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.

On air, up in the AA air

American Airlines’ inflight business show, Talk Business 360, interviews Turnstone Consulting in its latest episode, talking about visual scribing. If you travel on an AA or US Airways flight anywhere in the world during April and May, business or coach class, you’ll be able to listen to the whole program from your seat, on Channel 9. That’s on air to five million passengers up in the air. And, for terrestrial listeners, Turnstone’s 3-minute segment is available here:

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Hey Precious, What does leadership mean to you?

In 2011, I had the great pleasure of meeting Foluke Akinlose in London. She is the founder of Precious Online, a nationally recognized, award-winning and award-giving digital magazine, targeted at young women of color. She has won an MBE for her tireless and effective work. And recently, she invited Turnstone and other women leading enterprising work lives to contribute to a column Precious publishes about leadership. When faced with serious subjects, we like to lighten the tone. So, as you’ll see, the Turnstone contribution is an

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Doctor, I laugh when it hurts

Turnstone has recently returned from the third Comics & Medicine conference, hosted this year by the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine.

Here’s the 8.5mb pdf of Turnstone’s live drawings from the conference. Wherever you reference these, thanks for crediting/linking to them.

 
It’s typical, when live scribing, to draw for an audience that’s less familiar with thinking in pictures, so it was an honor, albeit a slightly daunting one, to record the conference in drawings for delegates with both published comics and medical degrees. They couldn’t be a nicer, more talented, more empathic and funnier bunch. Though the conference schedule ran the gamut of contagious diseases, grief, chronic pain, mental ill health and all manner of blood and guts, the tone was light, educated, entertaining, erudite and on to something: Experiences of illness and healing, of physical well-being and its opposite, are by definition corporeal, and encountered, and retold over time in 3-d technicolor. So it is fitting that sequential storytelling belongs in the medical humanities, and it turns out that band aids and comic strips adhere nicely. Highlights included:

• Joyce Brabner’s perspective on revealing (almost) all in Our Cancer Year, the autobiographical work she made with her now late husband, graphic novelist, Harvey Pekar.
• Dr Alan Blum’s hunch that satire could be as powerful a weapon against obesity as it was against smoking
• The Mayo Clinic’s efforts to turn incomprehensible HIPAA forms into clear-as-day cartoon narratives
• Pediatrician Alex Thomas’ Booster Shot comics, teaching kids to use inhalers.

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 schools

Turnstone’s most inspiring audience of 2011: In March, we addressed 150 5th-8th grade students at the East Harlem School. Here are EHS’s star performers at BB King’s, at the school’s annual Poetry Slam. The School invites volunteer tutors to join their Saturday School program during the academic year. Interested? Email here and Turnstone will introduce you.

This Fall, Rachel returned to the School of Visual Arts Interaction Design MFA Program, to supervise five graduate thesis projects. The second years will, come hell or high water, present a range of fantastic concepts, ideas realized, at their Graduate Symposium in May. Looking forward to it already. It’s a strong year.

In 2011, Turnstone also presented to the Harvard Graduate School of Design Urban Planning Organization and Carnegie Mellon University, as a guest of the Nierenberg Chairs of Design, and to Moholy Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest, Hungary.

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.

Special Brew: Summarizing the London riots

Since three days of burning shops, smashing windows, nicking trainers, drug crime, hoodies, senseless deaths, squads of indignant broom-wielding, bat-handling locals, and 24hr magistrates hearings galvanized the British public earlier this month, Turnstone has been trawling through range of (sure, left-leaning) articles about the UK riots.

One resounding concept (but ahem, not the only one) seems to be that it’s crucial to hold more than one thought in our heads about the confluence of contributing factors if any subsequent social, political, economic response is to stick. It was (get ready) multi-nuclei, local, regional, global scale, urban, heterogenic, pan-ethnic, trans-class social upset unfolding over days (breathe). To be constructive rather than draconian, any new policy must be holistic, bottom-up, top-down and must reflect only joined-up thinking to produce sustainable impact. Guess what, people, it’s not one thing and there ain’t a cure-all, quick fix. Suggesting we shhh twitter was akin to suggesting we squash ocean water, and betrayed that blokes in charge don’t recognize the nuanced segmentation and reflexivity of social networks…on as well as perhaps offline.

So our non-comprehensive coverage collected comes mostly, and with thanks, from our friend, Nick Durrant, who shared his set of sources over email in the days/weeks following. Our debate and exchange was conducted in a personal capacity. What follows is a summary of what we dug up as I asked some basic questions:

Seriously, who actually took part? The UK Guardian (a main point of reference for us) stratified the riots into its political classes to understand the wider social context of today’s British society, only to conclude that locally, the upheaval was not unexpected. A reissue of a 2007 article in Adbusters also echoed that we’re not blaming millenials, this is Generation F*cked.

And while many might retreat to an organic coffee shop in fear of them, a blog discusses today’s gangs in London and, if you dare stick your pin in the streetview, a google map of them. So while the riots reveal some unpalatable home truths about UK culture of fear and consumer greed, Suzanne Moore implored, Don’t shut these kids out now. Has anyone else written about the crisis of masculinity that the riots imply? Are girls looting the ultimate battle cry of the Ladette? Still looking for that coverage.

With that overview, it was interesting to watch various other opinions emerge by key issues-focused commentators:

Paul Gilroy, author of Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack had this to say about comparing this unrest to – and decoupling it from – the riots of the early 80s; Naomi Klein‘s “Looting with the lights off” was one of many to take a look at the consumer values/brands angle with the less likely commentators, Association of Accounting Technicians, suggest it’s too expensive to be a teenager and most pathetic of all, trainers and mobile phones, the things most shoplifted – have become objects of our disaffection.

This way, says Social Europe Journal, the riots can be seen as consumerism is coming home to roost. Echoing this, Pankaj Mishra from Bloomberg surmised that London’s rioters are Thatcher’s grandchildren and grimmer still, the UK riots were a ‘product of consumerism and will hit the economy’, according to City broker, Dr Tim Morgan of City analysts, Tullet Prebon, thinking the unthinkable. Meantime, the Mayor of London could worse than listen to the opinions and lyrics of a few more British Grime artists. About as grimy but no less perfect, is Jarvis Cocker’s Fat Children, sung from the perspective of a dead man mugged by kids for his mobile. Since Mr Cocker forbids his listeners to sing along, watch out, Prime Minister, just take heed.

Finally, onto the mapping perspective: What about seeing the inner city as a giant gaming space, part Grand Theft Auto, part Chromaroma. Why else (apart from subscribing to some scary hip hop magazines) call British riot police “FEDS”? Blackberry devices become the console for game-play in real swag and proper ‘blowing sh*t up’. Noone said anyone had to play nicely in a big urban game as they post QR codes to billboards. And for every urban antic, there must be a situationist perspective, this one from Domus magazine.

This, from the European Tribune theorizes about the police’s multi-layered, can’t win/can’t win role, speculating why enforcement can’t just be airdropped straight from Bratton’s LAPD ‘copter from Watts to the West Midlands. A perfect example of the constraints of models, as described in  “The Fruitful Flaws of Strategy Metaphors” we’ve referred to here before, from the Harvard Business Review.

We’ll conclude with the incredible interview with globalization guru, Zygmunt Bauman, who makes me feel dumb just looking at him. Two quotes stand out:

“The thus far reaction of the British government to the mutiny of the humiliated is bound to deepen the self-same humiliation that caused their rebellion…”

“Their mutiny was an un-planned, un-integrated, spontaneous explosion of accumulated frustration that can be only explained in terms of ‘because of’, not in terms of ‘in order to’; I doubt whether the question of ‘what for’ played any role in that orgy of destruction.”

His conclusion is not for the faint of heart. While there is not enough work to do, there is work to do.