The +U team including Sony and YouthNet were asked to share details of the application with an audience of innovation enthusiasts at a UK government “Digital Leaders” conference in London earlier this month. The theme of this quarterly conference was “Innovation in Digital Delivery” with many exciting speakers and presenters sharing their latest projects.

Sony and YouthNet were invited to present in the Social Action break-out group which wanted to highlight “organisations that have put digital innovation at the heart of developing new services that communicate effectively with new audiences”. The sessions also included a discussion around Winkball, an organisation focusing on user-generated video content to get opinions voiced and “using social media platforms innovatively to drive business and new audiences.”

The +U presentation included Paul Frigout’s inspirational video of what the app is all about, why YouthNet thinks this is the best time to introduce volunteering in the mobile app market, an explanation of how the partnership works and also a few screenshots of what the app looks like right now. There were many in the room who were eager to start using the app immediately – this once again showed the hunger there is for one-off volunteering opportunities. There was also a real interest for rolling out the app across Europe, so this is one for us to keep our eye on once the open-source code is released in March 2012!

Last but not least, the conference ended with an exciting afternoon tea at the House of the Commons (especially as it was the first time for some)!

Around the world, views on energy and sustainability vary from country to country. Here's a great infographic, showing which methods of improving sustainability are popular in different nations.

Check out this new video interview with Sam, one of our +U designers, talking about how the Open Planet Ideas developers and community have worked together to create the new volunteering app.

Click here to watch it on youtube.

Read further to hear about Paul Frigout's experience at IFA and what he thinks of how his concept is becoming a reality. Also have a look at our latest video on what the public said about +U at IFA.

Last weekend was my first time visiting IFA. Immediately, the size of the trade fair felt overwhelming; we walked through many buildings before reaching the Sony area. You entered the area through a dark corridor lit by different coloured lighting which set the atmosphere for entering a new dimension.

Walking through that corridor I remembered a screenshot of the application seen during the +U development phase. It was a great feeling to discover the +U application working on a mobile phone. The original idea is truly starting to emerge. The main functionalities are already embedded in this version and it feels very easy to use through the map locator. To set this application apart from the rest, the user is able to share their experiences with other volunteers, invite other volunteers to join an activity or to take pictures of the event to record, remember and reflect on (it’s always a pleasure to come back later to check and realize that you had a positive impact).

The reaction of the public was very positive. We had the chance to present the application to people passing by. They mentioned that this application is a good way to give life to a phone. A nice phone is great to have but this type of application is what makes a phone fun to use! It was also interesting to see a range of users from a wide variety of age groups and both genders and imagine that the work which started a year ago on the OPI website will be available soon to everyone.

+U was placed just next to the other Sony technologies in the Sustainability area, which included a prototype energy storage system. Its goal is to draw electricity from renewable energy sources during off-peak hours to be stored and used at any time, also saving on overall power consumption.

Now we will keep improving the application to push the usability further to reach our goal: make volunteering easier and more fun!

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The first preview of the +U mobile application was revealed at the IFA tradeshow in Berlin last Friday. It was a busy first few days at the show, especially on the weekend when many families made a fun day out of visiting the world’s biggest electronics show. It was great to see the first reactions of people when they had a look at our Story of +U video (as shared last week) and then got to test the preview application on one of our 4 Sony Ericsson Android phones in the Sustainability area.

Most of the +U development team as well as Paul Frigout, creator of +U, also joined me at IFA in exploring the feedback from the general public. The public was quite surprised to see a development like this and mentioned they had not seen anything like this before. Overall the feedback was very positive and everyone was quite excited about using the application themselves when it comes out next year. We had some interest from some German bloggers so Paul had his share of interviews again so he’s becoming quite a star!

The weather was also lovely so we managed to enjoy sunshine in the “Summer-garden” in the IFA grounds during our lunch breaks. We’ll be sharing another video later this week with some IFA highlights so keep an eye out for this!

The next steps in the development include reviewing the user experience journey as well as exploring the gaming angle further. Currently we are looking at badges and a potential points/highscore system or a “karma bar” as discussed in Development Day earlier this year but these are all going to be explored further in the upcoming month. In late November we will be running a closed beta with real volunteers to test the whole user journey so this is something exciting for us to look forward to. Following the beta test we’ll be making some final adjustments before a real pilot in February with Youthnet and releasing the application in the UK as well as the open source coding globally in March 2012.

A preview of the +U volunteering mobile application is unveiled at IFA 2011, the world's largest trade show for consumer electronics. It's open to the public from tomorrow onwards until September 7th so if you're in Berlin be sure to visit the Sony hall at IFA to see the preview of the +U app on Sony Ericsson phones.

This video shows the journey to where we are today with realising this final concept from the Open Planet Ideas challenge so have a look at it on youtube and enjoy!

The Sony Techsoft team in Brussels as well as our Sony Design Centre Europe in Surrey continue busy working towards IFA where we will be previewing the look and feel of the +U user experience. I’ve just seen the latest user experience screens and wanted to take you through the user journey and get your feedback on this.

When you log-in into the +U application through your Facebook connect, the first screen after the splash screen that’s shared is the “Now” screen which shows what your friends are doing with the +U application and the next upcoming volunteering events. Following this, you can choose to click on the specific events to find out more about them or choose to click on one of the top tabs to Search for events near you and choose specific interest areas such as animals or elderly for example. Once you find an activity which looks interesting, you can click on it to explore it in more detail and it will take you to a page where it explains the activity, when & where it will happen and also show the location on the map.

You will then be able to “Join the event” and share it on Facebook if you wish as well as “Invite friends” to join you! Once you go to the event, you will be able to check in to the event at the location and also share a photo you’ve taken of the event if you want to encourage your friends to join. This is of course then posted onto your Facebook if you choose to allow the application to do this.

Once you start joining more volunteering events and encouraging your friends to do so, you’ll also be able to win badges and awards which aims to work as a nice incentive for you and your friends to join even more volunteering events. There’s much more on this and the gamification element to come later…

That’s the snapshot of the basic user experience journey so far – what do you think?

Have you ever thought about the simple routines you do in your daily life? Sometimes they become so habitual we are often on autopilot during our days and don't even remember doing them. Things like this could be anything from switching the lights to the short drive to work to locking the house door. This is a lovely infograph from our friends at WellHome and it points out how we can adapt our routine consciously to make more of a positive difference for you and the environment. Tips from the minute you open your eyes until you close them again at night are all below. So how about making some of these helpful actions below more of a habit?

Tom from Sony Techsoft in Brussels, lead engineer on the +U mobile app development, gives the latest progress report on the development. Watch this video to see why he thinks the application will encourage volunteering and the key project milestones he's working towards.

A few months back we ran a survey for the community on the website. We've now received a decent amount of reponses and have gone through the results - thank you to all who took the time to answer it! We thought it would be nice to share what you told us and also open the doors for any other additional feedback you may have.

One of the areas where we received the most positive feedback was the design of the site - 88% of you were either satisfied or very satisfied with the attractiveness of the design. We also found out you all are quite a loyal bunch with 54% of you visiting the site at least weekly or more often. Some of the extra activities such as Build Hour during the concepting phase were highly praised which definitely proved the true engagement of the community.

Some of your improvement suggestions included more sharing functionalities (digg, delicious) and being notified when someon commented on or applauded your concept. There were also some recommendations for a clearer, easier collaboration element when it comes to building on the concepts or linking two very similar ones as this process was not always the most obvious one. Last but not least, many of you were quite eager to keep the challenge going and would like to continue submitting ideas and the discussions - looks like there's hunger for another challenge!

Have you got anything else to add to the above - anything you specifically enjoyed or something that you think definitely needs to be re-developed? We look forward to hearing your feedback on our Facebook page!