Don’t panic – it’s just a video game. Welcome to Neuro-Ludus, a game designed by Montreal researchers to test the effectiveness of gamification in IT training. Its dramatic opening scene is meant to draw players into the game, where they solve various puzzles to win points and advance through 30 levels.

Clearly, this is not traditional tech skills training. And that’s exactly the point.

“This game is very engaging. We wanted it to be accessible for a wide range of people,” says Dr. France Boutin, a professor at the Université du Québec a Montréal (UQAM).

France Boutin, UQUAM

Boutin developed the Neuro-Ludus game with a team that includes Dr. Chris Chinien, president of Compétences/Skills R&D Inc. They cite research suggesting video gamers fare better than non-gamers at multitasking, short-term memory, spatial cognition and information processing – all essential to learning new IT skills. The same research also shows video games help people ‘learn how to learn.’ It’s a transferable cognitive skill that many schools and IT courses ignore, says Chinien.

“They don’t teach people to learn how to learn. They teach subjects,” he says.

The Neuro-Ludus project is underpinned by new research on neuroplasticity as well.

“People thought our brain was fixed or hard-wired, that you’re born and you die with the same kind of cognitive skills and they can’t be changed. Now with recent neuroscience research, we discovered the brain is soft-wired. With training and experience you can alter the way the brain is wired,” says Chinien.

Can video games effectively teach IT skills? Can gamified training rewire the brains of non-techies to help them acquire IT skills faster? Boutin and Chinien’s team built the Neuro-Ludus game to find out.

They’ve put out a worldwide call for volunteers aged 18 and older to test Neuro-Ludus. (Ludus is Latin for ‘game’ or ‘learning’.) The game will be available for test play in French and English for computers, tablets and smartphones from May until December.

Gamified IT training has already been put into play at Launchfire Interactive Inc. The Ottawa firm gamifies consumer promotions and corporate training for clients such as Telus, Costco and Sobeys.

“Probably the coolest (IT training game) we did was for Dell, Intel and Microsoft. All three of them were collaborating to train Dell staff on the value proposition of Dell computers in combination with Intel chips and Microsoft server-side software,” says John Findlay, Launchfire’s chief technology officer.

Each Dell employee was given a virtual budget to build their own data centre by choosing server, chip and software components. If their data centre stayed on budget and successfully completed various tasks (like handling email traffic or shooting down viruses), players earned ‘money’ to upgrade their data centre and move to the next round. (They had a chance to win real prizes as well.)

“The people it was targeted at were both IT folks and salespeople because Dell wanted them to understand some of the complexities and value propositions of these products,” says Findlay. “And the average person played for almost an hour. So in terms of engagement it was one of the more successful (training programs) that Dell had done.”

“The whole process of learning by game is just considerably more fun,” Findlay adds. “And I think it speaks to a realization that people are gradually coming to, that there are better ways to teach people.”

Now the more than 5,000 Canadian-based Shopify retailers can use the same software that powers their digital storefronts in the real world.

“You can sell in store, you can sell on the go using our mobile phone app, and you can sell online using one system,” said Adam Mcnamara, vice president of product at Shopify, during the company’s recent pop-up event in Toronto. “What we’ve managed to do is bridge the gap between online retail and in-store retail in a way that’s approachable by small business owners.”

Shopify’s POS system

Retailers using the POS system for in-store payments, which attaches to any Apple mobile device, will now be able to put their business online and accept credit card payments with the push of a single button. At the same time digital retailers will be able to accept cash and card payments at pop-up shops and brick and mortar storefronts using the same software that powers their online storefront.

Mcnamara believes that at $49 a month for unlimited payments and locations, and credit card rates as low as 2.1 per cent, the Shopify POS system will have no problem competing with similar payment processing systems such as Square, which charges retailers a flat 2.75 per cent on all transactions with no monthly fees. He also believes the lower price point will translate into a better shopping experience for consumers.

“For the customer, lower prices to accept credit cards translates into lower price to sell products, so we’re hoping to bring down the merchant’s overhead so they can run a really streamlined, polished business, which translates into savings for the people who shop there,” he said.

Other features, such as automatically emailing receipts to customers and faster payment processing have the potential to improve the retail shopping experience for customers, but the real selling point for Canadian small businesses is the ease of having all their vital sales information in a single location.

“It’s the same interface, it’s the same setup for inventory and product and customers and orders, all managed in one place,” said Mcnamara.  “From a merchant’s perspective, I understand my business better, managing outstanding orders and coordinating by customers becomes easier — it’s a quality of life improvement.”

While negotiations with Canadian banks forced Shopify to provide the service in the United States first, Mcnamara is excited to bring the POS system back to where it all began.

“We’re a Canadian company, and we’re really proud to finally bring Shopify Point of Sale back home to Canada now that we’re worked with the banks to allow us to accept credit cards here as well,” he said.

Photos courtesy Andrew Williamson 

This may be less common at academic gatherings, but at events in the technology industry you can now reliably count on the organizers setting up a giant monitor somewhere on site that shows a running feed of all the comments from attendees on Twitter. Usually these are organized by the hashtag that identifies the event. There’s usually little attempt to filter or highlight anything that gets displayed on the screen. It’s as though, after realizing people were not putting away their smartphones and would be providing a running commentary about their experience online, conference producers want to show that they are aware and encouraging of the practice. The monitor, like the buzz of conversation at the networking cocktail reception near the end of a conference, is a way of showing that the whole thing was a big success.

To me, though, Twitter walls at events are a huge missed opportunity, and show how far we still have to go to integrating display technology in a way that’s more effective and sustainable. What gets tweeted during the keynote speeches, plenary sessions and coffee breaks represent an incredible source of data on what resonated with attendees. Instead of capturing and studying it, event producers tend to simply turn off the monitor at the end of the day and rely on people filling out that same paper-based evaluation forms they’ve been using for decades. They fail to recognize that what’s being said on social media is a parallel but distinct event in its own right. It should be a place where experts engage, contribute and provide additional value to what’s being said on stage.

This isn’t just a failing of the conference industry. Instead of a monitor, why aren’t more people implementing software to power actual digital signs which would not be limited to a day or multi-day event but permanently installed in helpful locations within an organization? Examples might be the lobby of a public space where visitors could get a sense of what’s going on inside or tweet questions about what they need upon arrival. Retailers could offer information about products and services right next to a shelf, and curate links to videos, articles and other content that help shoppers get more out of what they’re preparing to buy. There are plenty of startups with good products that could offer some degree of this today, including Tint, SocialWally and  TweetBeam, but I suspect there’s also still lots of room to innovate here.

So much of what you see in digital signage is basically a one-way conversation between who owns the sign and those that happen to glance in its direction. There are still untold ways that the silent but never-ending dialogue taking place on social channels could be harnessed, curated and amplified to completely rethink the user experience of being in a particular location. It’s time to pay more attention to the enormous panel discussion that happens long before — and long after — any kind of isolated conference or event takes place.

Connor Dickie,
Synbiota

“Instead of bioengineering costing millions and taking years of your life, it costs just thousands now and takes months, and in fact it could be just hundreds of dollars and days,” said Dickie. “If the cost is going down, that means more people are going to get involved, and not just more people in big companies and governments, it will be designers and students and mothers. They’ll come up with really interesting ideas that were never thought of before, just like what happened in computing.”

Dickie, along with co-founders Justin Pahara, Pantea Razzaghi, and Mason Edwards have created an ‘open science’ platform called Synbiota, which provides complete access to some of the 400 projects currently being pursued by its 800 users.

The platform provides users with access to researcher’s electronic lab books, allowing them to either collaborate or build off of research that is already being conducted. It also allows for Twitter-like mentions, attributions, and hashtags, to provide users the ability quickly find existing research in areas of interest. This means that instead of requiring a lab and a research grant, everyday people can contribute their research and ideas from an iPad at a coffee shop.

“In terms of user experience for collaboration, we’re using the common tools that remote collaboration has been doing for the past 20 years in computing,” said Dickie.“A person who’s interested can inspect a project and look at any DNA codes that has been stored in that project, they can look at any lab notes and lab book entries and experimental results that have been included in that project, they can ask to join a project, and if they think there is valuable stuff in that project they can fork it into their own repository.”

Dickie adds that Synbiota has also recently partnered with a venture capital firm in Ireland called SOSventures, which has opened up a $300,000 fund to finance some of the projects that result from the platform, and provide an incubator-like environment for the life science innovations.

“People that come on our platform, they can sign up, start projects, do research, bring in colleagues, and they can also take their projects to a marketplace that we provide,” said Dickie. “The idea is to really empower the user with the full capabilities, from research right to market.”

Dickie believes that these tools will be vital in empowering everyday people to contribute to biotechnology projects, and while DNA coding isn’t as common today as computer coding, Synbiota has had some encouraging signs that the industry is moving towards the mainstream.

“We won the South By Southwest interactive accelerator, and we got the top prize in the innovative world technologies category, and that was fantastic for us because it really is proof positive that synthetic biology and this new type of biotech is breaking into popular culture,” he said.

Just as computing was once only accessible to major corporations and government entities, Dickie hopes that biotech will soon break free from the lab environment, allowing everyday people to contribute their innovations to a ‘bio app store.’

Marchessault’s focus on art and technology runs far beyond the aesthetic and academic. “(It’s) about redefining places where art is shown, getting it out of galleries and museums and putting it in unusual places,” she says. Take Land/Slide, an exhibition she curated last year in the Toronto area suburb of Markham. By placing interactive, multimedia art installations within historic village buildings, the show riffed on themes of history, urban planning, cultural diversity, architecture and environmental sustainability.

The Project: In her ongoing Visible City Project, Marchessault examines how new media technologies and globalization influence artistic cultures in Toronto, Havana and Helsinki. In 2013, Marchessault helped launch Sensorium, a set of labs where academic research meets artistic expression and technological innovation. Part of its stated mandate is to focus on “collaborative methodologies between artists and scientists.” Case in point:  Sensorium’s Future Cinema Lab, where researchers and artists explore new methods of digital storytelling via film, 3D technology, augmented reality (AR), mobile media and interactive Web content.

Sensorium is as much about technology creation as research generation. For Land/Slide, various AR apps were developed at Sensorium so people could use their mobile devices to enjoy an enhanced experience at the show. “That’s one of the research axes that Sensorium engages with: in situ, site specific technologies that exist in the environment and create new kinds of interaction between public spaces and technology,” says Marchessault.

The Progress: While Sensorium, Future Cinema Lab and Visible City are all ongoing long-term projects, Marchessault does have some new irons in the fire. She plans to transform a tiny schoolhouse museum in Toronto’s North York district into a public art installation using various display technologies to explore “the concept of progress.”

The Prospects: Though no commercial activities have come out of her research yet, Marchessault says some of the components developed for Land/Slide (in AR, architectural projection and embedded media) carry the most potential to become licensed intellectual property or be applied to existing products and services.

The Passion: Marchessault believes there’s a global crisis in ecological sustainability. She says digital technology can help engage people in environmental issues – and art in general – by making both seem more accessible and relatable.

“A lot of artists are using new kinds of media – whether it’s mobile phones or large projections or Internet-based artworks – to forge a new space where art can be a means of both creating this public conversation around relational forms of art or in developing new kinds of pedagogies,” she says. “It’s a whole new aspect of public space with all this digital technology. And a whole new concept of engagement.”

For obvious reasons, the things that jump out to most mainstream media covering Digital Canada 150 last week were the ones that seemed to have the biggest impact on everyday consumers. There is the promise of expanded Internet access in rural areas, for example, and revamped privacy legislation to keep data safe in an age of increasingly online and mobile transactions. For academics wondering how, or if, their research in areas like gamification, user experience (UX) design or interactive display will ever make it into the commercial market, there was plenty in the federal strategy that could help.

Probably the best news, in fact, was something that had come out before the complete digital strategy was unveiled. This is the Business Innovation Access Program, which was originally announced in the 20123 budget. It’s designed, in the government’s words, “to support innovative research and development that translates into products that benefit Canadians by connecting small and medium-sized businesses with universities, colleges and other research institutions.” Elements of the Business Innovation Access Program almost seem to have been created with things like UX in mind. Eligible technical areas, for example, include “product optimization,” and “process development, analysis or optimization.”

There was a lot more in Digital Canada 150 that touched on commercialization, including intentions to update intellectual property laws and $100 million set aside for the Canada Accelerator and Incubator program, but the Business Innovation Access Program deserves particular attention. It’s less money, at $20 million pledged, but it could represent a highly tactical form of investment.

Many of the breakthrough inventions or technologies in post-secondary labs already take years to develop. Sometimes the thought of bringing it to market must seem equally (and dauntingly) long-term. The Business Innovation Access Program, however, focuses on organizations that normally aren’t candidates for technology commercialization because their pockets aren’t deep enough. Yet small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are the predominant corporate entity in this country, and a breakthrough that brings value to SMBs could have a far greater chance of commercial success than something that appeals to what is essentially a small collection of large Canadian enterprises.

SMBs are also, out of necessity, focused on a more near-term return on investment (ROI), and the Business Innovation Access Program has clearly taken this into account.  The government wants “short-term projects for which a business service or technical assistance would clearly demonstrate the potential to contribute to quicker commercialization of products or academic research.” That’s something researchers should want, too.

It’s hard to say how the government’s overall digital economy strategy will pan out, but this program, albeit a piece part of the whole, is probably the only way academic breakthroughs can get a foothold with this particular customer set. Yes, Ottawa is clearly hoping for a few quick wins here, but if the research sector could give them some, the path to applied innovation could become a lot shorter, too.

Last week, CommerceLab hosted a Google Hangout that brought together a panel of experts who could provide some advice and direction to help academics determine the best option for their work. Hosted by consultant Rick Paradis, the Hangout was the second online extension of a live workshop series that was also produced by CommerceLab.

The full recording is below, but we’ve once again captured some of the key highlights and takeaways:

Beware the $10,000 mouse trap: According to Jennifer MacInnis, senior director, applied research and commercialization, and legal counsel at Ryerson University, some researchers work on technology that may lack a viable market. If they manage to ensure someone will buy what they’re selling, it’s more a matter of how much they are willing to put into it. Many startups are founded, she said, because there isn’t an obvious company that would license the intellectual property (IP) involved.

“Startups take a lot of work, time and energy. They take people devoted to bringing the startup forward,” she said. Although finding someone to take the IP can also be difficult, “Once you’ve found your licensee, you’re turning your baby over to boarding school.”

If IP is all you’ve got, prove it: Researchers may worry that they need to build a functioning product or at least a prototype before seeking to license their technology or create a startup, but that’s not always the case, said Tai Nam, a lawyer with Miller Thomson based in Kitchener-Waterloo.

“If you are looking to license (your research) and exit, try to capture the value of IP through a registration, whether it’s patents or industrial designs, to demonstrate to investors that you have captured it in some form that’s registered and transferable,” he said. “If at an early stage you haven’t fleshed out the details and you haven’t done some experimentation to figure out what the problems might be, it might be hard to file a patent that demonstrates you have possession of the invention.”

Want a partner? First, figure out the parameters: Academics may decide instead of merely creating a startup or licensing that they will partner with an established firm to further their IP. Paula Mendonça, technology commercialization officer for Life Sciences at Genesis Group Inc., recommended thinking carefully about what kind of partner you really need. For example, there are some companies that can do everything, but are specialized in working on certain stages of development. Do you need help to build a product, to market it, to sell it, or all three? Also, consider how IP should be managed when multiple researchers are involved.

“In our case, IP is jointly owned between inventors and the university. When there is IP that comes out and we evaluate it and it has commercial potential, it needs to be assigned to Genesis,” she said. “Having one institution managing that IP definitely makes things easier. We then work it out with the individual inventors in the sharing of royalties . . . It looks unprofessional if you’re dealing with a multinational and you have different inventors pitching different things. You want to present a united front.”

photo credit: Lincolnian (Brian) via photopin cc

Stacey Scott,
University of Waterloo

The Project: “I am trying to build better technology for people working and socializing in a face-to-face environment. Primarily, I am interested in supporting small groups of collaborators or friends and families getting together. I focus on large screen technology, such as interactive tables and interactive walls.” As her online bio states: Her particular area of specialization is in the development of digital tabletop computer technology for supporting various face-to-face collaborative and social endeavors, including both “serious” pursuits such as military command and control and emergency response, and more “playful” pursuits such as board gaming. As a strong advocate of the potential of digital tabletop technology to support collaboration – yes even (way) before the invention of the Microsoft Surface (now PixelSense) – she is heavily involved in the interactive tabletop and surface international research and development community, as well as in the more broad communities of human-computer interaction (HCI) and computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW).

The Progress: From the fringes of technology 14 years ago to the having a seat at the (digital) table, Scott has proven that her passion for an idea before its time has paid off – interactive large tabletop technology is becoming an affordable reality for the masses. Within a couple of years, living rooms will boast a 4k television, table tops will become digital game boards and colleagues will digitally swap information around a table. The future has arrived, says Scott.

What seems so strange is that many of us already assumed this technology was here – from the Hunger Games’ large-scale control room and James Bond’s multi-touch table in Quantum of Solace – to the ubiquitous iPad that even toddlers use. But, according to Scott, while her and her colleagues were inventing the software, the actual physical hardware is just now being invented. It’s not as easy as making an iPad bigger, as Scott points out that iPad technology is not scalable to a bigger surface. So Scott is focused on technology that is designed for much large surfaces. And now the hardware side is finally catching up, especially in Europe, so we can look forward to using digital tabletops at the office and in the home within a few short years, says Scott.

The Prospects: The future is golden for this type of research. Scott says with Microsoft’s recent purchase of Perceptive Pixel, they’ve become a major player in this technology area again, driving the need for the leading-edge software that Scott and her colleagues has been developing. In Canada, Smart Technologies is making strides in the hardware, but, according to Scott, Europe is where much of the hardware action is happening. This progress means commercializing Scott’s work is the next step. It’s a case of “if you build it, they will come.”

The Passion: Improving collaboration around large digital surfaces is what drives Scott. “I always saw the promise in it, but it was really hard to convince others. But now I can tell people to imagine a really large iPad that people are sitting around collaborating. Suddenly, people can imagine the possibilities, now they can picture what a future workspace will be.” They are finally catching up to Scott’s vision.

Harvey Medcalf, co-founder and CEO of Arroware Industries and self-described “tech junkie and privacy advocate” recently launched myApollo, a social media application that hopes to address some of those privacy concerns.

“We want to create the exact same experience, but do it in a manner that’s inherently a lot more private,” he said. “We wanted to build something where users wouldn’t have to worry about a third party watching over their shoulder — something that gave them piece of mind knowing they retain ownership of the material they put online.”

What makes myApollo unique is that it runs on a decentralized peer-to-peer network so that all conversations, pictures, and user generated content is stored on the device of the user and those in their network. This is in direct opposition to traditional social media sites that store their data on a single server. Data is also encrypted so that it is only available to the intended recipient.

“The risk of having all of that information and profile and behaviour all in a single infrastructure somewhere is that someone could potentially compromise it and start pulling out information,” said Tom Moss, director of products and services for security software company Trend Micro Inc. “Even if you trust the service provider to deal responsibly with that information, a compromise to that information means that it could end up in third party hands.”

Moss added that social media users who share a lot of personal information are more susceptible to the threat of identity theft. If someone wanted to create a fraudulent credit profile most of the information they would require is available on social media sites, and the rest can be attained more easily once a malicious user has learned their target’s online habits.

“If somebody decides they want to steal your identity (and) try and open a credit card account or try and open a bank account, you’re essentially facilitating that by sharing all this information,” he said.

It is those types of security concerns that Medcalf hopes to address with myApollo.

“With people that are out there trying to cause mischief in the digital realm, (social media users) can be a very easy target,” he said. “Just by architecting the system in a peer-to-peer manner, we allow people to disperse content among the people that they trust, on their own trusted devices. None of the user generated content is stored with myApollo.”

Medcalf believes that social media users currently accept the privacy risks associated with them because there simply is no alternative.

“We’re trying to show people that it’s not about just abiding by the current system and the current ideology,” he said. “Now is the time when people need to go out there and pioneer the systems that will allow us to continue doing what we’re doing and what we’ve identified as being important to us, and continue doing that tomorrow and in the years to come in a way that’s sustainable.”

MyApollo is currently available on Android and iOS devices with a desktop version available coming soon.

Featuring an 8-panel video wall and a 65” touch-screen display (from NEC) this installation is the first of its kind in Canada. It’s set up to show behind-the-scenes moments and enable fans to purchase exclusive sports memorabilia.

Launched last week, MasterCard teamed up with Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment to create the Priceless Toronto Zone, allowing fans to interact with video content on the big screen and use their mobile phone to complete the transaction.

The Priceless Toronto Zone is currently set up to entice fans to buy sports memorabilia during Raptors and Leafs games. In a few simple steps, you can browse and purchase from a selection of collectible bobble-heads featuring the likeness of Raptors and Leafs mascots and players.

If you’re a Canadian MasterCard cardholder or MasterPass account holder, you can buy one of these collectible figures for $15.99. All net proceeds are being donated to the MLSE Foundation, which aims to improve the lives of youth by building facilities, giving to sustainable programs and empowering youth through sports and recreation.

Adjacent to the interactive screen is an 8-panel video wall where video content is likely to be streamed. There’s also a kiosk-like area on the other wall that looks like it’s supposed to entice fans to register with Priceless Toronto on one of four iPads secured to the wall at about hip-level. These small screens by comparison appear more like an afterthought to the whole interactive digital experience.

MasterCard has also now outfitted its food-and-beverage concession stands with contactless Tap & Go technology, enabling fans to quickly pay with the tap of their MasterCard to ensure they don’t miss a moment of the action.

All photos by Roger Cullman.