Title	NOTIPEN
Product/Service	NOTIPENS ARE FELT-TIP PENS THAT SEND A SIGNAL TO EACH OTHER VIA WIFI WHEN THEY A
Category	A01. Innovation
Entrant Company	DENKWERK Cologne, GERMANY
Advertising Agency	DENKWERK Cologne, GERMANY

Name	Company	Position
Jochen Schlaier	Denkwerk Gmbh	Creative Director
Alina Schlaier	Denkwerk Gmbh	Creative Director
Gregor Kuschmirz	Denkwerk Gmbh	Creative Director
Marcel Zauche	Denkwerk Gmbh	Conception
Homero Heredia	Denkwerk Gmbh	Production Designer/Conception
Martijn Lammers	Denkwerk Gmbh	Production Designer/Conception
Carolin Liebl	Denkwerk Gmbh	Conception
Lucia Grompone	Denkwerk Gmbh	Production Designer
Benjamin Wolf	Denkwerk Gmbh	Programmer
Philipp Spaans	Denkwerk Gmbh	Production Designer

The Brief

Looking for ways to bring colleagues from the company’s different departments together and reinforce the sharing of ideas, we have developed the notipen. It is based on two observations: 1: Handwriting is popular and simple, but only with a pen and on paper. 2: There are great digital co-working tools, but they are only used effectively by a minority. As we wanted to reach as many of our employees as possible without forcing anyone to spend even more time in front of a screen, we equipped a classic marker pen with a feature of digital communication: a notification function. The notipen informs the author of a question when another member of staff has replied or reacted to the thoughts they have expressed on paper – for example on a whiteboard somewhere in the company. By doing so, the system turns any writing surface into a lively forum and ensures an active, fun exchange of ideas. As we weren’t looking to add any more distractions to the already existing cacophony of ring tones, warning and error messages, we have come up with a particularly subtle notification method: the pen simply topples over. When this happens, the author knows that it is worth consulting with their colleagues.

A possible scenario: Jack writes a question on a board with a notipen. He then takes the notipen back to his office. A little later, Joe answers Jack’s question. Shortly afterwards, the pen in Jack’s office falls over. He now knows that a first response awaits him. When Jack comes to the board, Jim is writing an alternative response, which Joe is also informed of at the same time. Later on they come together and arrive at a mutually agreed solution. This is how the technology behind it works: inside the cap of every notipen is a RFID chip. When it is nearby, it is recognised by a docking station. Via USB cable, the station communicates with a desktop computer, which is connected to the Sparkcloud and can communicate via this with the Spark Core Wi-Fi shields in the individual notipens. The pens log in automatically so the station – via Cloud and computer – always knows which notipen is currently active. And vice-versa, the pens are notified via the Cloud when they have to vibrate or topple over. For these ‘notifications’ every pen is equipped with a servomotor to make it fall over and a vibration motor as an activity indicator. For us, the particular technical challenge was reducing the motors and the power supply down to a size that would fit inside a pen. We achieved this by doing without the casing of the servomotor and installing particularly high-performance batteries. The battery life is sufficient to keep the pens in operation for four hours, and due to the connection with the Cloud it is possible to make software updates on the notipens at all times, without having to collect them all first. We equipped the station, which must be installed near the writing surface, with a reset button so all notipens in the Cloud can be reset to zero when the written dialogue is completed.

With the notipen we have created an additional, efficient system for in-house ideas development and collaboration across departments. Following a beta phase with a limited number of employees, we now want to make the pens available to all our colleagues. In this way, we want to make the Internet of Things tangible, as the subtext of our design and development processes, and also to demonstrate to our clients how existing objects can be intelligently connected.