We worked really hard developing the MirrorMe application and took risks to push both technical and creative boundaries. This makes it even more rewarding we receive recognition from the digital community.

We launched in Q4 2009 and are excited to announce that MirrorMe has already won its first award! MirrorMe beat competition from across the World to win an outstanding achievement award in the lifestyle category of the 2009 Interactive Media Awards. It’s a great honour to get this award and hopefully the first of many!

http://www.interactivemediaawards.com/winners/certificate.asp?param=70503&cat=1

The MirrorMe app was born out of a Crossover lab that Jeremiah attended earlier in the year. I now had the privilege of attending a similar Lab along with experts from science, film/ TV production and games.

The crossover science lab was a week of daily brain storming and idea generations exercises to come up with creative ideas based on our skills; designing platforms that can bring science closer to people using games or traditional media.

It was a fascinating experience for me to get a glimpse into how the film industry and the science industry work. All the attendees were experts in their field and chatting to them over dinner and during workshops was very exciting; I think there is a great opportunity for us to combine our skills to produce some truly unique ideas.

The first three  days of the lab we were led by Frank Boyd and the team of mentors to try and establish what we were aiming to achieve as well as understanding each other’s perspectives. The main categories were film, TV, Digital media, Games,  science and psychology; because we were all from very different disciplines, it was important for us to establish a common ground and understanding of each other’s language.

We were constantly put into different groups and doing varied actives to come up with some unique (and some truly mad) ideas. Everyone was in good spirits and no ideas were seen as bad ideas. It was a very fun experience for me and I really enjoyed the creativity and energy that was flowing around the room.  We were given challenges over Dinner and Lunch to work on in teams of 3 to 4, and were always doing pitches for the ideas. Frank and the mentors were brilliant and supportive of the group, constantly giving us great feedback on each of the ideas.

On the fourth and fifth days of the lab, we had to narrow down 50 ideas to just 6 which we all wanted to work on. We then split into 6 teams and with just over one day to work on the idea and prepare a full presentation on Friday afternoon.

I was fortunate to be on a team with Peter Dale from RareDay, Peter Bently from UCL, Pete from Tunatech (yes there were a lot of Pete(r)s in our group) and Rob Davis from Playniac. Our idea involved using augmented reality and geographic data from the UK. It was an incredible, exciting idea, and being the only artist in the group, I was responsible for producing the powerpoint presentation.

On Friday afternoon, the 6 teams had to do presentations in front of a panel from Channel 4, BBC, National Geographic, NHS, Screen Yorkshire and the Wellcome trust (as well as the mentors and the other groups)

Our presentation went really well and the panel gave us some great feedback on how we could improve it and it seemed like a very solid idea that got everyone excited. Hopefully the idea will move forward so I get to work on another exciting project emerging from a Crossover Lab!

The Crossover lab was a truly unique and amazing experience for me, the enthusiasm and energy from everyone was unbelievable. The Ideas coming out of the sessions were extremely creative; it just goes to show that when working with a group of creative people, you can come up with ideas  beyond what an individual could. We were constantly buzzing with excitement due to the creativity and discussions throughout the week.

A huge thank you to all the mentors: Mark Atkin, Heather Croall, John Kent, Margaret Robertson, Patrick Uden ,Emma Cheshire and last but not least, Frank Boyd the lab director.

It was a privilege and honour for me to spend a week with industry experts and share their unique insights; I couldn’t have gained this experience anywhere else.  It was a sad moment when I had to leave the Lab and say goodbye to everyone, but we are all keeping in contact and there seems to be a couple of ideas that are being pursued by the teams. I will keep my fingers crossed for all of them and update you when there is any exciting news!

See more photos from the event.

Although primarily designed to be simple and fun, MirrorMe has some clever technology behind it. It uses advanced Facial Recognition technology to detect over 86 unique points on the human face and uses this information to create an individualised and scarily accurate facial distortion. It also incorporates medical research to create changes specific to the individual user’s sex, age, location, ethnic origin and bad habits.

MirrorMe will be coming to other social networks in the New Year, and an iPhone version is also planned. Try it for yourself.

MirrorMe is a Facebook application that allows you to take any photo of yourself and after entering an overview of your bad habits, morph your face into its degenerated future form. You can then share and compare images with your friends and experiment with the effects of different lifestyle choices.

Although primarily designed to be simple and fun, MirrorMe has some clever technology behind it. It uses advanced Facial Recognition technology to detect over 86 unique points on the human face and uses this information to create an individualised and scarily accurate facial distortion. It also incorporates medical research to create changes specific to the individual user’s sex, age, location, ethnic origin and bad habits.

Have a go yourself, and see what you will look like when your old! http://apps.facebook.com/mirrorme

Northern Film & Media are the partners for 4ip in the North East and are supporting the development of ideas in the region. Over the 2nd, 3rd and 4th we took part in a special 4ip crossover lab, designed to get the best traditional and new media companies in the region collaborating and creating innovative ideas for the fund. 20 people participate from all streams of media including film production, web design and games and following three days of intense idea generation and pitching activities, everybody began generating amazing ideas.

We’re looking forward to collaborating with some of the companies we met on the scheme and also submitting some great projects to the 4ip scheme… watch this space.