May marked a milestone in the evolution of the Media Innovation Studio.

Four years after establishing the Media Innovation Studio as an international research and learning lab the team have published and recently launched an interactive review of the research and innovation projects they’ve been doing in up to now.

Professor Paul Egglestone is Director of Research and Innovation at the College of Culture and Creative Industries – home to the Media Innovation Studio. He said “Four years seemed just about long enough to feel we’d done a reasonable body of work to share with anyone who’s interested in how digital technology – or more appropriately – how human interaction with technology – can open up possibilities for social and economic change. I guess we’d all like to’ve done this earlier, but to be honest, we were busy doing the work and hadn’t really stopped to consider producing a book. I’m really pleased we have though. There’s some great stuff in it”.

The book opens with some examples of previous work that helped set the tone and direction for the studio. There’s also an overview of the methods and processes – clearly in the action research mode – used in various ways during past and present work. These are explained briefly setting the stage for a prolific team effort with a range of projects throughout 2015 spanning Big Data, data journalism, drones and drone policy, exiled media, the Internet of Things…. the list goes on.

Dr Mark Lochrie designed the publication and took charge of augmenting the book using audio and video to offer readers an enhanced experience. He said, “We couldn’t really call our selves a Media Innovation Studio if there was no media output or innovation in the book we’ve just published, so I’m really pleased the print copy features additional multi-media content people can view by just pointing their smartphone at any page that contains the ‘interactive’ logo. They’ll need to download our Media Innovation Studio ‘app’ to unlock the additional content but that bringing together of the digital and physical world is a large part of what we’re about here.”

If you’ve already got a copy of the Media Innovation Studio Interactive Review you can currently download the companion app from Google App store (MIS Review) with iOS coming soon.

If you’d like to know more about the book or the work of the Media Innovation Studio follow the team blog at www.mediainnovationstudio.org, email the team via dhdearnley@uclan.ac.uk – or better still, pop in a see us some time.