What The Block

When Nike Basketball came to us to help them deliver on their mission to help young athletes elevate their performance, our first step was to understand how kids try to improve their game. Our ethnographic research revealed a key insight: fledgling players hone their skills by watching their basketball idols, and mimic their signature moves in order to appropriate pros’ moves and personalize them to suit their own unique style. At the inaugural World Basketball Festival at the legendary Rucker Park in Harlem, we created The Film Room, a live event where aspiring players not only learn from the very best, they make the moves on their own, and learn about their performance. The Film Room is part green screen, part half court, 100% education. Kids watch a pro performing a signature move, and with the help of Nike coaches, analyze each step. Next, they try to perform the move themselves on the half-court. As they perform the move, HD cameras capture their movements and a custom-built algorithm breaks down each frame. Within minutes, participants receive a personalized 18 x 24” Nike Basketball poster, starring themselves.

There are currently over 65 million people displaced worldwide, the highest number since World War II. Last year the UN’s migration body, the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) attended to the welfare of over 5.2 million people. Although access to healthcare is a basic human right, the growing number of refugees and migrants is making it increasingly difficult to provide support on the ground. Inspired by the on-going European refugee crisis, Frontend volunteered to work with IOM to review their service provisioning and design a “Future Vision for Migrant Healthcare”. Reimaging medication labelling is a central part of this project.

The ʻI Want To Beʼ course is a 2-month after-school program for 12-15 year olds, designed to open the minds of children in Ghana to the career opportunities around them. The class, led by a teacher, takes children on a trip of (self) discovery through company visits, interviews, talent quizzes, and group assignments. An interactive computer application supports the class, tracking kidsʼ progress and showcasing companies and careers available in their communities. Children in Ghana have a narrow view of career options. When researching kidsʼ ambitions, most children told us they wanted to be a ʻdoctorʼ or ʻlawyerʼ and that they didnʼt want to be a ʻdrug dealerʼ or ʻbank robberʼ. In reality, most children leave school at 16 and take a low-paying job to help out with the family finances. This course gives children and their parents the chance to explore realistic career goals and understand paths to achieve them. As a result, children and families may reach higher in terms of education and career and contribute to the long-term skills needed to develop Ghana – and eventually other developing nations.

The Healthcare sector has witnessed an exponential growth in infrastructure and technology all around the world but at the same time, India being a developing country faces its share of hurdles. The Healthcare sector in India lacks emphasis on patient and Healthcare worker experience. There is a need to design an effective and efficient solution that caters to the needs of the Healthcare stakeholders (patients & healthcare workers). Artemis 389 is designed to provide an effortless and pain-free experience to the healthcare stakeholders involved in the activity of patient transfers.

Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) kills over 350,000 people every single year in the U.S. alone. It is the leading cause of death for adults over the age of 40 and also leads to the loss of nearly 23,000 youth annually. Despite being a massive public health issue, survival rates have unfortunately remained dismal at around 10% for decades. Fortunately, there’s a treatment for Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) – a life-saving shock from an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). If used quickly, an AED can be highly effective. However, the problem is that AEDs are not readily accessible, and too often don’t get to the people who need them. Avive is on a mission to change that. With each passing minute prior to treatment reducing a victim’s chance of survival by 7%, an AED’s accessibility, design, and usability make the difference between life and death. Our strategic design collaboration with Avive focused on developing a first-of-its-kind connected AED system. In addition to a standard AED’s capabilities, the Avive Connect AED™ is a portable device that, when spread across a community, acts as a mesh-network of coverage enabling support to any individual within the radius of that network. When activated, the network of AEDs and local responders are alerted to find the closest AED to the victim. Once an AED is activated, it provides diagnosis and instruction to both professional and pedestrian users supporting a victim of sudden cardiac arrest.

Throughout our lives, we amass a myriad of personal belongings, from the teddy bear we received at birth, to the new shoes we bought last week. As our belongings accumulate, it is inevitable for some items to stop serving us, whether it be a shirt that’s no longer our style, or an old toy we no longer play with. However, just because an item no longer serves us does not mean it cannot serve someone else. Whome helps pre-loved items find a home where they can be appreciated and cherished once again.

Amoeba revolutionizes the workspace post-pandemic by addressing challenges in office relocations, significantly reducing wire waste and rewiring costs while enhancing sustainability. Rewiring costs, typically accounting for 25-40% of the total relocating or renovating budget, have been a significant hurdle.

In 2014, The City of New York issued a Request for Proposal that called on the technology and media community to reimagine the City’s obsolete payphone infrastructure, and bring free public Wi-Fi to the streets of New York to help bridge a growing digital divide. As a result, a groundbreaking public-private partnership formed between the City of New York and a consortium of private companies to launch LinkNYC in January 2016, the largest and fastest free public Wi-Fi network in the world. Replacing more than 7,500 outdated payphones, each Link delivers free high-speed gigabit Wi-Fi, phone calls, USB ports for device charging, a touch screen tablet for internet browsing and wayfinding, 911 emergency button, and a platform for civic and commercial applications, bringing connectivity and digital touchpoints to every community and commercial street corner across New York City.

In 2007, the world’s most visited website was Yahoo.com, and the iPhone was considered “technology with potential.” It’s also the year that Zendesk took its first bold steps into customer service. Unlike other solutions at the time, Zendesk aimed to deliver a beautifully simple experience for customer support agents. Much has changed since 2007. Social media has quickened the pace of communication and mobile apps have made it 24/7. The invention of applications like Messenger, WhatsApp, and WeChat have added complexity to customer service. Each app represents a new communication channel, and for support agents, switching between them means lumbering between disjointed dashboards.

MyMachine DreamsDrop is a brand-new complimentary program, turning our inter-generational co-design methodology into a cross-border collaboration: it's an online world map that invites anyone (adults and children alike) to upload their dream machine idea. In addition, we run an annual open call to primary school teachers to join their class, combined with a call to university professors to participate with their students.