We consider that the developments and achievements made during the final year of the project, and their wide visibility in the creative industry (through public events, keynotes and showcases) as well as among creative communities such as developers, creative coders, artists and designers (through workshops and hackathons), has achieved the expected impact proposed in the RAPID-MIX DoA.
During Y3 RAPID-MIX has successfully introduced innovative ICT technologies within the creative industries, by launching the final version of the RAPID-API. This has been released together with a set of prototypes/tutorials that help our user community to demonstrate the different functionalities and features of the API components. The RAPID-API has been designed following guidelines and specifications that guarantee interoperability between hardware and software, and its functionalities were aligned not only with the specific needs of our SME partners, but also with the the general creative industry through public events deployed since the beginning of the project.
We can proudly claim that the RAPID-MIX design cycle has taken place close to professional and end-users to guarantee a good product-market fit. During the reported year the project has updated its corpus of user-centred design methodologies and guidelines to cover MIX product design, that are publicly available to the European creative communities, with the aim of contributing to the leadership of European creative industries in the development of innovative technology products.
Year 3 has also seen cost effective, innovative and high-value products and services delivered by the RAPID-MIX consortium. These innovations took the shape of low cost hardware and software tools, easy to interface with each other (the RAPID-API), and prototypes to demonstrate their utility in different contexts (gaming, music, mobile apps, wellbeing). As shown by the products pushed forward by partner SMEs, the RAPID-API is capable of greatly optimising (cost and time wise) the fast-prototyping of multimodal interactive and expressive interfaces, reducing dependence on ground-up development, and allowing fast prototype-to-product pathways. One of the main aims of the RAPID-API was to increase the cost effectiveness of product development, improving both time efficiency in product design as well as dependence on 3rd party consultancy and research.
All the aforementioned achievements have materialized in the final version of the MIX products that have been released this year/in the following months. Together with the API, these are the most relevant contributions of the project during Y3, as described in the DoA, having a direct impact in real market scenarios during Y3.
Moreover, the SME partner PLUX won the 1st place at the “Innovation Radar Prize” in the “Industrial and Enabling Tech” Category (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission thanks to its new product line powered by RAPID-MIX. Reactable Systems, another SME partner, was also nominated and finalist for the same award.
