Rob Maijers

Project Ramped has been nominated for a SpinAward and Dutch Interactive Award!

SpinAwards are professional awards for creativity in digital media. Ramped was chosen amongst 545 entries and is nominated in the category Innovation for "innovative application of existing technology and using new technology in communication objectives".

Project Ramped caught a lot of attention at Interaction14, an international conference on interaction design!

Every day, many conference attendees tested the student installations and they were impressed. We were honored to have lots of guests, from international design agencies and also corporations like Microsoft and Philips. (Someone from Google mentioned that they use this conference as a sort of global meeting place.)

So what did they see? A live skater on a miniramp playing against opponents with mobiles, a grindbox indicating with led light how far the skater has grinded comparing it to the competition, and a concept skateboard detecting an 'ollie' and reacting to motion with ambilight. Films showed the development process and actual use by kids in Skatepark Utrecht.

Many asked when all this will be in a skatepark and whether the installations will be 'on tour'. One thing is for sure: a documentary about Ramped will be released soon!

"Shiiit... I don't want the games to leave" "Actually there should be more"

These were some of the reactions of the young skaters at Skatepark Utrecht. Not all went as planned, but the demonstrations evoked warm reactions.

We're looking back at half a year of hard work for the five student teams, as well as the professionals at Rhinofly and the staff at Hogeschool Utrecht (University of Applied Sciences Utrecht). Thanks to the joint effort, it lead to prototypes to be proud of and all teams passed the tests. Congrats!

On the way we had some great guest lectures at Hogeschool Utrecht. Thanks to: -Lean UX with Taco Ekkel (ProQuest) -Projection mapping with Martin Boverhof (Born Digital) -Researching gameplay with Niko Vegt (TU Delft) -Unconventional research with Maarten Lamers (Universiteit Leiden) -Dutch Game Garden with Kars Alfrink (Hubbub) -Cross-media experiences with Tijmen Zonnevijlle (Tijmenrockt) And finally, we thank Skatepark Utrecht!

Vandaag Ramped in de spotlight bij de HU. Ik kreeg terplekke de gelegenheid wat vertellen voor de 300 man op het HU onderwijscongres over de samenwerking tussen Rhinofly en HU. En in discussie met de HU lector Codesign en de gedeputeerde EZ van de provincie...