Student Projects for Ikea, Amazon and Lego Win Future Lions at Cannes

A food container for Ikea that warns when its contents are about to spoil, an AI voice interface for Amazon designed for seniors and an app that reads books to children via Facebook Messenger were among the winning student work of this year's Future Lions awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Also successful was an in-store system for Lego that suggests new sets based on a customer's existing bricks and a language-learning tool that uses Spotify to help people memorize words. In the 11th year of the contest, created by AKQA in 2006, more than 1,900 students from 69 countries participated, making it the most entered and competitive year so far. Sweden's Berghs School of Communication was named Future Lions School of the Year, having received more short-listed entries than any other school, for the third year in a row. Berghs students Filip Myringer, Amelie Farmer, Olga Lillienau, Sofia Bleiweiss and Ebba von Zweigbergk created the Hallbar food container for Ikea. It has a smart sensor that measures bacterial growth and indicates when your food is about to spoil, while a linked app allows people to track their food's freshness in real time. Book Messenger, created for Penguin Books by Jiwon Ko, Miyeon Shin, Seonhaeng Lee and Haeyoon Jhun of Kookmin University, Hongik University and Chung-ang University/Big Ant Academy in South Korea, addresses the problem of children reading more text messages than books by putting books into an app, so they could read via Facebook Messenger. Kids could also interact with the storyteller via the app. Another Swedish team, Petter Monsen, Tomas Möller, Axel Lokrantz Månsson, Kristofer Gullard Lindgren and Simon Kraft of Beckmans College of Design, created Lego Generator, an in-store machine that suggests new sets based on someone's existing collection of Lego. The machine sorts and packages the toy bricks to match the chosen set, while the rest are put in a separate bag. Emma, for Amazon, created by Yanci Wu and Xia Du of VCU Brandcenter in the U.S., is an AI voice interface designed specially for seniors that lives in the Amazon Echo. Emma can converse with seniors and also help them navigate the internet more easily, delivering email, photos, games and puzzles. Music Speaks, for Spotify, created by Sebastian Brännén and Maria Lashari, also of Sweden's Berghs School of Communication is a tool that uses Spotify to help people learn languages using the power of music. Users can create a personal playlist of songs where the words they need to learn most frequently appear.

Student Projects for Ikea, Amazon and Lego Win Future Lions at Cannes

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