GO4: SDPS’s services for New York’s New Jobless June 9, 2009
Posted by rda1 in : 10_Storytelling, 14_Final, 4_ServiceDesign, 6_DesignAsUrbanIntervention, Assignments, Class admin, Guests, Outside inspiration, Presentations , add a commentChin Up!
The students of the SDPS Spring 2009 class proudly present the full write-up of our end-of-semester assignment:
GO4: A ‘Go Bag’ for New York’s Recently Laid-Off
GO4 is a suite of services for New York’s New Jobless, connecting people to resources they need for the arc of time between a layoff, surviving unemployment and getting back on their feet:
Click the image above or here to download the full presentation
For further details about this project, please read on or get in touch.
About GO4:
After 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) ran a campaign called Ready New York to prompt individuals to prepare a bag of essentials to have handy in case of emergency, whenever a natural or man-made disaster called for a quick exit out of town.
This year’s ‘Go Bag’ responds to New Yorkers facing a crisis of a different kind:
The economic downturn – intangible and invisible and not site-specific, but no less disastrous for some.
It’s a concept proposed by an architect and an interaction designer and articulated by a group of ITP grad students who live and work and study (in) NYC:
In late ’08, two friends, Don Shillingburg, architect with Peter Walker + Partners, and Rachel Abrams (class instructor), had been wondering what the city (and The City) would make of all the human capacity expelled from office cubicles, washing up in neighborhood coffee shops and public spaces. They conceived the GO4 project, treating design as a form of social, cultural intervention, later inspired by Obama’s inaugural address about what can be achieved when “…imagination is joined to common purpose”.
In spring ’09, Rachel was teaching this class at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, and set her students an assignment based on the original project.
Participating students:
Karla Calderon, Angela Chen, Derek Chung, Cynthia Hilmoe, Sara Huong, Madeline Jannotta, Ari Joseph, Gloria Kim, Sonaar Luthra, Jeehyun Moon, Nobuyuki Nakaguchi, Kristin OFriel, Nahanaeli Schelling, Jonathan Ystad. Their individual contact info is available here.
The students’ response:
Over three sessions, the students gathered material, organized it and represented their proposition.
Specific roles to introduce the design process
In pairs, students each took on specific roles, to focus on and explore particular tasks at key stages in the design process:
Investigative reporters, City clients, typical NYC new jobless, design strategists, interface designers, typical subscribers of the Go4 services – jobless people’s outlooks transformed, and historians from tomorrow looking back from the future.
This way, each pair focused on a stage of the design lifecycle: from discovering, defining, designing, detailing, deploying through documenting the outcomes and next phase.
Guest critics
The students presented twice, first to service designer, Ben Fullerton of IDEO (San Francisco), formerly of Live | Work, London, then to public space advocates, Raj Kottamasu (NYC Parks Department, Arts Program Manager for Freshkills Park) and Cassim Shepard (Editor, Urban Omnibus.net)
The Outcomes:
In a concept document of single slides for each stage in the process, the project is summarized as a slideshow. Some highlights below, from the full presentation (which you can download from the top of this post).
The slides tell the story of a proposition worth responding to, and a plausible design process towards an effective, context-appropriate outcome.
It is both attractive and topical, timely and collaborative document of their proposed intervention;
It reflects the design methods that the students had been exploring all semester.
We’ve decided to publish the results not only to attract attention to the skills, process, values and experiences that these ITP students draw on to tackle real-world issues, but also to articulate what could be done to smooth out the bumpy time many people are navigating adapting to right now.
Week 10: Services stories, part 2 March 31, 2009
Posted by rda1 in : 10_Storytelling , add a commentWoah, today was a roller coaster ride of design methods, field exercises and card games. All towards summarizing Laura Kurgan‘s Million Dollar Blocks case study and figuring out what design discovery and definition becomes through the IDEO…and the Brian Eno lenses. Between now and next week, you are invited to post your reflections on one reading and one diagram/visual model/tool for thinking that you’re working from for our 1:1 chats in week 11 and 12. News from Postopolis from me, seminar summaries from this week’s crew – thank you Nahana, Nobu, Sara – and last week’s – thank you Kristin and Madi. And Ari, add that Metropolis gem to the blogroll? Have a good week.
Week 4: And in other media for observing the city February 10, 2009
Posted by rda1 in : 10_Storytelling, 3_Public space, 4_ServiceDesign , add a commentThis is just a lovely interpretation of NYC city space: http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/02/02/i-lego-ny/
About the header on this blog February 4, 2009
Posted by rda1 in : 10_Storytelling, 11_Ethics, 3_Public space, Outside inspiration , add a commentTerry Richardson’s garish, super-model-filled ad campaign for a luxe vodka brand has been up for months in the Broadway Lafayette subway station near NYU. Cutting up/tagging ads is a long-established subway tradition; all part of that dynamic stance between authors/audiences, designers/users we’ve been talking about in class. So while a bit of glamor’s welcome in trying times, these posters invite specific outrage: One day, a sheet of 8 1/2 x 11 appeared over the ads. It simply read: Public Space for Public Good. And here it is. We in SDPS drink to that, but perhaps not fancy liquor ; )