Little Signals

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.

One of the greatest shortcomings of human-centered design is its lack of guidance on how to include diversity as part of the design process. Which human, exactly, belongs in the center? Most designers end up using their own abilities and experience as a baseline for their designs. This problem is even more pronounced for the predominantly young and able-bodied designers that work in technology. The result is products that work well for people with similar abilities and resources, but end up largely excluding everyone else. This is especially true for roughly 1 billion people on the planet with disabilities.

TrafficBridge provides connections within and across organizations to assist network television advertising broadcast matches.

Nouvelle réalité (New reality in French) is a physico-digital exploration project, it is a gateway between physical and digital worlds, aiming to generate artistic interest in children. The augmented reality gaming app reveals artwork from Lego assemblies built by the children. In this first experiment, we explore the De Stijl art movement through three unique art pieces.

Data Cubed has developed a fully integrated electronic data capture platform and cross-platform app, designed using gaming mechanics and reward-driven behavior change to increase participation and improve retention for clinical trials. Data collection is fully automated, gamified, and engaging, using human centered principles and modern technology.

What happens in the current political news reading experience is users will subscribe and read the news and the media based on their interests. What the worst is, to improve the stickiness and catch up user’s attention, companies also use the algorithm to feed the news, which fits the user’s interests. Over time, it creates a filter bubble or echo chamber, in which users could only receive the information which they believe, causing the intensification of the political polarization.

Web Lab is a groundbreaking, year-long exhibition, featuring a series of interactive Chrome Experiments that bring the extraordinary workings of the internet to life. Visitors to Science Museum (London) play and learn collaboratively with online visitors through controlling physical machines, in what is truly a global museum exhibit.

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.

More than ever, young people are raising their voices on issues they care about. From Extinction Rebellion to FridaysForFuture, there’s a worldwide movement of children getting involved in activism. This new generation have opened our eyes to the power of children’s voices – showing us that they should be our role models. They’ve made it clear that for human life on Earth to continue, we all need to make big changes.

For nearly 70 years, we have been interacting with computers using a keyboard, and for the past few decades with a mouse. With the rise of touchscreen technology and the Internet of Things, we’re long overdue for a more intuitive way to create and work with technology.