees

User Interface sketch for the mobile application: keep track of the impact you made with the lamp and get engaged in the cause

As for now we only got a small “ice breaker” to the CHIC adventure. The possibilities towards how this idea could evolve are countless and Milestone 2 will be the goal helping us to focus on the next exploration. The causes we want to aim are many and we could see this idea implemented to help children in difficult countries as well as less-fortunate people in our own local reality. On the other hand, even the context for such product need to be explored and we will understand if it could fit better as a personal device at home, a collective object for an elementary classroom (going back to communities) or as many more options.

Everything will be answered by the next Milestone! So stay tuned for the next updates 🙂

NAPaC Team ~ Turn On Your Love To Donate

“Time flies” is not just an expression, but a reality.

It looks like the CHIC adventure just started… Still in less than a week, NAPaC will already present an idea of product responding to a question of large scope that our interdisciplinary team aims to solve. Here is a short recap of this fourth week, preparing the first milestone of Friday, December 1st.

After having brainstormed about refugee communities, very different orientations appeared in this wide universe. Narrowing down towards four central topics, the group decided to investigate the nature of recurring problems in refugee camps. Education, identity registration, resource sharing and coordinating organization have been emphasized.

Then, two activists of “UNIL sans frontieres” have been interviewed. The Swiss association militates to facilitate the access to university for refugees. The objective of the meeting was to get more familiar with the current situation, talking with persons from the field. This conversation became key to start thinking about problematics that really matter.

With Estelle’s support, everyone cooperated to build a value proposition and imagine different customer segments for this project’s idea, that could be developed from February 2018.

Before the first milestone, Chloe will have the opportunity to participate to the Humanitarian Hackaton in Geneva. Luca and Marjane will use their awesome drawing skills to put in pictures the first ideas of our project. Meanwhile, Estelle, Yann and Simone will find the state of the art of other products on the market. Together, the pitch for the presentation will be prepared and practiced.

Stay tuned! As soon as we know if the idea of the project is validated, we will of course keep you and CHIC community updated.

To be continued …

Hello CHIC community

Three weeks already that we’ve started this adventure and NAPaC seems to be on good track !

After our first pitching class where Luca totally blew our minds, we had to get back to work. We moved heaven and earth to understand the refugee’s problematic and now we narrowed down our focus.

On our weekly meeting we brainstormed over our homework of the previous week. Marjane’s sheet was the best source of inspiration ! Four themes popped out :

1. Education for kids in camps
2. Volunteers working in camps
3. Identification of refugees in camps
4. Management of ressources in camps

Our goal for next Thursday : choose the idea ! Oh yeah…

Luca, Marjane and I met Professor Stéphane Halmaï-Voisard from ECAL who gave us some good hints about where to seek for information.

Simone is preparing next week’s meeting which is going to be crucial and Chloe enrolled for a hackaton on the refugee’s topic. This one promises to be awesome !

With Yann, we met Nathalie Janz who is responsible for registration of refugees integrating UNIL. We got a lot of references from her…so many acronyms we felt like we could be playing Scrabble with the given letters !

Tobia, our mentor, gave us some very precious contacts as well ! Dikolela from CODEV at EPFL already presented us a « ready-to-work-on » project. Vasili who is actively working with refugees in Lesbos, Greece offered us a Q&A session for next week and said he’d come and meet us in december. But best for last : He invited us to come to Lesbos and discover the situation on our own in February !

As usual, Yann makes sure we don’t get too messy, spreading our files and documents everywhere but where they should be. He keeps us organized so we’re up and ready for another crazy week !

Hello CHIC community

Here is what happened during this adventurous second week !

We continue to make our appointments at epfl and we started by saying hi to everyone, very important since it was the first point on the agenda Luca provided. That was cool !

We met our three mentors. We had a chat with them and understood better how they will fit in the team. They will be a reference for anything that concernes the team organisation and a starting point when ever we feel in trouble in the group dynamics.

We then made a round of ideas from each team. Everyone shared what they explored during the past week and what they have found. We took some time to discuss the different proposition. Everyone found a strong interest in the refugee camp topic. It will need more exploration and we will be on it !

So Estelle’s timeline of homeworks…
It can’t be all fun. So Estelle presented the timeline of achievements to do for the coming meetings before the MS1.
We have a very nice presentation for the coming tasks. We will look for our costumers (associations, etc.) and try to determine a problem we could solve from them.

Last but not least, Estelle invited us saturday night to share a meal together (except Chloe who was in London 😢).
The level was very high, she made food with LOVE and it was delicious.
There was food for each tastes, we thank her again ! It was really nice to share a moment together, we get to know each other step by step…
We meet Simone’s and Estelle’s boyfriend/girlfriend and it seems that everyone is on the same feeling !

xoxo
Marjane

Here we are.
Lost in the immensity of the possibility offered by the Urban Communities. A universe so vast that everything seems to go with it, and yet nothing has satisfied our minds.

“We need to narrow the scope!” you can almost hear screaming through the virtual corridors of our Slack chatroom.
– Smart urban lights?
– Alternative communication systems?
“No! We have to think about the people.”
– Pedestrian?
– Refugees?
“Wait let’s think of a problem first!”
– Traffic pollution?
– Garbage management?
“Hey let’s focus on the technology we could exploit.”
– LoRa?
– SmartPhones?
…

This is a big dragon to slay. But we are all ready, and for tomorrow’s meeting we will all come armed with new and sharp ideas… only one will be left standing.
So we will have our champion.
And, who knows, we might even figure out how Trello works!

See you soon.

Hi everyone! We had our first CHIC workshop last week-end… and now the adventure begins!

The NAPaC team is formed of (from left to right, top to bottom on the team picture): Chloe from Microengineering, Estelle from Business, Simone from Microengineering, Marjane from Industrial design, Luca from Media Interaction Design and Yann from Computer Science.

Our team formed around the idea of providing services to urban communities. We have many ideas, like urban gardening, crop monitoring or local networks for disaster relief situations. We have a broad subject and are determined to explore many possibilities to find how we can help with our product!

You might be wondering about our name, right? As there is some Italian influence in our team, we could have decided to design something related to pasta… but in the end our project is Not A Pasta Cooker. Here you go.

Stay tuned for more information about our project!

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Nagoya_West_Medical_Center_rooftop_garden_No.3.JPG