“Innovation begins with strong creative ideas, then supporting those ideas with a careful balance between tech and craft,” says Geert Eichhorn, Innovation Director at MediaMonks. Having a great creative idea is one thing—and essential for differentiating oneself—but supporting it with the best possible execution is another matter.

However you choose to engage with consumers on an emotional or empathetic level, executing that narrative requires every aspect of the project to serve the story as best as possible. “It takes someone that can marry these three in service of telling the best story and that is an inherently creative process,” says Eichhorn.

Many brands like to leverage cutting-edge technology to make a splash while making a point. But when the technology fails to adequately support the idea, they end up missing the mark. MediaMonks Creative Technologist Samuel Snider-Held has discussed in the past how brands have used flashy, experimental interfaces like AR and VR to these ends, only to fail in the process.

But when provided with a task that might seem impossible, like translating the inherently intangible struggles of another’s disease into symbolic objects that give those experiences shape and weight, we knew we’d have to do something that’s never been done before: affect a machine with a human disease. Through a process that mixes innovative fabrication with fine art, a unique 3D printing approach wasn’t the star here; instead, we sought to highlight real-life stories through objects that couldn’t have existed through any other means.

Affecting the Machine

Made in collaboration between MediaMonks and Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, one of the largest university hospitals in Europe, Printed by Parkinson’s is a unique art project that aims to raise awareness of Parkinson’s disease as well as funds to research a cure. It includes a series of six objects constructed by a machine affected by the disease.

You might wonder how that’s possible. After recording kinetic and neurological data from real-life patients living with the disease through EEG systems and accelerometers, we used it to influence the movement of a 3D printer as it constructed an object that for each patient had become unusable, demonstrating how the disease has impacted their everyday lives. One patient named Heinz enjoyed crafting handmade goods before acquiring the disease, for example. For him, the printer constructed a nutcracker—based on the ones Heinz used to make—whose distorted shape, informed by Heinz’s movement data, symbolizes its lack of usability.

Through documenting the stories behind the objects—and the lives of those who used them—the campaign seeks to dispel stereotypes about the disease. “Parkinson’s doesn’t manifest with only a tremor,” says Eichhorn. “There’s a lot of different ways it can affect someone, like muscle stiffness.” Eichhorn noted how the patients depicted in the campaign presently aren’t afflicted with the well-known tremor thanks to a treatment called deep brain stimulation.

In this respect, the stories behind each object provides an opportunity for patients to explain symptoms and experiences that aren’t always visible—but executed in a way that viewers can’t turn away from. The objects themselves are arresting in their erratic, distorted shapes, beautifully rendering each subject’s story in a tangible way. “For some, these objects were a diary, or a means of having a legacy—a physical thing that tells your story and is documented for future generations,” said Eichhorn.

Roan Laenen, a Jr. Creative at MediaMonks who worked intimately on the project, echoes the sentiment: “The patients could share their own personal stories, which meant a lot to them and their families,” he said. The two noted how one patient’s grandchildren were present at the gallery opening where the objects were displayed. Perhaps too young to understand Parkinson’s disease when explained through words alone, they could clearly understand the message conveyed by each sculpture. “They tell such a powerful story,” says Eichhorn. “You don’t have to explain anything—you see immediately that something is off. In just a glance, it all clicks.”

Celebrating Imperfection without Sacrificing Quality

Finding the best technique to print the objects was no simple matter; there’s many techniques for 3D printing, not just one. Finding the right technique to construct each artwork was essential for doing the patients’ stories justice. “Our goal was to really justify how good the idea was—to print them in a way where it feels like an art-object,” says Eichhorn. “It needed to feel like a premium item, whereas standard 3D printing often looks and feels cheap.”

Experience the unique collection of objects and stories yourself.

The team collaborated with 3D printing artist Joris van Tubergen, also known as RooieJoris, whose techniques in 3D printing are used in several international galleries and museums. In their experimentations with different printing methods, the team settled on one called fuse deposition modeling, one of the most common 3D printing techniques, in which the printer builds an object layer by layer.

While other techniques—like extracting the object from a liquid—could heighten visual or textural quality, using them would weaken the narrative potential of each object. “It was still important that we have those print lines, since that’s part of the story,” said Eichhorn, explaining how powerful it is to see how the Parkinson’s-affected printing arm built each object layer by layer. In this case, the imperfections inherent in the technique—a rougher and more jagged surface—helped to bring the story above each sculpture’s surface. “The lines of the object and the data used to build it shine through in a nice way, contained in a premium object,” says Eichhorn.

In addition to printing technique, proper choice in material was essential to the quality. Originally, the team considered replicating each object so its 3D-printed version would have the same material as the original that inspired it. Thinking that it would be better to keep the series uniform, the team settled on bronze filament—a material that isn’t just good to look at, but nice to hold. “It presented a nice effect in that it looks and feels a bit old, tying it a bit to more historic sculptural pieces,” says Laenen. “Yet it’s made with a very modern technology and innovative technique.”

Telling the Story Creatively with Data

Translating patients’ neurological data into a machine-led printing technique isn’t a cut-and-dry task, despite its technical nature. “There’s a creative process there, too,” says Eichhorn. The patients’ movement data came in the form of line graphs, whose mountains and valleys determined whether the printing arm would be offset in one direction to another. This technique enabled each object’s distinct wavy shape. “We had to consider things like: how does this data look? What does it do to the object? How printable is it?” says Eichhorn.

Laenen experimented with devising how to best apply the data graphs for each sculpture. A long, slender kayak paddle, for example, has a subtler distortion that compliments its shape well. The boxy chainsaw, meanwhile, takes a much more jagged look to make its distortion immediately clear to viewers. “Based on the principles of printability, and how the data impacts the object’s construction, we chose what we thought told the story in the strongest, most visually clear way,” says Laenen.

The strength of the project lies in how different elements and people came together to tell an emotionally resonant story that clearly conveys patients’ everyday lived experiences. This included not only the fabrication of the artworks on display, but also supporting elements like video, photography, animation and even the website’s typeface.

“It was interesting to see how many people were involved in this process,” says Laenen. “I think with something like this, in which you instantly understand and feel passionate about it, you see the power of a strong, emotional idea executed to perfection.” Technology best serves these ideas when it becomes unobtrusive, if not unnoticeable. Eichhorn says only half-jokingly: “It should win the Oscar for best supporting role, not starring, so to speak.”

In many places around the world, learning disabilities and impairments often go undiagnosed due to a lack of resources and access to facilities that test for them. But when missed, learning disabilities or color blindness can oftentimes discourage children from participating and excelling in class–sometimes eroding self-confidence in the process, which in turn can lead to far-reaching difficulties later in life.

But technology can help bridge the divide in communities where traditional testing isn’t scalable or accessible to students—so when children’s multivitamin brand Pharmaton Kiddi wanted to impact kids’ lives through technology, MediaMonks’ innovation team sharpened their pencils and put their digital skills to the test. The result is an assessment designed to determine whether students may have one of the learning impairments mentioned above—all while they’re having fun by playing their way through an engaging, interactive digital picture book.

Called Kiddi World, the app takes users aged 9-12 on a journey through the charming World of Words, which is populated with living school supplies and rendered in a charming, painterly aesthetic. Our hero is a sharp, courageous pencil named Lapi in pursuit of Gomba, an irritable eraser whose rampage results in the erasure of parts of the world and words becoming jumbled together. Through a series of visual and language-based activities, kids must erase the prickly eraser’s influence on the world and set things right. The app shows what edtech can achieve through a hands-on approach that brings together data, UX expertise and best-in-class creative storytelling.

Reducing Testing Anxiety with Under-the-Hood Innovation

“Kiddi World fills an empty space where you can pre-diagnose the child,” says Geert Eichhorn, Innovation Director at MediaMonks. He cautions that it isn’t meant to replace a medical professional’s diagnosis of any impairment. “It functions as an indicator based on professional tests,” he says, prompting parents’ or teachers’ attention if a child is likely to have an impairment.

Through AI, the test can measure students’ legibility with precise accuracy—for example, how much a student’s writing extends outside the bounds of a line. “It’s a matter of determining a percentage of error that allows us to apply some simple rules,” says Luis Guajardo, Creative Technologist at MediaMonks, “to tell teachers to look further into it and check in with the child.”

And that’s a good point; while children can play through the test by themselves (guided by text and voiceover instructions that lead them through timed exercises), the app doesn’t signal a reduction in the teacher’s role. Instead, it gives teachers a tool they can use to help them understand how individual students process information differently. They can apply this knowledge to how they educate their students—like making a customized lesson plan or supplementary programs—to aid in these students’ learning.

With so much happening under the hood, children are free to enjoy the assessment without feeling the pressure and anxiety that comes with being tested. Instead, the experience is designed and built to emphasize a child’s unique journey exploring the world with Lapi.

One of the more interesting ways the app achieves this is through handwriting recognition, which aids in identifying dysgraphia automatically as students write. Many touch devices, like Apple’s iPad, natively offer handwriting recognition to translate users’ handwriting into print text. This feature is great for extracting meaning from handwriting, like if a user is jotting down notes. To detect atypical writing behavior from typical ones, MediaMonks took handwriting recognition a step further.

“We used an external tool that could measure stroke speed and density, helping us measure if a line was made fast or slow,” says Eichhorn. These variables are key for making a precise assessment for whether a student might have dysgraphia. “We employed a set of rules that identify aspects of dysgraphia that are particularly notorious and can be examined by the app,” says Guajardo.

In addition to native handwriting recognition, the team also had to disable spell check native to iOS apps. If a student’s spelling mistakes are corrected as they go, it would impact their score—an obvious, but easy to overlook, barrier to accuracy. “Instead, we use an API that determines if what a student has written is a real word, or close to a real word,” says Eichhorn.

Building Immersion Through Design

The tech under the hood is remarkable, but the designs on the surface of the experience are what bring Kiddi World to life. For every action, students write or draw something on the screen, adding to the sense of engagement as they make their mark—literally—on the story’s world. This is why the user’s avatar is a pencil: Lapi reflects the everyday tools that students use in class.

Narrative is ingrained into each of the challenges that kids must overcome in their journey through the World of Words. First, they’re tested on color blindness: Gomba has erased a path through the land, so readers have to draw it back by tracing a line that cuts through a pattern commonly used in tests to determine the type and intensity of color blindness that one might have. Users complete this challenge by drawing a series of segments of the path, which then come together like comic panels to create a full scene.

If a student is color blind and therefore can’t see one or more paths, they can simply skip that segment. This way, students aren’t penalized for something they can’t control, which is critical to how the assessment is designed and progresses. No matter how students respond or interact in any of the exercises, results aren’t telegraphed to them nor do they affect the narrative. Instead, results are saved in a report that’s delivered to the teacher upon each test’s completion.

Eichhorn notes that the narrative is constructed in a way that gives students a real sense of progress. “In the first chapter, students are working with Lapi to respond to what Gomba has already done,” he says. “In the middle, they’re about the same level as him, and in Chapter 3, they’re ahead of him and trying to thwart his plans.”

The flow (and lack of scoring interrupting the narrative) ensures students feel confident and empowered regardless of difficulties they face in the assessments—of which there are a variety. “A lot of testing is required for accuracy,” says Eichhorn. “We found that we needed maybe six times as much information than we originally imagined to come to a reliable and accurate result.”

Still, the team was able to deliver the necessary assortment of tests seamlessly integrated into an engaging narrative—a good test for partners who understand both tech, user experience and visual design. From responding to a direct regional need and offering a familiar and engaging narrative experience, Kiddi World shows that innovation doesn’t have to come at the cost of usability or accessibility. In fact, it can help us facilitate better accessibility to users who need it.

Tools like this can have a profound impact on education—not just by aiding students who might have one of the tested learning disabilities or color blindness, but by initiating more personalized educational plans. By providing measured feedback on how students process information, edtech like Kiddi World enable closer, one-to-one connections between students and teachers, helping them identify the best individualized approach to enhance a student’s learning.