The participating companies are so pleased with the collaboration with the design researchers at the research centre Interactive Spaces in Århus, Denmark, that they have begun to approach the centre themselves to establish joint projects. Part of the basis for this success is a diverse group of competent researchers and the formation of the limited company Alexandra Institute, which matches up the right partners, says Associate Professor Peter Gall Krogh.

By Maj Carboni, journalist

Together with the Danish IT company KMD and a number of public schools, the research centre Interactive Spaces has developed eBag – an electronic schoolbag that incorporates the children’s mobile phones in classroom activities as a way of gaining access to class materials, for example from the electronic blackboard.

LEGO, Bang & Olufsen, TDC and KMD. These are just some of the many companies that Peter Gall Krogh, associate professor and design researcher at Aarhus School of Architecture, Dennmark, has collaborated with in various IT research projects over the past ten years.
The research projects result in prototypes that the companies may choose to develop further and put into production. This may include, for example, new types of home computers in collaboration with Bang & Olufsen or Microsoft Research. Other research projects have a more open thematic character and are closer in nature to basic research. In one of the latter projects, for example, Peter Gall Krogh has been involved in studying how computer technology may help to enhance children’s learning in school, with an “electronic schoolbag” as one of the outcomes. Other projects result in smaller spin-off companies, for example a firm that produces web-based information galleries for Danish libraries. 
 
At first, the establishment of joint projects was always initiated by Peter Gall Krogh and the other researchers. That is no longer the case.
“Gradually, our contacts with the companies have become so good that they now approach us more often than the other way around,” says Peter Gall Krogh.

Success Based on Neutral Ltd. Company Format
An important part of the reason for the companies’ growing interest in engaging in joint research projects is the establishment of the Alexandra Institute A/S, which grew out of the Computer Science Department at the University of Aarhus in 1999. The idea was to create a neutral setting where companies and researchers would be able to collaborate on specific research and development projects.
“The benefit of establishing a limited company is that it makes companies feel much more comfortable engaging in a collaborative project. In a university setting it may be difficult to determine who’s actually in charge of the project. With the institute as a limited company, the companies are familiar with the organisation format, the working conditions and the legal framework,” Peter Gall Krogh explains.
The Alexandra Institute has also headed the projects that he has been involved in personally under the auspices of the multidisciplinary research centre Interactive Spaces, which is hosted by the Institute for Design at the Aarhus School of Architecture and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Aarhus. Now, Peter Gall Krogh has himself become head of innovation at the Alexandra Institute in addition to his position as associate professor at the Department for Design, Aarhus School of Architecture.

World-Class Research
Forming a limited company, however, is not in itself enough to make the companies come back to set up new joint research projects. According to Peter Gall Krogh, the main source of the Alexandra Institute’s success is the good research results and the high level of professional qualifications among the many researchers in the IT City of Katrinebjerg, where the Alexandra Institute is located.
“We have a strong academic and professional environment, which enables us to carry out world-class research. Our strength is that we are able to cover the entire field within pervasive computing, i.e. the linking of physical space and digital qualities. We have researchers with expertise in optimising algorithms as well as design researchers like myself, who study how people might incorporate computer technology into their daily lives,” he says.
More than 70 companies, including Google, Vestas and Bang & Olufsen, have even moved their development departments to the area in order to be close to this creative research environment. The 10,000-square-metre research park is now expanding, as all the office space has already been rented out, and additional companies are interested in relocating to Katrinebjerg.

Research results from Interactive Spaces form the basis of InfoGalleri, which was developed in collaboration with several libraries. InfoGalleri is a new medium that is capable of displaying digital library material and other relevant information on interactive screens in the physical library space.

Coordination Eats Up Research Time
Geographic proximity between project partners does have an impact on the research results, in Peter Gall Krogh’s opinion.
“Being close to one’s partners is clearly more efficient, because it makes it possible to create a more concentrated environment where the knowledge that’s developed can quickly be passed on. Not all communication can take place via web sites. One shouldn’t underestimate the informal knowledge exchange that occurs when people meet by the coffee maker or when they have lunch together. That’s often where the real momentum comes from,” says Peter Gall Krogh.

The more geographically spread out the partners are, the more meetings and communication channels does it take for people to communicate and share knowledge and discoveries. This means that time can become an issue if the partners are physically far apart.
“The biggest drawback in working with companies is that the coordination between the parties can be very time-consuming. Since this is rarely figured into the budget explicitly, there is a risk that research time is eaten up, as the time required for coordination has to come out of the time allocated for research,” he says.

The Right Research Design Takes Time to Develop
Another item that is often missing from the budget is the time it takes to find the right project partners and the best approach to the research project.
“People aren’t always good at allocating time to develop the research design, for who’s going to pay for it?” asks Peter Gall Krogh.
In fact, a good research design and the right project partners are crucial for a successful collaboration, he believes.
“For example, if you’re going to do a research project about future energy sources, it’s important to address the many different aspects of this issue. If the purpose of the project is to make more people use renewable sources of energy, that may constitute a design issue, but there will also be technical issues that need to be addressed. Therefore, it’s crucial to bring the right researchers together in relation to the issue at hand,” says Peter Gall Krogh.

That is why one of the Alexandra Institute’s main functions is finding the right combination of researchers and companies. Within their field, they have amassed considerable knowledge about the areas of expertise of both researchers and companies, which enables them to match up the right project partners quickly. They also arrange workshops where researchers and companies can meet each other to discuss and develop ideas for future research projects. Peter Gall Krogh argues that public and private foundations as well as research councils should sponsor similar workshops in other fields of research. His advice for researchers and companies who are interested in collaborative projects is to contact more experienced colleagues, for example at the Alexandra Institute, to learn more about what these projects entail.
“It’s important to structure the projects in a way that produces sound research as well as successful products,” says Peter Gall Krogh. 

Together with Arkitema, Dansk Data Display and the Municipality of Aarhus, researchers from Interactive Spaces have developed Wisdom Well. It is a “knowledge well” in the form of an interactive floor surface, intended for learning and knowledge sharing in schools.

New Knowledge for Researchers and Companies
A good research partnership should provide the companies with new techniques and knowledge that they can use in developing new products or in developing their enterprise in general. Researchers, on the other hand, should have the opportunity to develop new knowledge that is not only related to a particular product but which has general applicability within a given area.
“As researchers, we should be able to contribute with stuff that our colleagues around the world have never heard about before. That may be a contribution to a new theory or a new method or technique, which we can also use for educational purposes with our students,” says Peter Gall Krogh.

One example of this is the development of the “electronic schoolbag”, a piece of software that is now licensed by the Danish IT company KMD. The idea behind the research project was to make it easy for schoolchildren to share documents with each other as well as their teachers through a sort of expanded mobile telephone via the school’s computers and a big screen in the classroom. In relation to IT technology, the concept development generated new knowledge for researchers, while the design process involved the development of several techniques and methods for including children in design processes. Once the researchers’ goals have been achieved, the joint project ends, and it is then up to the companies to take the final steps with regard to specific product development. Thus, KMD is currently continuing development on the electronic schoolbag prototype and aim to begin production later this year.

In order to benefit from collaborative research efforts, it is crucial that the researchers secure the right to disseminate their results in scientific journals, as Peter Gall Krogh emphasises.
“Of course, we shouldn’t compromise the companies’ interests or spoil their ability to take out a patent for a particular product by prematurely publishing an article presenting the research results. But as researchers we have to be able to discuss our research freely, and not, for example, be under an obligation to suppress negative outcomes,” he says.
This aspect has not presented any problems in any of the projects that Peter Gall Krogh has been involved in. They have resulted in more than 100 publications over a period of five years, an output that he is very pleased with.

Photos: www.interactivespaces.net
 

Mind Design #6, 2008