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.

It’s the journey, not the destination, that counts

So, loyal fans of Turnstone, New York City have made their decision about the taxi of tomorrow (ToT) at last. Deep breath: The contract to build a custom yellow taxi for New York goes to Nissan, not to our client Karsan, nor to incumbent Ford.

First, thank you to notes and emails streaming in. No, we haven’t thrown Turnstone under a passing Crown Vic. From from it, Turnstone is delighted to be stepping into a new by-standing role as merely a savvy passenger.

That Karsan is already looking to other cities to establish a new global standard for cab design, and Nissan gets into production for NYC, is a huge testament to the original research accomplished with fellow Taxi07 Fellows of the Design Trust back in 2005-7, to Turnstone’s independent work leading up to Taxi of Tomorrow and to the efforts we made on behalf of New Yorkers’ favorite.

In a news week that buried alive all other announcements unrelated to Bin Laden and the Royal Wedding, we don’t envy anyone trying to cover this cab story, but we’ll try our best to represent some of the coverage here.

Calling Karsan’s submission ‘stylish and amenity-laden‘, the New York Times explained why the City have gone for the Japanese model over the Turkish one. Regulators are risk-managers before they are paradigm-shifting innovators. Good enough may be better than nothing at all.

Paul Goldberger’s glowing words for Karsan in The New Yorker will be framed for the Turnstone bathroom wall, alongside our Oscars and Platinum discs:

“The Karsan was far and away the best piece of design….It somehow looked as if it belonged on the streets of New York. …the Karsan taxi’s face was friendly. It made you want to jump aboard. …The Karsan was the only one of the three that made you smile, the only one that looked and felt as if it had been designed from the ground up as a taxi, and only as a taxi. It would have been something new, and something that would have made the streets of New York look better, which is what I thought this whole “taxi of tomorrow” business was about.”

While dieselheads at Jalopnik could barely muster faint praise as damnation (“New York’s New Taxi Freakin’ Sucks”), Gothamist comes out more clearly on Karsan’s side, calling out a rather ungentlemanly commenter’s verdict that the City’s choice was ‘the minivan of yesterday‘, declaring simply,
“Karsan Kab, we really wanted you to win!“
and greeting news that the V1 will go to market elsewhere,
“If those things start showing up in San Francisco we will not be amused.”

To all these speculative fans, who liked what they saw before the potential became a reality to climb aboard, thank you for allowing us to envision what New York deserves.

In what follows, I’ll draw a number of conclusions from a couple of distinct perspectives that reflect my various engagements with this process. First, as an independent design strategist with years advocating yellow cab passengers’ needs. Secondly, a partisan view, as a consultant to Karsan. Thirdly, as a designer, stepping outside the ring of municipal mega projects, to draw some lessons for other projects.

For decision makers, least worst may equal best
Orthodox as a public agency must be, the City’s choice is not the worst decision it could have made. It could have made no decision at all, or been cowed by lobbying interest groups. It stuck reasonably to the success criteria in its original, decently crafted Request for Proposal. You get (mostly) what you ask for. More about what else it could have asked for, below.

Glocal city
In this global economy, it’s no shock that a New York icon is to be designed in one corner of the world, manufactured in another (Mexico), driven in another (Manhattan…at least below 125th St. Harlem, the taxi of tomorrow won’t come soon enough) by a man with, most likely, a South Asian/West African passport. And let’s face it, Japan could use some good news these days. That said, the economy around any local industry is worth looking after.

The City’s yellow cab choice is still a bright green one.
What the NYC cab industry does in bulk for 13000 vehicles not only influences at scale the direction in which other national cab fleets follow suit, but sets a precedent, a new normal, for miles per gallon, air quality, fueling infrastructure, and the way individual motorists think about their own car purchasing choices.

We articulated this in the Roads Forward report in 2007, alongside many other vehicle requirements that influenced the ToT concept; choosing a new cleaner vehicle is a radical shift environmentally. Fingers crossed, the project can survive legal battles ahead which may frustrate what is good for cab drivers (who pay for their own gas), for New Yorkers who breathe traffic when they open their windows, and, yes folks, for the only planet we’ve got.

On yer bike
By not choosing Karsan, the City foregoes an opportunity to introduce a cab that’s accessible to all (that’s you too, stroller moms, luggage-schlepping tourists, furniture-hauling, carless apartment-dwellers, as well as the rightly vociferous wheelchair community). An inclusive vehicle – accessibility and availability – was a pivotal goal in Roads Forward and for Taxi of Tomorrow and yet the selected car allegedly sails past this objective like an off-duty cab at 4.30 in the rain.

Drive this shiny object towards shiny objectives
From the conception of ToT, the City called on auto manufacturers to make new, iconic, safe, robust, affordable vehicles. Certainly, no small request. But a wider conceptual frame to the project, one which situates that car in a service context (nod to Zipcar), might have raised the competition amongst the submissions. What’s the ride like? How, as urbane New York street furniture, will it look from the sidewalk, from the 47th floor of a skyscraper, in the next 20 years of countless movies and ads?

Turnstone’s contribution to the Karsan proposal, specifying content strategy for digital media in/around the car, would have improved the service experience of riding and driving a cab. So why not a connected cab, a gateway to rider-relevant, context-specific, revenue-generating services? Granted, deliver the vehicle, then let’s redraft some shinier functionality for it. I’ve made Jetsons noises like this before. To paraphrase an early Banksy: Laugh now, but when the next killer app arrives on wheels and you all hail one to get home late at night in another city, I’ll say, Told You So.

And, Karsan will build their cab anyway.
“We fervently believe that there is a strong market and an acute need for a true Taxi of Tomorrow, and we look forward to working with other forward-looking cities around the globe to make the Karsan vision a reality.”
So, uncharacteristically following rather than leading, NYC may later imitate what they might now have pioneered, once it becomes standard in other cities. Can’t blame anyone for not buying v1.0, but really?

Hold the door open for the ladies
Last of all, I was the only woman on any of the competing consortia, as far as I know. Coincidentally, most NYC cab passengers are women. Just sayin’.

Equal opportunities aside, Turnstone’s more important contribution to this project was as a strategic advocate of all those who ride around in cabs (not of those who run or regulate or refurbish them), a change agent within the design team, fusing the expertise of car and digital engineers to serve the people who will sit on cab seats 24/7, 365 days a year.

Thanks
Finally, thanks to my friend York (fittingly, now working for Hot Wheels) who got me hooked on this project at the outset (that’s the last time I’m taking orders from an ex-Marine), to Imagination, the Design Trust staff and fellows, all the organizations and universities that have invited me to talk about taxis, to the constellation of unofficial tech consultants who validated our media concept in 2010, Frank at The Map Office for his visual design, and patient friends who sat through many cab rides while I barraged drivers with questions about medallions.

Your feedback is welcome. We’re going off-duty now. Back with news of the next projects very shortly.

Congratulations, Eddie. The Map points to Pentagram.

On October 1, Eddie Opara becomes a partner at Pentagram, after five years of running The Map Office. This week, Pentagram officially welcomes him, so here’s a modest addendum to that.

Rare as it is for Turnstone to hop out of the third person in these blog posts, I’m sharing this one from a personal perspective: With much gratitude, congratulations and warm wishes to my long-time friend, mentor and collaborator.

Alissa Walker’s appropriately awesome and excited profile anticipates Eddie’s next move here, for Fast Company’s design blog. Map’s work speaks for what led his team to this point: Evidently pressure makes real diamonds, even on Canal Street!

Looking back over five years, it’s been a huge privilege to work alongside Eddie and team, to share space, community, trade ideas, unravel red tape, dissolve obstacles, imagine and realize possibilities. Well worth stating, but of course writing it down doesn’t really cover how priceless it is to work with trusted, lovely people whose work you respect.

Looking even further back to the late 80s, a time when the stars of the design profession were still mostly only pale+male, and computers (innocent little Mac Classics) were threatening to transform the work beyond recognition, an internship with Pentagram in London’s (then decidedly unfashionable) Westbourne Grove was what inspired me to insist on working in this field.

Twenty years on, it makes absolutely perfect sense that Eddie will lend Pentagram his hybrid talents – fastidious visual acuity, insatiable tech curiosity, dogged hard work, personal integrity and a Brit’s sense of humo(u)r.

So, Eddie, bloody good luck. You deserve all the good things ahead. Thank you for everything. I’m really excited to see what the next chapter holds, taking for granted, perhaps, that the work will look great. Bravo!

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…

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?