Citizen Participation with AR

1. Decision makers cannot visualise solutions to problems their community is facing. Citizens are not participated to provide the solutions. 

2. By visualising solutions to problems in your community using augmented reality on your mobile phone, citizens will have unparalleled channel for providing suggestions to decision makers. 

3. Sharing your local solutions on online platform instantly gives access to anyone globally. People on the other side of the World can learn from your solutions. 

Communities around the World, small and large, face the same problem: people who would know how to improve their society do not get their voice heard. Best ideas do not meet the decision makers. In contrast, communities where citizens actively participate in the decision making process thrive.  Based on research the benefits of public participation are a) improved governance b) greater social cohesion c) improved quality of services, projects and programmes d) greater capacity building and learning. Most often the reasons for the lack of citizen participation are language or resource related. Our solution solves these bottlenecks by enabling anyone to visualise solutions to problems in their community in augmented reality using their mobile phone. 

We are working all citizens in the World who have a smart phone (around 40 % of World's population). Anyone can use our AR solution called "3DBear", download it for free, redesign their environment in augmented reality, take a picture or video describing how their design would change their community for the better, and share it with others on our online platform. 

We are working with decision makers such as cities of Helsinki, New York, Seattle and organisations like the Digital Citizenship Institute and United Nations to put the citizens' suggestions into use. 

We are co-developing our solution also with students and teachers in schools around the World, and incorporating our solution into the curriculum to have a global impact. 

We have so far reached 100 000 learners who have made 550 000 designs in AR in 43 different countries. 

Being a visual solution, it's easier to show than describe: https://youtu.be/XCPbYSxqqwM

In 3DBear, anyone can redesign their environment in augmented reality using a mobile phone and share their work in the form of photo or video with other users. This uses the newest native augmented reality ARKit and ARCore technology from the Apple and Google and for older phones we use 8wall or Wikitude. The app can be downloaded from App Store or Google Play for free for basic features.

Augmented reality has been used for entertainment solutions like Pokemon Go where you collect coins and chase monsters. In our product, you are able to use this new technology for something purposeful: to solve problems by visualising solutions on your mobile phone. What is new and different in 3DBear is that citizens are able to design and create themselves, not just experience passive content created by others. Using AR for citizen participation is entirely new innovation. 

3DBear uses the video camera feed of mobile phone to scan your surroundings and based on that enables 3D (re)designing your surroundings in the actual context! 

We provide ready-made 3D models (such as green walls, solar panels, recycling points, bike share racks...) to help people getting started to think how they could improve their local community (in this example to be more sustainable, overall there are millions of 3D models available). 

But what is more important, we provide so easy-to-use experience that a four-year old (or grandma) can comfortably use 3DBear to visualise solutions to problems by redesigning your environment. For more advanced users, they can bring in completely own 3D models to be part of the augmentations they create. 

We have challenges in-app to lead the user through the problems their community might be facing and asking them visualise solutions to them. 

So, it's overall about both the underlying technology and packaging it well with flawless user experience and comfortable UI. 

In Helsinki, where students in 10 schools redesigned their school using 3DBear to meet solutions to their everyday problems, survey among the students and teachers revealed that 90 % thought that using 3DBear was a good way to participate students in the decision making process and similarly 90 % thought that it was an ideal way of learning higher order skills (communication, collaboration, critical thinking and creativity). 

In Espoo, where citizens redesigned their local community the evaluation report stated: "The 3DBear tool enables participation and learning job skills with the help of new technology. It develops critical thinking skills, visual and kinaesthetic learning, and is not tied to any language."

Here's also user testimonial video in another context to show the wide variety of problems that can be solved using 3DBear, this time again in school:  

https://youtu.be/LEK7WmStPjk

Currently: 100 000

Next year: 1 000 000

Five years: 500 000 000

Next year: 

In addition to keep the exponential growth in users going, we will establish better the service to the decision makers from the community. We have the communities involved already, next step is to systematise the service we offer to decision makers based on Helsinki, Espoo and New York cases. 

Five years: 

In addition to keep the exponential growth in users going, we have systematised, well documented and scaled up the service we have developed for decision makers to take the citizen solutions into use. 

Scaling up the citizen users involves digital marketing strategy implemented by growth hacking. We have been very successful in this. 

Scaling up the decision maker service requires setting up partnership and reselling network, which is slower, but will provide significant gains. 

As in our strategy (digital marketing first) we have decided to go for the citizen users first, we are not generating that much revenue yet. We have sold over $500k but that is not enough to keep the exponential growth going. We have raised over $3 M in financing so far with LearnCapital and Rethink Education in US involved but the availability for financing will be a crucial factor determining how quickly we can scale. 

The percentage of users having smart phone increases all the time, so time is on our side in terms of technology adaption. The market of AR capable phones doubles every year. 

Localization of the product and adapting it to different languages and cultures is obviously a big hurdle, but we consider that as a positive problem. 

In terms of competition we've been in this niche in blue ocean so far. Probably the highest risk is Apple or Google buying us out. But we want to be in position where our work can affect the lives of people around the World. 

Fundraising has so far been successful and we want to keep it that way. If for some reason funds are not available, we have plan B which secures our digital marketing strategy for several years. In this timeframe we are able to gain enough market share and sales to scale back up again. But this would slow down the expansion.

To address more smartphones we have made our solution available for phones supporting 8wall or Wikitude (most smartphones published within four years). 

We are using and building an ambassador community which helps us to create content specific for the regions we are expanding into. 

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10 full-time staff

3 contractors

We are the best team to lead and disrupt this market. 

CEO Kristo Lehtonen has over 10 years of experience in leadershipand international business from Nokia. In Nokia Siemens Networks he worked as the right hand of former CEO Pekka Soini.

COO Jussi Kajala has over 10 years of experience in financing, business strategy and sales. He has degree from University of Cambridge, UK, and Ph.D. in computational physics. He has won the prizes of the best salesman, and the employee of the Year in Business Finland where he run their 3D technologies program.

Chief Design Officer (CDO) Pekka Salokannel has over 10 years of experience in 3D technologies and entrepreneurship. He founded 3D-printing company Kokosom, and was the artist behind Tinkercad up to the time when they did their exit (sold to Autodesk).

CTO Olli Niskanen has over 5 years of experience in software front-end development with Unity and back-end development. He has been the leading games platform developer at Futurice.

Chief Pedagogical Officer Maria Muuri has written several school books and for example this EdSurge hit article: https://www.edsurge.com/news/2...

We are currently rolling into Google Education partnership program and working with Apple Education. We have done co-promotions with Makerbot (the World's largest desktop 3D printing company) where students 3D print their AR designs. We have been working with Facebook Education to support sharing works directly to Facebook (new 3D sharing feature they launched in late 2018)!

In addition to these bigger partnerships we work with several local organisations such as the Digital Partnership Institute and the New York Teacher Center Committee.  

In our digital marketing strategy our app can be tried out for free, and we provide subscription to access the premium features in the application (and the web dashboard for sharing the designs). 

The subscriptions have tiers starting from $199 / year for 30 users package to $2.65 / user / year for package having more than 500 users. 

The premium features include: 

-Premium collections in the app (like the sustainability collection) 

-Access to activites (such as redesign your community) and challenges

-Access to dashboard for controlling and showing citizen work 

-Integrations to LMS and other city systems. 

-Onboarding via webinar or live training

Revenue stream and funding details included in the answers below.

Solve will help us to overcome our most significant barrier: access to global networks. With the network that Solve has at its disposal we will able to derive partnerships, co-branding, distribution and access to customers in a sustainable way. 

Access to talented workforce in the Solve community will be crucial for our expansion plans. We are currently looking to hire a US education focused growth hacking expert, marketing & comms lead and Vice President for sales in the US. 

Finally, funding will able us to accelerate our growth and reach profitability quicker, enabling citizen participation to many more people around the World sooner. 

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United Nations, UNESCO: to work with to reach the sustainable development goals in local communities all around the world by participating citizens to provide solutons.

City Development Offices (e.g. Mayor's Office of San Francisco): to pilot and then take our solution into use to participate citizens for improving the city. 

Google, Apple: for distribution of our solution worldwide.

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Here's why:

https://youtu.be/G6t8FjcjloQ

Many of the new tools you see in education are replacements for books. We are the replacement for pen. 

3DBear encourages citizen involvement in surroundings and community. Users can suggest improvements by showing how would they design their local city  using augmented reality.

This builds future job skills. According to the latest megatrend reports, 3D modeler is one of the top 20 job titles for the future. With 3DBear you learn the skill of tomorrow with the tool of today.

3DBear really enables something that was really difficult to do before without AR technology. You can 3D design anything and see it through AR lenses in 3DBear. 

What we’ve found is that our approach helps kinesthetic and visual learners in classroom. When given the right tools, they flourish. This improves employability and college enrollment particularly for low income, underrepresented minority and first generation students.

And what is best about 3DBear is that it is inexpensive, and really easy to deploy. You’ve got the device already. It provides affordable, high quality pedagogical content harnessing the experimental nature of XR. 

Users generate content, and thus it provides a platform for almost anything. It’s not just about learning one niche thing, it’s a tool for creating and designing for everyone.

The prize would help us to accelerate our entry to the US market and overall deliver all the benefits listed above to more people around the World. 

Here's why:

https://youtu.be/G6t8FjcjloQ

Many of the new tools you see in education are replacements for books. We are the replacement for pen. 

3DBear encourages student involvement in surroundings and community. Users can suggest improvements by showing how would they design their local city using augmented reality. 

This builds future job skills. According to the latest megatrend reports, 3D modeler is one of the top 20 job titles for the future. With 3DBear you learn the skill of tomorrow with the tool of today. 

Think about it: if you are designing a dress and want to try out how different buttons look on that dress, what is the best way of doing it? It’s through augmented reality. 

What we’ve found is that our approach helps kinesthetic and visual learners in classroom. When given the right tools, they flourish. It is particularly engaging for girls and women to tell their stories in a digital medium.

And what is best about 3DBear is that it is inexpensive, and really easy to deploy. You’ve got the device already. It provides affordable, high quality pedagogical content harnessing the experimental nature of XR. 

Users generate content, and thus it provides a platform for almost anything. It’s not just about learning one niche thing, it’s a tool for creating and designing for everyone.

The prize would help us to accelerate our entry to the US market and overall deliver all the benefits listed above to more people around the World. 

Here's why:

https://youtu.be/G6t8FjcjloQ

Many of the new tools you see in education are replacements for books. We are the replacement for pen. 

3DBear encourages student involvement in surroundings and community. Users can suggest improvements by showing how would they design their local city using augmented reality. 

This builds future job skills. According to the latest megatrend reports, 3D modeler is one of the top 20 job titles for the future. With 3DBear you learn the skill of tomorrow with the tool of today. 

3DBear really enables something that was really difficult to do before without AR technology. You can 3D design anything and see it through AR lenses in 3DBear. 

What we’ve found is that our approach helps kinesthetic and visual learners in classroom. When given the right tools, they flourish. This improves employability and college enrollment particularly for low income, underrepresented minority and first generation students.

And what is best about 3DBear is that it is inexpensive, and really easy to deploy. You’ve got the device already. It provides affordable, high quality pedagogical content harnessing the experimental nature of XR. 

Users generate content, and thus it provides a platform for almost anything. It’s not just about learning one niche thing, it’s a tool for creating and designing for everyone.

The prize would help us to accelerate our entry to the US market and overall deliver all the benefits listed above to more people around the World. 

-

Here's why:

https://youtu.be/G6t8FjcjloQ

Many of the new tools you see in education are replacements for books. We are the replacement for pen. 

3DBear encourages student involvement in surroundings and community. Users can suggest improvements by showing how would they design their local city using augmented reality. 

This builds future job skills. According to the latest megatrend reports, 3D modeler is one of the top 20 job titles for the future. With 3DBear you learn the skill of tomorrow with the tool of today. 

3DBear really enables something that was really difficult to do before without AR technology. You can 3D design anything and see it through AR lenses in 3DBear. 

What we’ve found is that our approach helps kinesthetic and visual learners in classroom. When given the right tools, they flourish. This improves employability and college enrollment particularly for low income, underrepresented minority and first generation students.

And what is best about 3DBear is that it is inexpensive, and really easy to deploy. You’ve got the device already. It provides affordable, high quality pedagogical content harnessing the experimental nature of XR. 

Users generate content, and thus it provides a platform for almost anything. It’s not just about learning one niche thing, it’s a tool for creating and designing for everyone.

The prize would help us to accelerate our entry to the US market and overall deliver all the benefits listed above to more people around the World.  

Here's why:

https://youtu.be/G6t8FjcjloQ

Many of the new tools you see in education are replacements for books. We are the replacement for pen. 

3DBear encourages student involvement in surroundings and community. Users can suggest improvements by showing how would they design their local city using augmented reality, for example how to make it safer without guns. 

This builds future job skills. According to the latest megatrend reports, 3D modeler is one of the top 20 job titles for the future. With 3DBear you learn the skill of tomorrow with the tool of today. 

3DBear really enables something that was really difficult to do before without AR technology. You can 3D design anything and see it through AR lenses in 3DBear. 

What we’ve found is that our approach helps kinesthetic and visual learners in classroom. When given the right tools, they flourish. This improves employability and college enrollment particularly for low income, underrepresented minority and first generation students.

And what is best about 3DBear is that it is inexpensive, and really easy to deploy. You’ve got the device already. It provides affordable, high quality pedagogical content harnessing the experimental nature of XR. 

Users generate content, and thus it provides a platform for almost anything. It’s not just about learning one niche thing, it’s a tool for creating and designing for everyone.

The prize would help us to accelerate our entry to the US market and overall deliver all the benefits listed above to more people around the World.