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The Get Set Yeti app is in development, themed around a clan of yeti characters, that allows younger children to understand their emotions, through discovering ‘emotion beasties’, enabling difficult concepts to be put across in an age accessible and engaging way.

Background

Get Set Yeti is a Digital Education business, that specialises in using storytelling and character-based learning to make Growth Mindset accessible to younger children at school and at home.  They aim to level the ‘educational playing field’ by helping children from all walks of life develop the skills to become confident, resilient learners.  They also provide materials for parents to build their confidence and capacity to do the things at home that have an impact on creating solid school foundations in Early Literacy and Early Numeracy.  

Get Set Yeti supports educators and parents to help children develop learning resilience and confidence through building a growth mindset, and through emotional literacy. They offer a range of programmes and resources themed around a clan of yeti characters.  

The company came into existence through recognition of a need in the field and has been developed by its founder Carol Arnott. An experienced practitioner both in Primary and Community Education, Carol employed Growth Mindset techniques initially to develop a rhyming story to help local families struggling with learning confidence. The story of “The Yeti’s Roar” was born, developed into a book which grew into a learning programme that was successfully trialled in several local schools and nurseries in the Dundee area.  

Developing the programme became a passion of Carol’s and with the help of Business Gateway and the Elevator Business Accelerator, where Carol was introduced to Interface, her business began and demand quickly developed to the stage of looking to grow the team and expand into other cities – then Covid hit.  Unable to get into schools due to closures and distancing regulations and with other contracts put on hold it became apparent that digital learning was the way forward.  A new site was built and ‘Get Set Yeti’ evolved and grew. 

The Challenge

Get Set Yeti was created to provide Growth Mindset resources for children under 8 due to the lack of material available. In the educational climate, there was a growing need for children to learn to be more resilient in learning and it was widely recognised that learning to develop a ‘Growth Mindset’ could successfully meet this need. 

Get Set Yeti was interested in developing an app or platform that could help young children understand and process emotions using Growth Mindset to help maintain positive mental health.   

The Solution

Through the Accelerator in Dundee, Carol met Lorna Watson of Interface who identified University of Dundee’s Dr Michael Crabb (School of Science and Engineering) and Dr Alexia Barrable (School of Education and Social Work) who had the required academic expertise to develop an app that could help younger children develop emotional literacy and self-regulation. This initial project was taken forward with a £5000 Standard Innovation Voucher.  

The team at the University of Dundee helped initialise ‘The Yeti Field Guide to Feelings’ app to help children develop emotional literacy, supported by parents and educators.   

Based on the premise that deep in the forest on top of Yeti Mountain the yetis sometimes come across ‘Emotion Beasties’ that have escaped from children in the villages below. Once caught, the yetis learn how to look after them using their special book ‘The Yeti Field Guide to Feelings’.  They learn that caring for feelings takes practise and learn techniques to manage them through online interaction and additional printable activities and resources.   

The app will incorporate: 

This innovation sits right at the heart of Get Set Yeti’s core strategy as it uses process design to help children and families understand difficult concepts and gives them the tools to develop skills to learn successfully using Growth Mindset techniques. 

The Benefits

The Next Steps

Get Set Yeti have transitioned through the restrictions brought about by Covid19, transforming from a localised, face-to-face delivery company to an online-learning portal with international potential.  

Following on from this initial project the relationship between Interface and Get Set Yeti has continued to grow and there have been several more successful student projects/placements for a range of things from marketing to behavioural analysis as follows: 

Due the restrictions brought about through Covid19 Get Set Yeti pivoted to produce a digital version of their material and with the help of Abertay University the company developed a digital marketing strategy to promote their digital offering and transform from a localised business to offer their products nationally and develop a marketing campaign to appeal to local authorities, head teachers, infant teachers and parents. 
 
A successful student placement project with the University of West of Scotland helped Get Set Yeti achieve a targeted marketing campaign appealing to potential clients and partners; utilising social media and other appropriate available channels. 

The University of Stirling undertook some behavioural analysis to help Get Set Yeti understand and develop customer personas to allow them to enter new markets and target their future campaigns for maximum impact.  
 
University of Highlands and Islands students are currently working directly with the Musical Director and CEO to help devise a digital marketing and social media campaign to promote an album of original ‘Yeti Songs’ to enhance the delivery of Growth Mindset learning to younger children and their families. 
 
 

Unlocking Potential (U>P) – a powerful people analytics platform helping organisations of all sizes to optimise their workforce 

Background 

Nectis Ltd focuses on optimising wellbeing, performance and productivity in the workplace through people analytics and understanding business ecosystems.  Founder and CEO, Colin Campbell has a wealth of experience in this area, having spent more than 20 years building company ecosystems (the people related to your company). 

The Challenge 

Nectis Ltd successfully competed to deliver against CivTech 5, in 2021 with sponsor Transport Scotland.  Their Challenge – How can tech help foster the development of informal networks when people are working at home or in Work Local hubs? 

To assist in addressing the challenge and through the partnership between CivTech and Interface, Colin approached us to help facilitate collaboration with academia on three 3 different projects: 

The Solution 

The solution developed by Nectis Ltd is Unlocking Potential (U>P) Unlocking Potential – Optimising Business Agility & Performance, a SaaS people analytics platform that visualises patterns of collaboration and uses insight to create agility and wellbeing. This solution uses data driven insights of individuals and teams, to understand their patterns, overcome barriers and breakdown work silos.  In addition, it provides an evidence base for fair working practices, supporting positive working relationships. 

People analytics is a very powerful tool and up until now, the science behind it has been the reserve of researchers and programmers. 

Unlocking Potential (U>P) is a software tool that works by creating a digital model of a company ecosystem (the people related to any organisation) and then analysing it to deliver unique and powerful insights that can help achieve high levels of business agility and performance. 

To assist in addressing the challenge set by Transport Scotland Interface helped facilitate collaboration with academia on three 3 different projects: 

The first related to Data Visualisation where a Data Science for Business MSc student at the University of Stirling undertook a project working with data that was already on the U>P platform and also tested data, to find ways to increase the rate at which data is added, through motivational feedback loops. This was achieved by identifying which forms of data design and delivery optimised insight creation for individual users to help them solve problems and/or take meaningful action.  

Beyond the initial contract with Transport Scotland, Nectis wanted to understand market potential and their initial B2B target market i.e. organisations with remote/complex workforces. Masters marketing students at the University of Glasgow carried out research to establish the serviceable available market for their offering and establish what Nectis could legitimately claim they could deliver on and how to articulate it to these customers.  Other student projects looked at innovation within Nectis’ pricing strategy and at finding ways to reward people for adding data that builds the aggregate picture, as well as, providing value for them individually. 

The third project relating to Security and Anonymised Data Cloud Analysis was as a result of a successful Advanced Innovation Voucher application and involved the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University.  This collaboration built on work already done by U>P with the aim of improving the levels of security in the application, focusing on the collection and processing of personal data, as well as, introducing advanced security measures to enable intelligent analysis of anonymised data.  

A key aspect of the work involved the use Big Data analysis methods in understanding the complex relationships involved in projects, roles, business relationships, behaviours, and so on, to determine good practice in achieving strong outputs, and thus more clearly identify how best to both understand the metrics to be gathered, but also in how to best define KPI (Key Performance Indicators). Understanding that the collection of data around business relationships requires to be kept private, Nectis wanted to develop privacy enhancing methods, which could be used to assess successful engagement, but respect privacy and consent. The collaboration with the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University with their strong background in cryptography, and other privacy related areas, along with their experience in building production ready systems was crucial to the success of this project.   

The Benefits 

The academic rigour awarded by the collaborations with academia have been good for the Nectis U>P brand and have resulted in Nectis achieving the following: 

Background

Floco (formerly Lilypads Group Ltd) is a mission driven company that manufactures and sells reusable sanitary pads and provides menstrual health education. Founder and CEO of Floco, Alison Wood, strives to end period poverty and stigma by providing affordable reusable sanitary pads and education to communities around the world.  They currently work in Malaysia and Kenya, with preparations to start working in Cambodia and Nigeria.

There is a growing market opportunity for natural, sustainable, durable, and reusable sanitary products in the UK and current reusable sanitary pads are limited by several factors including leakage, lack of absorbency and the very high price point.

The company aim to develop a product suitable for the UK market, with the long-term aim that profit from this product can subsidise the cost of their international pads, ensuring they are affordable to all.

Challenge

During the product development phase, Floco trialled their product and learnt that the consumers found it more comfortable than their conventional sanitary pad. However, for these women the pad’s thickness was imperative; ideally the women could wear the pad all day and it be no thicker than standard disposable pads. With the current materials available on the market this looked unlikely and therefore the pad would need to be much thicker, limiting its attractiveness.

The company were also keen to look at ways to make reusable pads more affordable and environmentally friendly.  They recognise that absorbent textiles are key to this development along with being able to ensure the current attributes of pads are maintained. 

Floco approached Interface in the hope of undertaking a feasibility study with a research team to establish initial options and the key design principles for absorbent textiles that would offer the following attributes:

Solution

Following a search of Interface’s academic partners, Dr Danmei Sun, Associate Professor of Textile Materials & Engineering at Heriot-Watt University was introduced to Floco and undertook the initial feasibility project funded by a Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher. The results identified two materials – a quick drying fabric that was soft and felt like underwear and an absorbent middle layer than holds the moisture so even when pressure is applied it does not leak. The constructed pad is discrete, easy to use and wash and fits the user needs perfectly.

Benefits

Floco tested the product and identified a manufacturer. The pad was launched to the market in July 2020 by Crowdfunder with sales in the UK subsidising Floco’s work internationally to ensure no one is limited by their period.

Follow-On Activity

Following this initial project Floco returned to Interface to undertake a consultancy project around Strategy and Business growth. Working with a student at the University of Stirling, Floco have explored: the potential of targeting the pads at a specific demographic, behavioural attitudes towards buying sustainable products, analysing the sustainability of the whole business, not just the product, and optimising supply chain opportunities.

To learn more about Floco, please visit their website.

he Company

StudioLR is an award-winning design agency based in Leith, Edinburgh.

The Business Challenge

Dissatisfied with existing ‘way-finding’ products for dementia, and sensing an opportunity for a fresh and novel approach, the company wanted to access Scotland’s academic expertise to use the latest research to inform their design, ensuring an effective, as well as an attractive, finished product.

The Solution

After meeting at an industry event, Interface was able to identify extensive research expertise in the care of people with dementia at the universities of Edinburgh and Stirling, and introduced both universities to StudioLR.  After discussions with both universities, it was agreed that a collaborative approach to the project would be the best solution to provide the company with access to the most wide-ranging expertise.  A Scottish Funding Council Innovation Voucher, administered by Interface, was awarded to support this project.

Benefits

As a result of this successful business-academic collaboration, StudioLR developed a set of design guidelines for creating consistent signage to increase independence and wellbeing for older people and dementia patients in care homes, hospitals or other related environments.  Lucy Richards, Creative Director at StudioLR, said: 

“The collaborative process we have experienced working together with the universities of Edinburgh and Stirling on the Innovation Voucher has been both stimulating and fruitful, with exciting new thinking emerging throughout the process.  As the project builds in momentum, our purpose has become clearer and more worthwhile.”

Follow-on Activity

Following further brokerage services from Interface, StudioLR have been accepted into The Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities (SGSAH) Doctoral Internship programme, which matches doctoral researchers with industry partners. The company are keen to establish research in the area of “impact and consequences of the use of complex language in everyday settings”, particularly in the Care system and across public services, i.e. in hospital and clinical settings.

The outputs from the researcher will be a report outlining key findings and recommendations on the unintended consequences and negative impact of the use of this language.

Please note that Interface administers the Innovation Voucher Scheme on behalf of the Scottish Funding Council. All funding applications are reviewed on a case by case basis by the Scottish Funding Council, guidelines can be found here.

With a reputation spanning over 100 years, East Kilbride based Mentholatum are a recognised leader in the sale of Topical Pain Relief products.

The Business Challenge

Looking to diversify into the skincare market the company had developed a new range of skincare cosmetic products based on novel ingredients for the treatment of acne. Requiring academic analysis to be carried out on their range before they could be taken to market, the company was referred to Interface by Scottish Enterprise. They needed to gauge performance and efficacy in the key areas of:

The Solution

Following a full search of the academic base in Scotland, Interface introduced the company to Dr Richard Weller at the University of Edinburgh, who had relevant industry experience.
Leading the eight week clinical protocol study on the OXY range, Dr Weller conducted a full analysis report and published a white paper on the results, both of which have proven invaluable to Metholatum.

As Colin Brown, Director of Research and Quality Development at the company explains:

The introduction from Interface to the University of Edinburgh has been invaluable for the launch of our Oxy range for the spot prone skin market. The increased credibility we have received from working with the University and with Dr Weller has also improved our opportunities to gain increased  market share in the healthcare/personal care market.

The collaboration was also beneficial to the University in terms of highlighting the scope of their research to the wider business world, as Dr Weller comments:

The Mentholatum consultancy work has been very successful. We conducted a full clinical trial of its anti-spot products. To date, this work has gained considerable interest in two major British dermatology journals, and I suspect it will gain additional favourable media attention.

Creating Sustained Relationships

So successful has this collaboration been that Mentholatum see the partnership of University and business as filled with potential for future projects. Colin explains further:

This initial introduction has opened many doors within the University and also the wider Scottish academic network. We envisage this partnership with the University of Edinburgh as being long term and see many mutual benefits from working together.

2016

Since this initial project for their OXY skincare range, the company have funded a three year SUPA (Scottish Universities Physics Alliance) PhD studentship which investigated the application of Magnetic Resonance Elastography.

They have also sponsored a second PhD studentship through SINAPSE, a consortium of six of Scotland’s top universities’ medical imaging groups, including the University of Stirling and the University of Dundee.
This Scottish imaging network is at the forefront of research in the field of brain imaging.

Looking to the future,  Mentholatum is now collaborating with the Department of Physics at the University of Edinburgh on a project which will support the measurement of the rheological properties of its products.