Projects

Creating a Culture of Digital Transformation explores what it takes to create an agile, innovative and progressive workplace culture. The report makes actionable recommendations to help companies foster a sense of empowerment and engagement to move confidently into a technologically enhanced future.

Our collaboration with Heineken on the Worlds Apart | #OpenYourWorld campaign focused on over 80 years of psychological research to inform and establish the value of common ground. By embracing diversity, showing empathy and being open to interactions we informed the message of how to open your world. The video won Bronze Lions in the Brand Voice and Strategic Storytelling category, as well as the Business Citizenship/Corporate Responsibility category at Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity 2017.

The idea for the study came from a set of questions at the heart of integrating AI in the industry. How will AI transform our world? How can AI boost productivity as well as the value each employee can generate? How will workflows change – and what are the implications for job roles and the skillsets that are required to succeed in this new economy? Finally, how will AI change business itself, and what are the strategic considerations a CEO must make? The result is FuturaCorp, an idealized human and machine organization, created as a carefully-studied exercise to assess how AI will change organizations and, by extension, our world.

The Future of Experience explores the impact emerging technologies have on customer experiences, both offline and online. The study aims to better understand the intersections of brands, technology and people, in order to help brands create meaningful, human experiences.

AI chatbots are starting to emerge as a transformative way of interacting with businesses and brands. Chatbots can be simply defined as artificial intelligence programmes that conduct conversations with humans through chat interfaces. They can exist within brands’ own digital platforms, on their websites or embedded within apps. But increasingly, bots are appearing where people are spending more and more of their time – in messaging apps. Brands need to start thinking about a world in which millions of independent AI agents are interacting with their customers and making decisions on behalf of their organisation.

Research report commissioned by American stock exchange Nasdaq and endpoint security firm Tanium. We worked with a global panel of cybersecurity subject-matter-experts to define the eight inherent challenges that make up cybersecurity vulnerability: accountability, responsiveness, threat intelligence, risk appetite, human behaviour, legislation and regulation and cyberliteracy. We developed a statistical model for scoring readiness, awareness and vulnerability for these challenges and assessed through survey 1,530 non-executive directors (NEDs), C-level executives, Chief Information Officers and Chief Information Security Officers (CIOs/CISOs) across the US, UK, Germany, Japan and the Nordics (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland). Alongside the ability to score individual respondents we aggregated the responses into groupings of low (top 10%), medium (middle 80%) and high (bottom 10%) cybersecurity vulnerability.

The findings of the Human Cloud at Work add to the growing belief that wearable technology has a prime role to play in the increasingly competitive business environment by helping employees become more effective. Eric Openshaw and Harry Greenspun of the international consultancy firm Deloitte recently wrote (“The digitised employee – can wearable technology help create a healthier, more productive workforce?” Financial Times, 20 February 2014) that consumer technologies used by runners and others interested in their personal fitness were being rapidly adopted by businesses. This is expected to contribute to the market for smart glasses, activity monitors, smart watches and other devices being worth as much as $3bn this year

In June, 2013 as wearable technologies started mainstreaming as lifestyle and health and well-being technologies we investigated the emergent impact. Wearable technology has the potential to be both useful and entertaining. However, how interested are we in using these devices? Can they enhance our lifestyles or will they just cause more stress as users suffer from information overload? And will concerns around privacy hamper consumer adoption of these devices? Finally, do we need more cloud infrastructure to support these devices, managing and analysing the huge volumes of data that will be created?Through extensive ethnographic research and supported by quantitative research among over 4,000 UK and US adults, we analysed how 26 everyday people use wearable technology. The result is a social study commissioned by Rackspace, The Human Cloud: Wearable Technology from Novelty to Productivity’ which reveals our attitudes to wearable technology and examines how cloud computing is enabling this new generation of smart devices.

Shift 2015 is a research project aimed at understanding the key consumer motivations for wearable technologies and the opportunities they present for brands and advertisers.

Smart technologies have the potential to transform our everyday lives. We must address the inevitable data, domestic, technical, behavioural and regulatory disorder. 

We conducted a qualitative experiment with an ethical hacker at First Base Technologies to ‘pressure test’ busy commuter spots in Central London and determine how easy it is to hack into mobile devices and what data is accessible. In particular we focused on the concept of an 'Evil Twin' cyberattack.

Asset-lite and information rich organisations are disrupting every industry from taxis to accomodation, retail, entertainment, and logistics. The choice is either to transform into a software-defined business or figure out how you are going to compete with software-defined businesses. No sector of the economy or society will be immune. This research was a rapid qualitative research project involving case study simulations at the i2 Media research labs based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Included were in-depth follow-up interviews with the case study participants, and extensive desk research to gather data on the social psychology shaping and impacting behaviours of software-defined businesses and customers.

Smoothmedia contributed to AVG's 2014 Digital Diaries research on how children interact with technology. The research features a global study of how 6,000 mothers in 10 countries describe the activities and safety and security concerns of children interacting in virtual worlds. The launch of the research coincided with the launch of AVG Zen at the Mobile World Congress where Smoothmedia director Dr Chris Brauer delivered a keynote speech on the increased conflation of offline and online security and the need for progressive services and tools for tackling the inevitable challenges.

We used an open-source tool called Firesheep released by a developer called Eric Butler, with the aim of alerting both websites and web users to a security threat. Firesheep demonstrates the results of HTTP session hijacking attacks.

Firesheep allows the hijacking of anyone's online accounts when they're using social networking sites on a public wi-fi network, and our research team used it in various public places - though always after getting permission first from their targets.

They ask these two questions:

1) Do you realize that you are susceptible to the use of software by a third party to get into your password-protected social networking identity?

2) Would you like me to show you?

The results of the study was covered in an extensive segment by BBC Technology editor Rory Cellan-Jones on BBC Newsnight, the UK's flagship current affair's programme.

Our research team quite literally “lived in the cloud” for two weeks, bringing together online and offline qualitative research alongside trend analysis to elaborate just how many ways we interact and store in the cloud. The technologies we engage with everyday connect us in ways that we are only beginning to understand. More and more of our data is stored in the cloud; our music, contacts, files, emails, photos and videos we pull down for use and return for safekeeping. Many people don’t even know how much storage space they have, or how much they rely upon access to their data, services and social networks. People are talking to each other about their activities, concerns, and hopes for digital realities. Crucial to the findings of this project was the rising prominence of the concept of 'digital inheritance' and the complexities around safeguarding our digital possessions for this and future generations.

As we stand on the brink of the third wave of computing, the concept of a virtual assistant (a digital service looking after a range of our needs) is fast becoming a reality. As artificial intelligence and machine learning progress at pace, virtual assistants are set to become our gateway to the internet and know more about us than we do ourselves. Siri and Google Now are just the beginning. We set out with consumers and experts to design a blueprint for the virtual assistant of the future, designing what it will do, how will we interact with it and where its boundaries will lie.

Innovaros was established in September, 2010 in Paros, Greece as a collboration between Smoothmedia and small business owners and community leaders.  The purpose of the Innovaros working group is to develop skills and share insights into the use of emerging technologies and sustainable practices to promote events, commerce, travel and tourism on Paros.