Oh IXD, Oh Sandy

Back in Fall 2012, I taught this class on the Design of Systems to the first year Interaction Design MFA graduate students at the School of Visual Arts.

I was channeling, but not explicit enough about, the work of Durrell Bishop, and my work about his work – unpacking his brilliantly simple and complex notion that digital products should now embody the systems of our using them, since they no longer have to take the shape of the sum of the mechanical parts they contain. Shh, and think about that for a minute.

Annnyway, we did have guest lectures from Barry Richards of Rockwell Group, the designers of the Imagination Playground, that UNICEF just launched in Haiti; Chelsea Mauldin, my erstwhile Design Trust collaborator and now Director of the Public Policy Lab; Nick Abadzis, comic book artist extraordinaire; and Noel Wilson, intrepid industrial designer with Engineers Without Borders spin-off, Catapult Design out of San Francisco. We also got ourselves properly paranoid reading Andrew Blum’s Tubes, and tiptoeing through Trevor Paglen’s incredible photography of undocumented military and industrial installations, right before Creative Time launched his Last Pictures exhibit. We even had a field trip to IKEA. It was not a boring syllabus.

Then Superstorm Sandy became not only the disruptive force that diverted us from showing up in Week 6, and from starting then completing the deep and wide class blog, but also became the focus of the final projects. Those are summarized by the students here and were critiqued by Ian Spalter of Foursquare, Scott Peterman from Parsons and Tony Moulton from Occupy Sandy.

“That was more the philosophy than the design of systems” said one student in the last class, not unhappily. Anything to make makers think and thinkers make, I say.

Services are Everywhere: Turnstone at AIGA National Design Conference

Turnstone joined Zipcar and Facebook to introduce “Services Are Everywhere” to the annual AIGA National Design Conference in Phoenix, AZ this Fall: The all-women panel kicked off four sessions on service design, moderated by innovation consultancy, Continuum. Click the clip here to watch this recently released, short’n'sweet film of the presenters’ perspectives, from Disney, Facebook, the Mayo Clinic, My Police, Sony, Turnstone, Zipcar and others.

Turnstone in transit in 2012

Beyond yellow taxi fleets to greener road transit:

The downstate New York chapter of the US Department of Energy’s Clean Cities Coalition will roll out a new identity in 2012, based on strategy completed by Turnstone in 2011. The Clean Cities program’s mission is to improve air quality in major American cities by reducing, replacing and eliminating petroleum-consuming road transit with cleaner vehicle fleets.

In September 2012, Turnstone will present a paper at TRANSED 2012, India’s national conference on Mobility and Transport for Elderly and Disabled Persons, in Delhi.

Birds of a feather: Crain’s talks taxi tech to Turnstone

A bigger off button doth not a better content strategy make: Crain’s New York Business has been talking to Turnstone about media in yellow cabs:

‘Some urban-design experts are critical of New York’s taxi screen setup, saying that television programming should be only one element in the mix, writes Matt Flamm.

‘They’d like the screens to be open to a range of content providers and digital applications, and used to create an iconic New York experience rather than as the out-of-home extensions of two broadcasters.

“The screens could be telling me I should look out the window because right now that’s what’s exciting,” said Rachel Abrams, founder of Turnstone Consulting, who was co-editor of Taxi07, a report about the future of New York’s yellow cabs. “The city lost an opportunity.”‘

Read the full article here.

Turnstone in words and pictures

Turnstone has returned to its drawing roots this year, inspired by collaborations with Ludic Group, the international innovation consultancy. By invitation, Rachel takes visual notes for corporate-level strategy meetings. Sample concept drawings and diagrams from closed client sessions can’t be shared, but more illustrative images are here on the Turnstone web site. Rachel also presented at  LaydeezDoComics in London in December 2011.

In September, QR This, Turnstone’s review of the Museum of Modern Art’s interactive media exhibit, Talk to Me, appeared in the Architect’s Newspaper.

Taxis of Two Tomorrows

In October, Turnstone got a preview of Nissan’s Taxi of Tomorrow. We’re delighted a new cab has come of the strategic vision we initially set out with the Design Trust for the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

 

 

 

 

Turnstone is equally delighted the accessible, alternative fuel-ready  Karsan V1 cab, shortlisted last year to become New York’s Taxi of Tomorrow, is now a driveable prototype. The V1 went on display at the Dutch Auto Show in December, set for production in Europe.

Tonight: What’s Mine is Yours, What’s Future is Present

As is so often the case on any given weeknight in NYC, a clash of yoga-for-the-brain gatherings:

First, we’ll celebrate with Nick Bilton, NY Times writer, ITP adjunct, erstwhile Turnstone client, to mark the publication of his much anticipated book, I Live In the Future and Here’s How It Works.

Then, if gathering gadgets from the future isn’t as compelling as sharing services in the here and now, you should brave the filthy fall weather for The Rise of Collaborative consumption, a presentation and panel at Parsons/The New School Tishman Environment and Design Center tonight (9/16), led by Rachel Botsman with

- Co-author of What’s Mine is Yours: The Rise of Collaborative Consumption, Roo Rogers;

- Christopher Lukezic of space rentals site, Airbnb

- Carolyn Woodward, co-founder of Trade School and OurGoods.org, a peer-to-peer online network that facilitates the barter of goods and services between creative people, and

- Ryan Rzepecki, who’s sketched out a not-yet-on-the-streets bike-sharing scheme for NYC called SocialBicycles.

The blurb at Eventbrite says:

Rachel will share stories and research from all around the world, to explain how  from social lending (Zopa) to car sharing (Zipcar) and co-working (The Hub), from peer-to-peer rental (Zilok) to collaborative travel (AirBnB) and neighbourhood sharing schemes (NeighborGoods), millions of people from all around the world are already using Collaborative Consumption to reinvent not just what we consume but how we consume.

The panel will be highly interactive exploring opportunities and themes related to Collaborative Consumption including: the role of design thinking; how technology creates trust between strangers;  and the new culture and economy around sharing.

Can we borrow an umbrella?

Thank you petrolheads+systems thinkers: Envisioning the taxi of tomorrow

Turnstone is proud to have completed its pre-bid phase of work with Karsan, one of the auto manufacturers bidding to win the New York City Taxi of Tomorrow contract.

Due to hit the streets in 2014, the winning cab must remain a New York icon, but be much more fuel efficient (that is, a greener yellow), with a smaller footprint (no more 18foot Crown Vic canoes) and roomier on the inside (not just for wheelchair but stroller and suitcase access). A bit like Dr Who‘s Tardis, only for hire.

Karsan is paying close attention to all these requirements, and has put forward a built-to-suit solution, rather than modifying an existing model.

Turnstone joined the European consortium to specify how tomorrow’s cab communications might work. As we’ve discussed, tomorrow’s taxi will be more than just a car. It’ll be a personal wireless device on wheels, a way to access services on the go, on the way from A to B.

The project was an amazing opportunity to apply thinking from earlier discovery and definition phases of work to articulate an initial design proposal – drawing from research from the Taxi07 report, and months of independent lectures, Turnstone has reconceived, visualized and put forward what goes on those credit card payment screens, what public service announcements, maps and roof top ads look like inside and out, in a integrated package of passenger- and driver-friendly graphic signage and digital services.

The City is due to choose a winning design by the end of 2010. Meantime, Turnstone would like to thank the Karsan team and all those who shared enthusiasm, insights and recommendations (in an informal capacity) at our winter roundtable, at Google, Teague and Virgin America, social gamers Mudlark, screen technologists, Lumio, Transport Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier and elsewhere. Yes, we talked to in-flight entertainment aviation people. Because taxicab or plane cabin, city maps or in-flight snacks, it’s clear that user-centered designers in both fields have a critical brokering role, influencing the right kind of collaboration between the technologists and engineers to make the whole experience work, planes, trains and for-hire automobiles…

Not a drop to drink, desalinate, fish…

In June, as the oil splurge seeped on, global engineering firm, Arup, began – quite coincidentally – a round of international workshops on the future of oceans, for their Drivers of Change program. Turnstone was privileged to participate in the New York session and delighted to recommend Liam Young’s architectural perspective for the London roundtable. After all, the discussion pivoted on exactly what he does everyday, pondering Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today.

Out of office, and back to work

A four-day week (for both UK and US readers this week) seems like a good one in which to publish Is This Working?. It’s a review of a conference about the peculiar future of the office. It’s our latest article at Urban Omnibus. Thoughts provoked during the day: While we save energy switching off lights in our buildings and cutting down on business travel, how much power does working over the Internet actually consume instead? Is the most sustainable office in fact no office at all? For whom does a city become an office, and how does an office become its own city?