Cognizant’s Stall at Maker Faire Singapore 2017 Showcases a Digital Vision for Singapore

Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan (center), Minister-in-charge of Singapore’s Smart Nation Program Office, at the Cognizant stall at Maker Faire Singapore 2017

Singapore, July 23, 2017 — At Maker Faire Singapore 2017, digital services leader Cognizant’s stall showcasing the company’s proprietary technology to determine the ‘happiness index’ of visitors based on their facial expressions received overwhelming response from the large turnout of children, families and technology professionals.

Captured and analyzed on iPads, the expressions ranged from funny faces to broad smiles and translated into happy-faced emojis on a large screen, highlighting the company’s theme for the event: A Smart Nation is a Happy Nation.

At the end of the first day, the Happiness Index soared to 93.89%, underscoring the link between happiness and an atmosphere of learning and innovation.

The demo elicited keen interest from the guest of honor, Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister-in-charge of the country’s Smart Nation Program Office.

A Maker Faire sponsor for the second year in a row, Cognizant had organized a range of hands-on activities leveraging its digital capabilities to create unique learning experiences for visitors.

Children and young visitors were treated to a tabletop basketball game that used a pre-programmed micro:bit device to keep and display scores. Cognizant’s digital experts guided young minds on coding and writing simple programs to do other fun things with micro:bit.

This was particularly significant in view of the planned roll-out of micro:bit devices to primary and secondary school students in Singapore for coding education over the next two years.

What fascinated tech professionals and businessmen alike at the stall was a real estate app, built using Cognizant’s cutting-edge augmented reality (AR) capabilities to bring real estate maps to life as 3D pop-up structures and enable visitors to walk through and examine the properties as they would in real life.

Cognizant experts used this demo to explain the far-reaching potential of AR technology in the context of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative.

As part of its efforts to spark greater interest in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, Cognizant organized a mobile app-building workshop #JustAppify, giving more than 40 children, aged 13 and above, an opportunity to explore and experience the promise of digital technologies shaping our world.

Cognizant’s digital experts guided the children through ideation, design and coding, as they produced their very own customized music player apps. It was an exhilarating experience for the children.

More than 70 Cognizant employees extended volunteering support to the Maker Faire event through the company’s employee-led social initiatives program called Outreach, focused on education (including STEM education), care for the elderly, environment, and voluntary welfare organizations (VWO).

Outreach volunteers conduct weekly tutoring, reading, drawing and crafts activities with disadvantaged children in Singapore and have partnered with various organizations to support education and enrichment programs.

In 2016, Cognizant employees clocked more than 9,000 hours of volunteer work with community partners, including MCYC Community Services and the Special Olympics event.