MetaCancer’s Mosaic

In New Orleans, music can easily be mistaken for a natural resource. But every note of every song is the product of a human being. Not only are these people often uncompensated for their work, they are often not fully understood. To fulfill its Clinton Global Initiative commitment, Insight Labs convened the second annual UX for Good event in New Orleans on behalf of these musicians.

When Pearson, the world’s largest publisher, needed to redesign their textbook curriculum to meet new national standards, they did more than just write new content.

Given the current global movements to quell diversity it’s apparent that, as designers, we could be doing something about it. So we asked: How could we help celebrate culture and diversity, rather than suppress it? Considering the many ways we could go about helping to change the conversation, we recognized an opportunity space within the emerging world of Voice UI. Given the trajectory of Voice UIs—looking beyond seemingly inconsequential interactions like adding things to calendars, turning on lights, and triggering music—we envisioned a tool that could actually help immigrant parents raise their children as American while maintaining a meaningful connection to their native culture.

Pas a Pas is an interactive educational tool that enables children to learn and experiment through animation. It is designed to support and integrate in to an existing curriculum and is not meant to alter the natural learning pace of children. Pas a Pas incorporates physicality and the animated outcome of stop motion animation to bridge the gap between abstract concepts from maths, physics or arts - usually represented by graphs, equations or words - and reality. Pas a Pas contributes to an education that integrates 'play' and 'create' in to the learning process.Due to the inherent tangibility of stop motion animation, the concept fits into Montessori education methods - it is aligned with the idea of self-directed learning, indirect teaching and multi-age grouping.

A global study showed that the number of people in the UK dying before they reach 75 was worryingly high (the UK ranked 12th of 19 EU countries). Equally, levels of early death varied hugely between the regions of England, demonstrating that where we live can impact how long we live. The Secretary of State for Health made tackling premature mortality a key priority. He issued a call to action, vowing to save 30,000 lives in 7 years. He commissioned Public Health England to make the relevant data transparent and available to all. The goal was to generate debate and awareness of the issue across multiple audiences whilst inspiring intervention from local government to build healthier populations. This gave rise to Longer Lives, a new website providing the information and insight needed to facilitate better health and reduce premature mortality. The team, a partnership between Public Health England (PHE) and SapientNitro, delivered a compelling solution in a matter of weeks.

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.

Our inspiration for the Little People™ Apptivity™ Barnyard came from watching young children play with apps and toys. They didn’t view the world as “digital” vs. “physical” but rather moved fluidly between both modalities and even used them together. We therefore set out to reinvent our classic farm playset to reflect how children naturally want to play. The Little People Apptivity Barnyard represents a new level of interactivity, where the app and toy are fully integrated and augment each other. The app provides a rich, living world while the conductive playset and figures provide a new, tangible way to explore this world. Everything works with everything else, just as children expect!

Before the late-1990s, dial-up was the standard way of connecting to the Internet. Accessing the Internet was a conscious action that involved negotiation between family members living in the same house. The nostalgic dial-up modem sound of Pshhhkkkkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchchchchchchchcch… was the bridge between the analogue and the digital. Today, we are living in a world where the Internet and connected devices have become ubiquitous. The excitement around connecting to websites has disappeared and the underlying mechanism of the internet is hidden.

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.

As a society multitasking on Smartphones increasingly, the way we communicate, shop, bank, watch TV and work has been transformed. Despite many benefits over traditional analogue tools, some are frustrated by the inefficiency of certain tasks and the inefficiency of moving between apps, interrupting flow and increasing the cognitive load of simple tasks. As you leave the app you are working in, your attention is focused on distracting menu systems instead of the task at hand. The average person uses 25 apps per week and one in five times they use a device, they open at least three of those apps.