The three-day event brought together 12 teams of engineering, design and art students from MIT, Harvard and Wellesley College. Each team was challenged to create a novel projection concept and a working prototype that addressed real problems in the lifestyle and wellness space.

Following in the spirit of William J. Mitchell, the former dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, the hackathon utilized an interdisciplinary approach, enabling students to utilize a variety of skills from different fields.

A Collaborative Effort Between Students and Samsung

Samsung Research, Samsung Electronics’ advanced R&D hub, leads the development of future technologies for the company’s Device eXperience (DX) Division and is constantly challenging the status quo and pushing boundaries. Based on this philosophy, the hackathon challenged students to push themselves by breaking down the walls between various disciplines. The hackathon also allowed Samsung to connect with students by providing new opportunities for them to ideate, innovate and bring their ideas to life.

Younger generations of students have fresh perspectives and creative ideas on how to solve problems facing society. Taking inspiration from this, Samsung’s Research hopes to foster an environment where diversity and creativity can thrive, leading to great and sometimes unexpected solutions.

The hackathon was mutually beneficial for both students and Samsung. Students were able to learn more about Samsung Research by utilizing the company’s resources and facilities, helping them to learn and build relationships with others. Samsung was also able to attract talented students, further solidifying its position as a global company.

Expanding the Future of Wellness Through Student Innovation

After a long weekend of hacking, students shared their concepts and prototypes with E&I designers and MIT student mentors and Samsung executives including Dr. Sebastian Seung, President and Head of Samsung Research and Dr. Federico Casalegno, EVP and Head of E&I Lab. Teams were judged on their data and research, prototypes, story, impact and overall uniqueness.

Through a variety of angles and thought-provoking ideas, each team created a unique solution to address problems in the lifestyle space. From utilizing projection to connect people through storytelling to creating virtual cooking experiences, many inspirational and innovative ideas were displayed at the hackathon.

Originally launched as a product design studio for North America in 1994, the SDIC will merge with a new user-experience research arm to expand its role from designing products mostly individually to designing multi-device user-experiences. The mission of the SDIC will be to contribute to creating stronger insights based on a deep understanding of consumer lifestyle trends, as well as adapting to the changing trends and emerging lifestyle patterns of local markets. The center will also play an important role of envisioning product concepts that do not exist today and assist in the launch of those products to market. The SDIC is part of the Corporate Design Center, located in Seoul, and one of seven Samsung design studios globally.

Dr. Federico Casalegno, Head of the SDIC

Dr. Federico Casalegno, who has extensive experience as a designer and a social scientist at MIT, has recently joined Samsung Electronics. Dr. Casalegno’s expertise and interests lie in the impact of networked digital technologies on human behavior and society.

“In this age of connected devices, it is imperative that a designer understands and considers the cross-device user experience for every design element of a product, because most products no longer serve a standalone purpose anymore.” said Dr. Federico Casalegno, head of SDIC. “Our mission is to understand people and lifestyles to deliver meaningful experiences, through beautiful yet functional design, enabled by innovative cutting-edge technologies. With a talented team of multi-disciplinary designers, the SDIC will seek to leverage insights from the North American market and tap into the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial spirit to design inspiring products and experiences.”

“At Samsung, we recognize that our design and innovation have to be meaningful to people. It has to help people do more. User experiences must involve awareness of the other devices around them and work together. This is what consumers expect today,” said Don Tae Lee, head of the Corporate Design Center. “With the launch of the new center, we are establishing the framework to deliver that sort of experience to people across all our consumer devices.”

“Le Campus Junior” by Samsung gives children the opportunity to learn computer programming and to create their own interactive stories and games. This free and interactive online platform is designed to teach children how to use Scratch*, the development platform created by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), to help them take their first active steps in the digital world.

A Fun Way to Learn Computer Programming

Through approximately 40 short and fun video tutorials (four hours of play overall), “Le Campus Junior” invites children to discover the main concepts of computer programming by following the adventures of Professor Misso along with Sam and Zoé, two cute, smart and mischievous children.

Once the registration process is approved by their parents, children can follow the learning path and pick up where they left off when signing back in.

“Le Campus Junior” offers self-paced learning modules of Scratch*: ranked by difficulty, the tutorials in the “I learn” section explain the main programming steps while those in “I practice” offer fun workshops to reinforce what has been learned. Children also have the opportunity to evaluate their knowledge by taking quizzes by level — beginner, intermediate and advanced — and earning the respective badges.

“Le Campus Junior’s” training path and educational content were developed by Tech Kids Academy, a specialist in designing creative digital workshops for young people. The course aims to gradually introduce key programming concepts with Scratch* and then allow children to imagine their own games.

To discover the Campus Junior approach, the “First Steps in Scratch” tutorial is available directly on the website homepage: www.lecampusjunior.fr

Educational Tools to Support Trainers and Educators

“Le Campus Junior was originally designed for children, but educators quickly started using the site’s content to teach basic programming concepts. Therefore, we decided to develop dedicated educational tools to help them achieve this,” explains Florence Catel, director of corporate citizenship at Samsung Electronics France.

Trainers have access to the same content as that offered to children, but they also have free access to a comprehensive toolbox designed around a dozen IT concepts: position, movement, loops, conditional structures, variables, random numbers, and more.

The “Toolbox” section includes:

Practical Guides

• Concepts: an overview table allows trainers to see the computing concepts presented in each of the video tutorials;
• Search tool: multi-criteria search quickly identifies the tutorials covering the concepts the trainer wants to introduce to the children;
• Educational resources: explanation sheets, “Step by Step” guides and all video tutorial scripts can be downloaded, for flexible use of “Le Campus Junior’s” content.

Group Creation and Tracking of Children’s Progress

By this September, a new section called “My Groups” will allow trainers to create groups of children to track their progress and assess their understanding of the various concepts, based on the quiz results.

Samsung Electronics: A company Committed to Education and Training in the Digital Field

“Le Campus Junior” demonstrates Samsung Electronics’ commitment to education and training in France. It follows the opening in September 2014 of the “Samsung Campus”, a socially engaged training center which aims to develop the digital industry skills of young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 through a tuition free program. With “Le Campus Junior”, younger children have the opportunity to discover the world of computer programming for free.

In France, computer programming is already offered as a extra-curricular activity in schools, highlighting the importance of digital technology in today’s society. Introducing children to coding helps them develop a number of fundamental skills, such as logic and mathematics. It also opens up a new world of creativity, where they can let their imaginations run wild, create their own games and share them with their family and friends.

*Scratch was developed by the MIT Media Lab’s Lifelong Kindergarten Group (see http://scratch.mit.edu). Use of this content is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 2.0 licence.

About TECH KIDS ACADEMY

TECH KIDS ACADEMY is a leading French digital academy for children from age 7, based in Paris and Saint Germain en Laye. For more information: http://www.techkidsacademy.com/