Whome: Finding new homes for pre-loved items

The Philippines has storied history of labor export – with Filipinos working all over the world in various industries. Among these migrant workers, Filipino domestic helpers bring a huge yet complicated impact to Filipino society at the familial level, as many of them are mothers absent from home life. Though there is no shortage of tools in this technological society with instant messaging & video calls, there are facets of the migrant worker’s life that are expressed in the culture of transnational gift-giving.

MetaCancer is an organization that is built on helping people with advanced stage cancer. MetaCancer has worked for many years building a compassionate user community and programs to support them. MetaCancer was technologically delinquent. Their old bulletin board system was the furthest thing from inviting. Partnering with the Center for Expressive Arts, MetaCancer developed a program that illustrated the healing capabilities of art as participants expressed their personal experiences through painting and poetry. MetaCancer needed a vision on how to best use technology to leverage all they had learned about their community over the years, and give them an experience that was empowering and trustworthy. Designed and built with mobile in mind, Mosaic has the simplicity of a journal with the richness of a photo or paint application. Mosaic juxtaposes technology and art for a therapeutic and empowering community experience. It represents every user’s personal journey through a challenging time in life.

UFOcus addresses the challenges faced by students, particularly those with attention disorders, in a traditional classroom setting. It proposes an interactive and participatory learning system for Primary and middle School classrooms. Using light signals, projections and sound cues to guide students through different stages of the lesson, ensuring they remain attentive and aware of their progress. Each student has access to tokens and tiles, allowing them to actively participate, answer questions, and engage with peers at appropriate times. The system also introduces ice-breaking activities and de-stressing games, encouraging both mental and physical involvement.

Pigzbe is a (very) smart device that teaches kids 6+ the value of money in a digital world. It's one of the first-ever family products built using the blockchain.

Art museums have long served as epicenters of cultural heritage, human experience, and social gathering. In recent decades, however, new competition for our time and attention has arisen in the form of arcades, malls, and home theaters, not to mention a never-ending stream of digital diversions. Celebrating its 100th year, The Minneapolis Institute of Art rebranded itself as Mia seeking to reengage the public with its world-class permanent collection and world-traveling special exhibits.

Money isn’t a number, it’s the way through which we express our liberty as an individual. Thus, it comes as no surprise then, that there is an indisputable link between mental health and financial literacy. Yet less than 50% of adults living with autism in the UK have any control over how their money is managed. But why is this so?

New York City’s municipal website, NYC.gov, serves more than 35 million unique visitors per year and gets over 250 million page views annually. It’s the primary resource for New Yorkers to accomplish tasks such as paying parking tickets or determining the right school for their child, and for the city to share its initiatives and accomplishments with its citizens. It had not been redesigned since 2003 and, over time had become a disorganized hodgepodge of text and links. It had become difficult for users to find what they needed, and they were increasingly calling 311 (the city’s public help line). The city had already started to invest in a new technology infrastructure and make city data more open and accessible – this was the final effort to bring more power, information, and transparency to the people of New York. Our goal was to create a more intuitive, usable, and efficient experience that would be easy to search and browse, and a delight to use. The experience had to beat accessibility standards and work in many different languages. At a higher level, our goal was for NYC.gov to set the standard for the way governments communicate with and empower their people.

Soundline is a playful, social, sonic intervention which aims to investigate the potential for technology to influence the future of entertainment and the facilitation of the state of group flow within these spaces. Turning an “error” within the festival experience, into an opportunity for play and creative exploration, this roaming performance creates an environment that invites audiences to engage through music, dance and performance.

280 million people worldwide have diabetes causing 4 million deaths each year. With no cure on the horizon, daily self-management is the only option for sufferers to maintain a healthy lifestyle. Blood glucose levels must be tested several times a day and insulin dosage adjusted accordingly. While the technology to monitor blood glucose is improving, the cognitive and physical abilities of the (mostly older) patient group still present a major challenge. "For my patients who require insulin, the steps involved in the self-care of their diabetes can be complicated and overwhelming" -Diabetes Nurse (SanFrancisco) It often falls to nurses to overcome these usability obstacles - spending valuable consultation time training patients to use these devices instead of focusing on more important healthcare issues to prevent complications, e.g. blindness and amputations. In less developed healthcare systems, patients rarely get any training-leaving them frustrated by complex technology, procedures, and instructions that prevent them from effectively managing their diabetes, increasing their health risks. Roche Diabetes Care commissioned Frontend to analyze this issue. What are the usability barriers for patients and nurses? How could the process be simplified? How can we empower patients to manage their diabetes? How can we help nurses optimize training?

In a truly e-commerce and on-demand based economy, more than 25 million US workers perform material handling activities: they move our goods and mine our raw materials, construct our buildings, and create the energy needed to power our society. Last year US companies spent $60bn on lifting related injuries, the most expensive cause of injury in the US, most of which is preventable. Most injuries happen due to cumulative trauma on the spine and surrounding muscles, caused by repetitive bad biomechanics when lifting.