Digipack Pro is a backpack that facilitates youngsters’ social interactions and promotes playful activities during social encounters. This backpack goes beyond being a gadget that monitors physical movement towards revamping social interactions. With this design concept, Digipack Pro has been selected as a finalist and winner of the Research and Design Competition at the Interaction Design with Children 2019 (IDC 2019) Conference. Teacher Katarina Liljeqvist and fifth-grade students from the Rantakylä Teacher Training School participated in the testing of the concept.
Senior Researcher Calkin Suero Montero, PhD, presented Digipack Pro at IDC2019 in Boise, Idaho, USA in June this year on behalf of the research team with Professor Eija Kärnä and Postdoctoral Researcher Kwok Ng.
The IDC conference is the prime venue in the field of interaction design with children and the topic of the conference this year was Live Healthy! Under this theme, children from all over the world proposed ideas about technologies that would help them feel better and healthier. Based on these ideas, researchers were invited to produce design concepts that would address the children’s dreams. It is in this category that the Digipack Pro design concept was a finalist alongside other two concepts. Digipack Pro was announced the winner of the competition during the conference.
Dr Suero Montero has submitted a utility model application to the Finnish Patent and Registration Office to safeguard the innovation and the protection of its immaterial property rights.
Article on Digipack Pro: Calkin Suero Montero, Eija Kärnä, Kwok Ng. (2019). Digipack Pro: Revamping Social Interactions and Supporting Physical Activity. IDC '19 Proceedings of the 18th ACM International Conference on Interaction Design and Children
Competition entry video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IylOIjWJNHY
For more information:
IDC 2019 R&D Competition: http://idc.acm.org/2019/research-design-competition/
Digipack Pro presentation (13.6): https://idc.acm.org/2019/advance-program/
Inquiries: Calkin Suero Montero calkins (at) uef (dot) fi