Kitchen Budapest

/ The only spicy innovation lab /

KIBU is an internationally recognized, innovation lab with an experimental view. Our primary goal is to embrace young talents and support them with our professional experience, knowledge, international network and other useful tools. Our purpose is to create sustainable, valuable projects aiming to solve global problems of mass society.

Our team works on colorful and inspiring projects aiming to turn some of them into long lasting success. We want to bring ideas to life that don’t only work conceptually or in theory but also have a great potential to succeed economically in real life situations.

At Kitchen Budapest both our Talent Program and our Startup Program provide an opportunity for young talents to make their dreams come true and through their knowledge help to make the world a better place. Our programs consist of incubation and idea development for ideas of different stages.

Our team consists of talented young designers, artists and specialists in the fields of technology. Our projects are the result of their knowledge, teamwork, curiosity and playful experimentation. Besides, each and one of them are enthusiastic mentors of our Talent and Startup programs.

Kitchen Budapest was founded with the support of Hungarian Telekom in 2007.

TALENT PROGRAM

The Talent Program is best described as an alternative educational platform for fresh, young and enthusiastic teams who are willing to learn and create. Unfortunately our education system is proposing quite the opposite with individual studying, textbooks and learning without doing. That is why we work with these teams of these young individuals in a very new model: to fill those gaps and give them the kind of knowledge and work experience that is relevant in this time and age.

While there are many ideas, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are all ready to be developed further. The Talent Program’s main goal is to help teams of young people grasp the core of their idea while letting us help them re-imagine and contextualize it as a whole.

There is a need to intensively prepare students for the increasing competition in the workplace. Education, where technology undoubtedly plays a catalyst role, is moving from a knowledge-transfer model to a collaborative, active, self-directed, and engaging model that helps students increase their knowledge and develop the skills needed to succeed in the our ever-changing present and future world.

Already in our time, when it is possible to solve virtually any problem with technology, the real challenge is how to adjust this solution to the minds, expectations and habits of people that will use it. Kitchen Budapest is convinced that working through design challenges can show students and young professionals that today’s creativity is not a question of technological literacy, but it is about self-empowerment and self-expression.

Kitchen Budapest’s Talent Program is created for idea-development including an intensive half-year teamwork for young talents from different fields. KIBU provides the know-how, the professional network, scholarship and the funding of the projects. At the end of the 6th month, each team has the opportunity to present their project on the Talent Demo Day. One or two projects will be funded further by Kitchen Budapest Startup Program or through other financial solutions provided by our team.

METHODOLOGY

The Program always starts with a selection process. There is an application form on our website that we believe is pretty straight forward and easy to fill out, but you always have some odd emails and requests to answer. It is usual to receive 90 percent of the application between 11 pm — 12 am on the last day. It is also not unusual to have follow up conversations with teams that were not selected.

There had been around 25–30 applications in each round, which we had to choose the five teams we will work with. It was never easy! We always locked ourselves into our largest meeting room and project the applications onto a screen and discussed them extensively. Because the KIBU core team comes from a very diverse background we all had a different take on the ideas. After reducing the number of teams to 6–8 we asked ourselves who would be their mentor. This was crucial because the mentors apart from guiding their team must have a good knowledge of their specific field. For example a UX designer is a good choice for a team that develops an app or a product designer for a team that wants to make a pill dispenser gadget, but you wouldn’t put a service designer in charge of a game developer team. Although it might work. (It did :)

After choosing the teams and letting the other ones know what was the reason for not choosing them, and then having multiple meetings with them, and answering more emails, and going to more meetings, huuuh… the work can begin!

In the first month we destroy the initial idea and then pick up the pieces to reassemble them. Why do we do that? Because we need to understand their concept in depth while putting it in context. This is probably the hardest part for the teams and for the mentors as well. This first month can really break or make a project. There were teams in the past who couldn’t leave their comfort zone so we had to say goodbye to each other.

There are weekly private presentations (we call them pitch) where we discuss the progress, give feedback and make decisions about the direction the project should take. This shouldn’t take longer than 30 minutes. We invite different KIBU team members to different pitches to ask their opinion about that certain milestone. For example a graphic designer is always welcome when they present their website.

We chose to use Prezi for these presentations, not only because it’s first prototype was developed in Kitchen Budapest, but because in this way we can see the progress week by week and at the end of the 6 months everything is in one place. It is a fun tool and makes their storytelling more entertaining as well.

There are monthly open presentations where the teams also present to each other and to the whole KIBU team. Their competitive side can really heat up during these events. It is a really good reality check as well for the teams because they might think their concept art is awesome but then they see what the other team has done…

Every team has to choose a representative each week who will be responsible for their next presentation and other tasks. In this way every team member will learn leadership skills and to speak front of people. We don’t give strict guidelines how to manage themselves. Some mentors favour Trello and others believe in the Scrum method.

We also provide workshops every two weeks at the beginning of the program to teach trivial sounding but absolutely necessary skills like “How to google?” or “The art of pitching!”. Later these transform into individual tutorials about specific needs like Photoshop, Java or Max/Msp programming.

PROCESS

The Talent Methodology is based on design thinking, and the program was crafted specifically for guiding the team developing their ideas into working prototypes, ready for further applications in related industries. The Talent Methodology encourages young people to challenge their ideas at an early stage, start prototyping as soon as possible and to deliver projects as prototypes for potential products and services, while also help them to collaborate successfully with others.

The Program is devised as a 4-step training program starting from a theoretical and creative approach to the prototyping and implementation of the teams’ ideas. The 6-months-program consists of a ‘Discovery’, ‘Definition’, ‘Development’ and ‘Delivery’ sections.

Discovery (~ 1.5 month)

The first part starts with the re-definition of each team’s idea and goals, exploring its problematic implications while provoking new ideas. The mentors help the teams to conduct a deep and practical research of their initial topic, to widen their perspective and challenge their assumptions. It really looks like we make them break their project proposal and re-build a new one.

Afterwards each team have to build a renewed concept, this time with the use of personas and user journeys and a basic business case, in order to validate the rebuilt idea and project proposal. This section finishes with the definite project plans of each team, ready for the preparation of it’s execution.

Definition (~ 1.5 month)

The Definition part focuses on the projects’ possible scenario building. The teams have to define each design element of their project. They analyze similar case-studies, develop storyboards, search for touch points and prepare useable working scenarios. At the end of this part, the teams have to arrive to a point where they understand the big picture of their project with all the tiny details contained, and be all planned for the execution.

Development (~ 2 months)

This part consists of all the building — testing — fixing — making — coding — crying that comes naturally with the creative development process. Depending on the projects’ topics, the Development part is different for each team. In this part, mostly the mentors guide the teams, to iterate for a software to be developed, for a product to be mechanically built or for an application to be well tested — all customized to the teams specific goals and needs. The goal of this section is to find the final solution for all the issues or questions that can come across during the development phase, and get ready to deliver the final prototype.

Delivery (~ 1 month)

The final section is dedicated to finish the proof-of-concepts, depending on the topics that could be a working model, a physical product, a beta or a detailed business model for a Startup.

Demo Day

The Program ends with the Demo Day, where all the projects get to be exhibited and introduced to a large audience. It is an official presentation of the results, and a fun night to celebrate our Talents. During the Demo Day, the new teams of the next Talent Program are announced.

Followup

Once the Program is finished, we discuss individually with the teams the possible future collaborations or the continuation of their projects. Some examples:

Simplit

The Simplit team was working on a smart pill dispenser device extended with a medication tracking system to boost the pharmacist-doctor-patient relationship. At the end of the Talent Program, they had a 3D printed prototype of the device and a preliminary business model for the Simplit services.

We continued to work with them; focusing on the two main aspects of their project: the device and the services. At this point, the product development involved mechanical design, electrical engineering and UX design. From the service point-of-view, we helped them to cooperate with one of the main national online medical platform, with the intentions to integrate Simplit in their service-system.

Deal / Misto

During the Talent Program, the Deal team was working on an IOS task manager app designed especially for couples. Their focus was on creating balance in work-sharing — rather than outsource cleaning and childcare and other gender-roles.

They managed to deliver a working prototype for this idea, and we have seen the potential to continue to work with them in our Startup Program. They joined the Startup Program with a new name and a refined concept, called Misto.

Glowria

The Glowria team was composed of bio-artists, biologists and engineers. Their goal was to create useful and machine-like functionality of modified living organisms, that is to further develop the bio-light concept based on the use of gene-modified bacteria in order to create a sustainable light source.

During the Talent Program they have conducted extensive research with creative experimentation. By the end of the Talent Program they had a bio-display that was functioning as a personal monitor for your carbon footprint as well.

After the Talent Program, they had been able to continue the work with the equipments we provided, they kept on researching and experimenting, and have successfully improved the sustainability and stability of their bio-display.

Ocho Tonos

Ocho Tonos team was working on an audible textile interface for tactile/sonic interaction. They were exploring the relation between sound and textile and experimenting with the boundaries of our senses whilst changing the way we perceive fabric, surfaces and their manifestation as sound. During the 6 months they were here we helped them to develop several prototypes.

Their project was a huge success in the blog sphere, they were even featured on the Arduino website. They were also invited to exhibit the project during the Hungarian Design Week. They haven’t stopped experimenting with the technology they mastered in the Talent Program. Currently they are trying to implement it into every day clothing.

TALENT CASE STUDIES

AIGAMERZ — PSYCRAFT

AIGamerz is a group of computer science students who entered the Talent Program with the intentions to build a website to be the core for Artificial Intelligence development, where novices would learn how to program while playing and experts would entertain themselves with 5-second games. They imagined a place for championships where users could bet for AIs in number of games, where companies could look for their next IT employees and where programmers would change their knowledge for money in an easy and competitive way.

This was a very ambitious and way forward project proposal and they immediately got our attention. Moreover, they already had a dummy of the website, but they were using it for testing poker-bots, which is not exactly what we would happily engage in. We had no doubt that they were excellent developers, but we had some concerns about the possible outcome of the project. Nevertheless, they got selected and the common work could begun.

We had spent the first 2 months by breaking their idea and goals into pieces, we wanted to see how could they bring this concept closer to a larger user group rather than just make a super geek program for super geek programmers (and forget about the poker-bots). No programming was allowed until a new concept was steady and attractive to a wider audience. They agreed, but they really struggled. They were begging us to let them start programming.

Finally, they came up with the concept of PsyCraft. A game tailored to the needs and consumer habits of the Y and Z generations, with the focus of teaching the basics of the art of AI programming to them, in a playful way.

They wanted to achieve this by guiding the user through a journey, filled with fun, learning and special benefits, especially in the beginning. By going through the journey, the boundaries between AI programmers and gamers cease to exist, thanks to the various levels of abstractions available. The learning of AI programming becomes gradual and an integral part of the game. In the first levels an AI can be crafted by setting only a few parameters (learn speed, foresight, activeness), then by setting the responses to the enemy’s actions, and finally by writing a full AI using the favourite code language.

They involved a game designer and a graphic designer in the development, who built the background story for the game with a whole new world and characters, tailored to the levels of the AI progress storyboard. They managed to develop a side scrolling PvP platformer mobile game as a tech demo for the Demo Day, and finished the basics of the journey.

The team now has plans to deepen the PvP experience by adding virtual reality elements, and support for multiple popular coding languages, in addition to the continuous AI ranking and periodic live tournaments with Turing tests.

YOUNIVERSE

Youniverse is a team of four people and their initial idea was to work with brain sensors to move real life objects. They prepared a working prototype for the interview that blew our mind. We were already levitating a ping-pong ball on the very first time we met! This is the kind of impression you want to make so it was a no brainer to take them on.

The first couple of months were not easy. They never really go as planned. We went trough several possible use cases and scenarios from mind controlled plant growing to interactive lava lamps, but we really wanted them to let go of the mechanical element. We pushed them towards experimental design and scientific art experiments, researched the current trends and collected heaps of projects on a Pinterest board.

The final project started to emerge around the 6th week where we discussed the possibilities of generating graphics from neural data and taking neuro-snapshots. By week 8 the final concept was fully thought through and ready to be developed. It even had a name: Weight Of Words.

In our experiment, the two people are focused on completing a task. One person is wearing an Oculus Rift, a Head-Mounted Virtual Reality (VR) device, while the other is using an EMOTIV Epoc (EEG) brain sensor. In utilizing high-end gaming equipment and hacking them a little bit our goal is to create a digital environment where our basic social emotions such as sympathy, trust and reliability are shown in a new context. They don’t know it, but the task cannot be completed without the two people cooperating and trusting each other. Traditional ways of communication are cut off, they need to find their own way around it, or make up their new communication system.

Capa Center and Kitchen Budapest were realizing an exhibition entitled Imagining Vision at the time. The exhibition looked at innovative technologies related to vision and observation from a unique perspective and the Weight Of Words fit right into the topic. The possibility to exhibit to project gave it a massive boost and a pretty tight deadline as well.

The most frustrating time was the waiting for the Oculus Rift to arrive. They had everything prepared and ready to go but they didn’t know whether it will work or not. It turned out to be OK but they were still bug fixing even the night before the opening.

The project was loved by the visitors and on the local media! It was performed 2–3 times a week so the equipment got worn down quite early. But this is a good thing! There were always lines to try this unusual communication method.

They said they will continue developing Weight Of Words and take it to as many new media festivals as possible.

Currently we are at the 3rd edition of our Talent Program. During the past year we tested many aspects of the process, the mentoring work, the selection process etc. We were continuously making small changes throughout the course of the program.

Along that, we realized that we have to put more and more emphasis on the potential business realization of the projects, which affected the selection process as well. For this reason, at the moment the mentoring work is comprised mostly of business development tutoring, so that the selected projects could develop into something real.

And now what?

With all the goals, objectives and methodologies listed above, our main intention with this program is still to help this self-driven X and Y generation for becoming a maker (as someone interested in coming up with new solutions for a problem, instead of buying a ready one) and through that, to increase the entrepreneurial mind-set among the youth.

We are here for them to show how to leverage their interdisciplinary skills to improve their profession, community and career. We do believe that a long-term output of this project could be that more young professionals have the skills and the possibility to establish their own real life business and enterprises in the near future.

Talent Program Lead : Attila Nemes

Currently: http://kibu.hu/#/projects/talents