Audience of the Future funding for early-stage projects
Apply for a share of up to £800,000 for early-stage, human-centred design projects in creative or immersive experiences
Innovate UK, as part of UK Research and Innovation, will invest up to £800,000 to fund early-stage, human-centred design projects through the Audience of the Future Challenge Fund.
The aim of this competition is to support early-stage projects to generate ideas that meet customer needs, using research and human-centred design principles. Fast, low-cost prototyping and user testing of those ideas is also within scope.
Your proposal must deliver well-defined, user-validated ideas ready for further technical research and development (R&D) and discover insights about the problem space, consumer motivations and behaviours.
Projects must explore innovation opportunities in one or more of the following themes:
- designing for Net Zero
- design for Build Back Better
- design for Cross Sector Immersive Projects
Projects must include activities or work packages that:
- discover customer perceptions, motivations, and behaviour
- define the problem statement and pinpoint the characteristics necessary to make any solution desirable and fit for purpose
- deliver clearly communicated ideas that have been validated through fast, low-cost prototyping and user-testing and are ready for further technical R&D
The competition is open to single applicants and collaborations for projects with total eligible costs between £25,000 and £50,000. To lead a project, your organisation must be a UK registered business of any size. You must involve at least one micro, small or medium-sized enterprise (SME).
Find out more about the Audience of the Future competition or watch the recording of the briefing event that took place on 1 September.
The competition will close for applications on 29 September 2021 at 11:00.
First published 3 September 2021