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).

See: Competition overview - Audience of the Future – Design Foundations 2 - Innovation Funding Service (https://apply-for-innovation-funding.service.gov.uk/competition/1001/overview)