I S S U E : 4

U S E F U L B R A N D S

We recently re-launched the 383 website, starting with a clean slate to create a brand new responsive layout with updated case studies and tonnes of new content. Make sure you take a look and let us know what you think.

SAY HELLO TO OUR NEW HOME ON THE INTERWEBS

383 SITE

www.383project.com

V IS IT

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WELCOME TO INK383 This Quarter

Become Useful

Hack Day: Universal Music

A Process for Prototyping

UX in the Field

Byte: Useful Innovation in Sport

Day One: LV

Mining for Good Canvas 2014

On the Move

I N T H I S I S S U E

B Y : JOHN NEWBOLD

Welcome to the fourth edition of INK. For those who don’t know, INK is a quarterly publication from us at 383. It’s filled with things we’ve been making, knowledge we’d like to share and thoughts on what’s next. This edition focuses on Useful Brands, why usefulness matters and how brands can innovate with purpose.

Whether you’ve been receiving INK since day one, or you’re a new subscriber, we hope you find something useful here. We love all the notes we receive after INK hits people’s letter boxes — if you find the content useful, inspiring or thought provoking, then do let us know!

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THIS QUARTER

B Y : JACOB DUTTON

Every year I sit down with our co-founders John and Sukhi to look at 383 and our proposition as a business based on what we’re great at, where the market is headed and where our passions lie. Usually this results in us sharpening our

purpose and how we communicate this better to our people, clients and friends through our different channels. This time though, we felt

that we needed more than just a sharpening of purpose, we needed to re-evaluate and redefine

our current product offering.

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R E I N V E N T I N G F U T U R E S

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Our background has been in marketing, we have stand out strengths here, particularly in content, search and social but we wanted to build on top of this in a logical way rather than leaving it behind.

Something we’ve always had a passion for is product and service innovation. In fact, it’s something we know we can be the best in the world at. We also know that our clients sometimes struggle to innovate internally for tonnes of reasons and that it’s something they’d like to do more of. We’re deeply passionate about facilitating this change and we think that product and service innovation is a great way to have more of an impact on our client’s businesses, consumer’s lives and the entire agency landscape.

We’re helping ambitious clients who want to build more useful brands for customers. Working as an outsourced Digital R+D Unit, we’ll work with them to develop products and services to open up new revenue streams, to make them more profitable or to completely redefine their purpose.

Our background in marketing is a huge strength here. We’re not advocating helping clients bring to market shiny new digital products and services and then walking away from them.

We want to use our knowledge of how to engage with users and change their behaviour to help build user bases for these products and services on a big scale.

We’ve been working with Universal Music on a Hack Day to solve business challenges around music subscriptions, licensing and talent discovery. We’ve also been working with our friends at LV on a Day One workshop, helping them to bring the whole organisation up to speed on how they might be disrupted from the outside and how they can ship ideas quickly to stay ahead. In terms of new products and services we’ve been working on, we’re really proud to have launched a new intranet product built on Google Apps for our client Lafarge Tarmac.

So, that’s what we’ve been up to and that’s really where this issue of INK is focused. Exploring what we call Purposeful Innovation’ and how we’re working to help some of the world’s most influential organisations reinvent their future.

Also, keep an eye out for more on the impending office move which is due for July, more information on the best lineup yet for Canvas and how we think we might be able to use cryptocurrencies for good.

WE’RE WORKING TO HELP SOME

OF THE WORLD’S MOST INFLUENTIAL

ORGANISATIONS REINVENT THEIR

FUTURE

RUNNING A HACK DAY WITH UN IVERSAL MUS IC

‘

B Y : JOHN NEWBOLD

Y O U R B R A N D

The concept of utility in economics is not new — the degree to which consumers are satisfied has long been a measure of both why consumers choose goods in the first place and how their willingness to pay different amounts is affected. What has changed however, is a brand’s ability to build an ecosystem of utility around its core offer in new ways. Creating new digital products and services which meet unmet customer needs to make the brand more useful.

More than ever before ‘usefulness’ is emerging as key way for brands to differentiate their offer and create customer preference.

S T A Y R E L E V A N T ,

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INS IGHT

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In highly commoditised sectors such as travel, Virgin is experimenting on a small scale to shape the usefulness of its brand beyond the airport. A service like Taxi2 (currently being tested between New York and London routes) offers travellers a free online taxi sharing service to co-book seats with other travellers, reduce taxi fares and skip queues when you arrive. Larger innovations such as British Gas’ Hive Active Heating allows customers to use a free app and smart thermostat to manage and visualise their heating usage in more useful ways. As a differentiator in the utilities sector, this puts Hive head to head with Google backed Nest, currently being rolled out in a partnership with npower. For npower, ranked bottom in recent UK customer satisfaction surveys, the Nest partnership is a big indicator in their faith that improving brand utility will positively shift customer preference.

The creation of digital products and services which aim to increase brand utility is a good indicator of the organisational step change taking place in some large brands. Where previous focus has been heavily skewed towards marketing and advertising alone, we now see an increasing emphasis and understanding of innovation and user experience as important pillars of annual budgets.

So, as brands begin to allocate spend towards user experience and innovation how should they focus their efforts? The ‘jobs to be done framework’ from Harvard Business School’s Clay Christensen is a good place to start. Christensen’s principles look at how customers ‘hire’ a product or service to solve a problem. This lens can help brands to look at customer needs in a new way, identifying areas where a new product or service could meet a human need, rather than seeing customers through demographic or technographic profiles.

In-house labs are also helping brands to innovate around better and more useful customer experiences. John Lewis has recently announced JLAB, an initiative to align the business with startups who in turn will help to support the future of John Lewis digital services. Similarly many brands are also working with outsourced R&D partners to help provide quick turnaround

prototypes, access new talent and provide a different outlook on what products and services may be worth exploring.

T H E E N D O F A D V E R T I S I N G ?

With more emphasis on creating ecosystems of useful digital products and services around brands, where does that leave advertising? If a brand has the ability to differentiate on utility, is there a need for them to still advertise at all? The answer of course, is yes. However, the role of a brand’s advertising messaging will likely be fundamentally changed through brand utility. Where promotions can be intrusive, products can be useful. People tire of being sold to, but that’s not an aversion to advertising per say, more an apathy towards undifferentiated messaging and noise. Brands who are focused on advertising their utility can

unite the idea of a promotion with the usefulness of a product in their messaging. We see this in some of the world’s most successful brands; Nike’s digital products, such as the Nike+ training platform or Nike Training Club app, drive customer preference and advertising drives awareness and acquisition. For brands with the advertising bandwidth to reach millions of customers, the opportunity lies in showing customers how the brand’s products and services solve problems for them, rather than telling them what a brand sells.

SHOW CUSTOMERS HOW THE BRAND’S

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES SOLVE PROBLEMS FOR THEM, RATHER THAN TELLING THEM WHAT A BRAND SELLS

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INNOVAT ION

As hack day participants ourselves over recent years we think we’ve developed a strong sense for what makes a good one. Here’s what we got up to at Universal and the principles we like to follow for creating good Hack Day experiences. The Universal Music Hack Day focused three teams at three commercial opportunities the business was keen to explore.

Earlier this month we spent the day with Universal Music Group running a Hack Day at their London HQ.

B Y : JOHN NEWBOLD

Hack Days are all about making something interesting within tight constraints. We wanted our participants to use the Hack Day to start making as soon as possible so we decided to kick things off the night before. Sharing provocations with the group early allowed some crucial time for the information to simmer in people’s brains overnight. We kicked off the day by building teams of smart 383 and UMG folk. Mixing together UX experts, developers, product managers and label reps to encourage collaboration.

D E F I N E C O M M E R C I A L O U T C O M E S A N D F O R G E T A B O U T P R I Z E S

Hack days can receive a bad rep if the outcomes aren’t considered before an event begins. We’re not fans of strange prizes as incentives, particularly when hosting something internally for an organisation. Having senior conversations with clients about their willingness to prototype ideas beyond one day demonstrators is key. Agreeing in advance that there’s a budget and appetite to progress preferred ideas through to working prototypes is a much better incentive than any other prize.

The reward for a great idea should be the ability to explore it further, not a pat on the back and a shiny voucher.

H O W CAN UN IVERSAL CREATE A MORE PERSONAL ISED MUS IC SUBSCR IPT ION SERV ICE?

H O W CAN UN IVERSAL TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE D ISCOVERY OF UNS IGNED ART ISTS BE ING LED BY FANS , NOT LABELS?

H O W CAN UN IVERSAL MAKE MUS IC L ICENS ING EAS IER?

A G R E E P R O V O C A T I O N S I N A D V A N C E

In advance of the day we’d spent time with Universal representatives to explore areas of commercial interest to the various labels and the UMG board. The areas identified covered subscriptions, licensing and A&R and from these we created three provocations;

O U R P R O V O C A T I O N S :

S E T P E O P L E ’ S B R A I N O N P R O B L E M S , N O T P O L I S H

We’ve found that a ticking clock at a Hack Day can be great for productivity once some initial ideas are flowing. But it’s important for participants to be focusing on big rough ideas, not small ideas with lots of polish. During the day, we encouraged all participants to assess ideas by thinking about their utility value. Does the idea genuinely solve a real user problem? Is it more useful than what’s already out there? Can we expect people to use it time and again? These type of questions help to not only ditch bad ideas more quickly but to identify what the core ‘most useful’ features of a prototype might be.

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At Universal we gathered the wider business in the bar to hear ideas from the teams. The A&R team demonstrated an idea for a mobile discovery engine that would live on top of SoundCloud. Licensing focused on reducing the friction for production companies, allowing them to quickly license music with a new platform that joined the dots between rights holders and fees. The subscription team showed a new idea for creating a physical record of your most listened to online music. From here we’ll be picking up at least one of the ideas to develop a working prototype.

A HACK DAY IS ABOUT ZOOMING IN ON THE NUCLEUS OF A GREAT IDEA , NOT RUSHING TO

SQUEEZE A YEAR’S WORTH OF WORK

INTO EIGHT HOURS.

S H A R I N G , N O T P I T C H I N G

At the end of a Hack Day we encourage teams to distil the core story of their day down into a short presentation. The aim is to not only demo the idea but share the story of how and why the team arrived at it. Paper prototypes, snippets of code or clickable visuals are all good ways to help bring demonstrations to life.

To get away from any cringey associations with Dragon’s Den we really stressed the importance of grounding ideas in reality in final presentations. It’s completely inconceivable to invent and validate the next Facebook or Spotify at a Hack Day.

We’re not after hyperbolic business models, cash projections and user numbers. What we do want to hear is what gap we think the idea occupies, why it could be good and what the next steps might be to validate and prototype. A Hack Day is about zooming in on the nucleus of a great idea, not rushing to squeeze a year's worth of work into eight hours.

We’re not after hyperbolic business models, cash projections and user numbers.

MORE

www.383project.com/workshops

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our own rapid prototyping process that allows us to quickly create a proof of concept which can be further developed into a fully functioning product.

This process consists of a suite of prebuilt components and widgets which we use to quickly create functionality. These components include a visual library of interface elements built on-top of a responsive grid giving us the ability to test natively on everything from mobile, tablet, desktop devices and TVs. In addition to the visual library we have chosen to use Node.js to add back end functionality, meaning that we can use one language for adding interactivity to the front end and logic to the back, helping to reduce the time getting a concept together. We also have our own hosting

platform based on Heroku which allows us to deploy a proof of concept with just a few clicks. All of this helps us iterate and build in hours rather than days, meaning that we can test something that resembles a finished product in a rapid and cost effective manner.

After we have validated these prototypes we can then refine the concept using our traditional process of Think, Design, Make fully in the confidence that our ideas have gone through a round of user testing.

Prototyping isn’t just for new ideas, we often use the same process when adding new functionality to an existing product or service as a feasibility check before deep diving into proposals and functional specifications.

In these workshops we like to create interactive demonstrations which go a bit further than paper sketches. We do this so we can add context and meaning to easily validate user journeys and experiences. To achieve this, we have created

B Y : L EON BARRETT

A P R O C E S S F O R

Using paper, pens and boards, plan out user journeys and identify

user needs

Using prebuilt tools and components, get a proof

of concept rapidly built to demonstrate user journey

Validate user needs, refine and transition into a fully

working prototype

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PROTOTYPING

We’ve recently been running a number of Hack Days where teams of developers, designers and user experience experts collaborate with clients to develop new products and services.

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PROCESS

Speaking to end users can sometimes be challenging — there are often legal hurdles to overcome, tracking down the right users is always difficult and sometimes clients can be quite wary of an external party speaking directly to their end users.

However, at 383 we feel that without speaking directly to end users, clients are actually posing the question “What does 383 think my users want?” rather than working to understand exactly why their users utilise their service, which will ultimately result in a solution tailored to studio views rather than users actual needs.

Therefore, we place great focus and energy on speaking directly to end users and work hard to overcome the logistical barriers to get to the right people, no matter where they are located or the role they perform.

IN THE FIELDO N - S I T E U S E R E X P E R I E N C E

Speaking to stakeholders to sharpen solutions.

B Y : P ETER HONNOR

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Recently, we worked with two very different clients — Harveys, the popular furnishing retailer with 150 stores across the UK, and Lafarge Tarmac, the country’s largest solutions provider for the building infrastructure industry. Harveys brief was to define the UX of its future online offering and with Lafarge Tarmac, we were tasked with curating a completely new intranet experience for its entire 6,600+ employee base.

W I T H H A R V E Y S

For Harveys, we spent a lot of time on the ground in Harveys retail stores around the UK, working to understand why customers had made their final purchase in store and how their online experience influenced their purchasing. We initially found that the barrier to purchase for a major item such as a new sofa or dining set was actually quite high and users were visiting stores to touch, feel, sit on and play with their potential new purchases. In addition, we found that customers create micro-social groups around new purchases - often in close circles. It was therefore key that the online experience supported this and lead customers to a local store to complete their purchase. By delivering an experience that allows content to be easily shared and enables a user to contextually envisage an item within their home, we are confident we have created an experience uniquely tailored to Harveys customer base.

W I T H L A F A R G E T A R M A C

Lafarge Tarmac took the 383 UX team to completely new territory — literally onto newly formed earth with a number of site visits to quarries and cement factories around the UK. From speaking directly to a wide range of employees, from plant workers right through to quarry managers and office workers, we quickly recognised the need for the Lafarge Tarmac intranet content to create a centre of internal focus and instil a sense of community across the employee base rather than acting as a standard process repository.

Factoring in the challenges of extremely remote user access, sometimes in quarries and pits far from civilisation, we were ultimately led to a solution that technically degrades gracefully to ensure we delivered the same great experience to all users, regardless of their connection speed and device type.

This has been well received, and we are currently working on a follow up release to deliver further engaging features and content with the Lafarge Tarmac comms teams.

USER INTERV IEWS ACROSS THE ORGANISAT ION WITH LAFARGE TARMAC

The design solutions for Harveys and Lafarge Tarmac were ultimately very different, with different areas of focus and content delivery to their users. However, at the heart of both experiences is a strong understanding of exactly why users visit their sites, their inherent behaviours and how content can fulfil their needs and expectations within a rich experience.

This can only be delivered through engaging directly, openly and honestly with end users, with key understandings and needs being translated to design solutions within our Design and Make process, which is core to the UX process here at 383.

B Y : DAN ARCHER

Our most recent Byte Breakfast focused on the area of ‘Useful

Innovation in Sport’ and included talks from 383 and Jules Robinson, Senior Director of Global Marketing

Partnerships at the NBA.

NEW IDEAS

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Xbox etc we’re now moving from a period of fragmented muti-screen experiences to converged smarter single screen experiences. Products such as Fan TV and the NFL deal with Xbox move utility such as social discovery, game alerts and on demand content back in to the place where our primary gaming or viewing experience is happening.

We also looked at useful brand experiences for wearables – encouraging participants to focus on utility value rather than opportunity size when building new things. As well as providing a lens on opportunities with software platforms such as android wear, we also focused on what not to do; encouraging those in the room to avoid the gold rush brand app mentality we saw with the iOS ecosystem which spawned a host of poor branded sports apps. The opportunity for wearables is to create genuinely useful things which improve sports experience for fans, either through way-finding, ticketing or by moving them closer to the game.

IMPROVE SPORTS EXPERIENCE FOR FANS, EITHER THROUGH WAY-

FINDING, TICKETING OR BY MOVING THEM CLOSER TO THE GAME

Byte is a quarterly event we host at the Hospital Club which brings together interesting talks, interesting people and plenty of pastries. For each Byte we zoom in on a specific sector, this time bringing together sports brands, clubs and sponsors.

U T I L I T Y A N D I N N O V A T I O N

We began the morning explaining our position that utility is an often overlooked value when building experiences for fans. Our belief at 383 is that by innovating around useful products and services brands and fans can benefit equally. Utility helps create preference and drive differentiation as well as providing a platform for longer term and more meaningful experiences.

We put forward our idea that the utility goals of second screen apps will shift away from tablet and mobile over the next few years. With the increasing connectivity of the best screen in the house (the TV) through devices such as Roku, Chrome Cast,

J U L E S R O B I N S O N - N B A

Next up was Jules Robinson, senior director of global marketing partnerships at the NBA. Jules delivered a fantastic talk on how the NBA innovate as the biggest sports league on the planet.

Jules’ specific focus was on content and how the NBA is able to serve content to over 200 countries across 25,000 different device types. Jules unpacked some of the ways that the commercial team at the NBA is able to localise a global property to deliver both on screen and in-person experiences. He also shared some great video content of in-stadium innovations developed with partners such as Cisco. One example, a court cam where users can stream live content and replays straight to their handset during the game, was a perfect example of how sponsors and clubs can deliver fan experiences which provide long lasting engagement and utility.

INTRODUCING

B Y : JOHN NEWBOLD

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INTRODUCING

Day One is designed for organisations interested in how to discover and progress new product and service ideas. It exists as a first

step to help organisations start ‘doing’ more easily.

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W H A T ’ S T H E C O N T E N T ?

During the day, we cover these things;

Our approach is centred on our core belief that for innovation to be purposeful it needs to be rooted in utility. We’ll introduce teams to some frameworks to help identify user needs, such as jobs to be done. Work through how these develop in to user stories and finally, explain how ideas get turned in to MVPs (minimum viable product).

W H A T A R E T H E O U T C O M E S ?

Day One workshops help clients arrive at one off ideas they’d like to validate through a prototype sprint or Hack Day. Often Day One causes a wider refocusing of a businesses overall innovation strategy. Changing the way business operates both internally and with external R&D partners.

D A Y O N E W I T H L V

We recently held a Day One session with Liverpool Victoria insurance. The session with LV bought together its in-house design and UX teams with stakeholders from other areas of the business including innovation and customer experience.

W H A T ’ S T H E F O R M A T ?

Day One is practical and people who attend should be up for participating, not just listening.

We encourage a blended room of people from across the business. Typically involving product, marketing, UX and design teams. We also insist on senior and board level attendees.

We also won’t be the only ones talking. No one knows the business better than the people who work there; we’ll brief a few people in advance with some questions we’d like them to share thoughts on during the day.

Why should utility value matter and what difference does ‘usefulness’ play in informing why people hire a brand?

What value can good products and services bring to users and organisations?

What role does advertising and marketing have in this thinking?

What is an MVP and how do you get started with rapid prototyping?

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THE OBJECTIVE IS NOT TO EDUCATE PEOPLE WITH INTERESTING THEORY... BUT TO EMPOWER THEM TO START DOING.

A Minimum Viable Product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort.

A small team from 383 facilitated the workshop which was designed to introduce LV to our thinking around how to increase the usefulness of a brand, as well as zooming in on their specific product and service ecosystem and how that could be improved. The workshop took teams from the theoretical to the practical, looking at how to approach design through the lens of utility and how to create and apply user stories.

MORE

www.383project.com/workshops

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B Y : TOM MART IN

FROM THE LAB

FREE CLOUD COMPUT ING POWER

‘GOODCOIN ’ CURRENCY WITH CHAR ITY BU I LT IN

DONAT IONS

MIN ING FOR A CAUSE

I sat down recently to consider the possibilities of how cryptocurrencies could benefit charities.

Over the last year or so we’ve watched Bitcoin with great interest. In fact, my fascination has been less with Bitcoin and more with the whole cryptocurrency ‘thing’ in general. LiteCoin, DogeCoin, Bitcoin, the list goes on.

CAN CRYPTOCURRENC IES BENEF IT CHAR IT IES?

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W H A T I S A C R Y P T O C U R R E N C Y ?

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are all built on a decentralised network. Where ‘regular’ currency uses a centralised system of banks to maintain ledgers of accounts and transactions, one of the unique properties in Bitcoin is how it distributes the ledger to everyone connected with the network. This decentralisation of the ledger means that every person in the network can see all transactions made and that some people can help maintain the ledger. So if everyone can see and manipulate the ledger, how can you stop people spending the same money twice? That’s where strong cryptography comes in. As each transaction enters the system it must be verified by other users connected to the network in order to be added to the ledger. This validation step is called Mining and it’s where some interesting things can happen.

M I N I N G

Mining Bitcoins is computationally expensive because it requires large calculations to be made in a short amount of time, as every other user on the Bitcoin network is trying to solve the same set of problems. Those that successfully verify the transaction are rewarded with Bitcoins, thus providing a value to the network and a financial incentive to keep going.

This led to our first musing; As we don’t use all our computers 24/7, could we use the spare capacity to do some good?

Although its possible to install the mining software on any PC, gaming PCs with high end graphics cards make the best miners. Inside most PCs are two types of processors, a CPU (Central Processing Unit) and a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit).

CPUs are found in every single computing device, from your phone to you’re washing machine. GPUs are specially dedicated to high performance graphics processing and are found in some smartphones, PCs and game consoles. A GPU is made up of many more individual units than a CPU and these can be trained to perform a task, such as mining, much quicker than a regular CPU.

S T R I K I N G G O L D

After setting up some mining software with the unused computing power in the office, we installed the software and waited for the coins to roll in. Unfortunately, the amount of Bitcoin collected was around $0.03 to $0.10 for a complete 24 hour usage — not really the type of numbers that would make a staggering difference to a charity. Although our computers are fast, there are many more people mining Bitcoin and many of these contain graphics cards which are dedicated to the task and perform much more efficiently.

We’ve also got to bear in mind that even mining this small amount isn’t completely free — we’ve also got the price of energy to consider (driving us to a loss overall), and we probably won’t be able to do much with our PC while it’s mining.

If you’ve got a high end gaming PC being under-utilised then you might be able to generate a handful of small change for a good cause. However it’s probably best to hold on to anything you generate and see if the price goes up, as the present economics of mining and cashing out straight away just doesn’t work out. Today, profitable mines occupy entire warehouses, housing custom-built rigs which use enough electricity to power a small town. For everyday users, digital gold is getting harder and harder to find.

WE DON’T USE ALL OUR COMPUTERS 24/7, COULD WE USE THE SPARE

CAPACITY TO DO SOME GOOD?

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SO WHERE NEXT?WHERE DID THE EXPERIMENTS GET US? The answer is somewhere and nowhere.

Our initial ideas for leaning in to spare computational resources didn’t add up, while it might be possible to hold onto coins or even mine an alternative currency, the economics and complexities of doing so make little financial sense. However, we did stumble on some interesting tangents listed here...

A C C E P T D O N A T I O N S V I A B I T C O I N

Even if you had Bitcoins to give, there aren’t many UK charities that will accept them.

Bitcoin’s short history is already littered with scandals, thieves and downright incompetence. Newer organisations like Coinbase and Kraken are building the next generation of tools making it easier and more straightforward for regular people to use, spend, share and store. Hopefully trust in these new tools will encourage more payment processors to start accepting coins. Stripe, a competitor to PayPal, recently announced they plan to support Bitcoin, hopefully we’ll see this become an option for donation in 2014 and beyond.

E N C O U R A G E M I N I N G P O O L S T O S U P P O R T C A U S E S

We’d love to see charities work out a way for miners to opt in, gift aid style, to donate a percentage of their coins to a given cause. This requires a bit of disruptive organisational thinking from a cause, but could be a fantastic way for existing miners to ‘do good’ and for charities to receive regular amounts of money.

N E G O T I A T E F R E E C L O U D C O M P U T I N G P O W E R

One of the reasons why mining in the cloud is prohibitive is the raw cost to run the instance. If a large charity could negotiate this time for free or at a much lower rate then the economics become much more viable. Causes mining for good could become an interesting CSR strategy for tech organisations like Amazon, allowing cloud providers to donate computing power to causes they support. There’s obviously still an environmental cost to consider, but it’s certainly something to think about.

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www.383project.com/labs

G O O D C O I N ’ , A C U R R E N C Y W I T H C H A R I T Y B U I L T I N

Due to Bitcoin’s open source nature, there are now thousands of variants out there. What if the world’s biggest charities could get together create a new currency, which has ‘good’ built in to the cryptograph?

Each time this coin were mined or spent a small percentage could be farmed off with each transaction. When thinking around the challenges that smaller currencies face we realised that many of these could potentially be overcome with the attention bandwidth on offer to some of the bigger global charities. Typical challenges such as creating a critical mass of users or finding places to spend currency could be overcome with the richer ecosystem of users already orbiting many well known organisations. Think of a cause like (RED) or Unicef and you start to see environments where a cryptocurrency could thrive; they have the perfect combination of attention and channels to raise awareness, and also have strong brand partnerships that could provide places to ‘spend’. Imagine a (RED) Apple product which could also be purchased with ‘GoodCoin’.

There are clearly other hurdles to overcome, but if customers knew that each time they spent money then some would automatically go to a good cause, we’d be interested to see how behaviour around digital currencies might change. And, with products like Squa(RED) recently being launched, there’s clearly the appetite from some charities to be amongst emergent technologies.

IF CUSTOMERS KNEW THAT EACH TIME THEY SPENT MONEY THEN SOME WOULD AUTOMATICALLY GO TO A GOOD CAUSE, WE’D BE INTERESTED TO SEE HOW BEHAVIOUR AROUND DIGITAL CURRENCIES MIGHT CHANGE

MORE

To read the original and dive a little deeper into our

experiments with Bitcoin, visit the Labs page of our site where

you’ll also find a whole bunch of other interesting things that have been keeping us thinking

over the last few months.

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L I F TOFF

MORE INFO & T ICKETS

canvasconf.co.uk

Canvas has been a huge success over the last two years and we’re confident that this year will be bigger and better than ever. When we sat down to decide the theme for 2014 we all shared a similar interest; The world is changing rapidly and more and more we’re inviting new products and services in to our lives. Many traditional industries are being disrupted by new startups and established brands are evolving to have a more focused product or service ecosystem. As users, we see the end product of these organisations everyday, but what goes on behind the scenes? From engineering and technology, to community and culture, what are the stories behind the world’s most interesting digital products and services? This is the focus of Canvas 2014.

As always if you head to Canvas you’ll be hearing from smart folk who blend great storytelling with technological insight. This year we’ve really zoomed in on the people behind some of today’s most interesting products and services. Our selection for speakers isn’t just about products with huge scale, but also those who are overcoming amazing challenges. We hope to introduce attendees to how these organisations are solving engineering problems, people problems, and everything in between.

A great example of an organisation operating in a challenging space is the organisation who are literally operating a service from space. Urthecast will provide the

world’s first Ultra HD video feed of Earth from the International Space Station. We’re thrilled to have the CEO, Scott Larson, flying in from Vancouver for the day. Scott will be telling the story behind how they’re building an online business which orbits 230 miles above our heads. We’re also really pleased this year to partner with IBM who have joined us as headline partners.There’s loads more in the pipeline and already the line up of guest speakers is looking incredible, with more to add as we get closer to the event.

B Y : DAN ARCHER

It seems like no time at all since Canvas 2013. Yet here we are, almost ready to announce some very cool updates on Canvas 2014.

SCOTT LARSON U R T H E C A S T

THE STORIES BEHIND THE

WORLD’S MOST INTERESTING

DIGITAL PRODUCTS AND

SERVICES

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By the time the next issue of Ink arrives, 383 will be settling into a brand new

Birmingham studio.Over the past few months

we’ve been busy renovating a former Victorian pen factory in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter into a new home to keep us 383ers warm, dry and inspired. Keep an eye

out on our site to see how the new space is progressing and be sure to pop in and say ‘hi’

when we’re all moved in.

ON THE MOVE

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1 6 . 1 0 . 1 4B I R M I N G H A M

J O I N U S A T C A N VA S 2 0 1 4

C A N VA S I S A S I N G L E D A Y C O N F E R E N C E T E L L I N G T H E E N G I N E E R I N G A N D D E S I G N S T O R I E S B E H I N D T H E W O R L D ’ S

M O S T I N T E R E S T I N G P R O D U C T S A N D S E R V I C E S

S C O T T L A R S O NC E O

C O N F I R M E D S P E A K E R

P A R T N E R S :

T I C K E T S AVA I L A B L E N O W A T W W W. C A N VA S C O N F. C O . U K

P L U S M A N Y M O R E . . .