Magazine Design Thinking for
Rocket Scientists Removing Barriers for Innovation at NASA Page 38
Summer 2020 Issue 015 US $20
jeffstaple: A Streetwear Legend's Creative Career Page 22
Four Climate Futures for 2050 Page 48
Design Lessons from Quarantine Plus, tips for your best home office! Page 62
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MISSION
Sam Aquillano, Executive Director
Bring the transformative power of design everywhere.
Liz Pawlak, Vice President Diana Navarrete-Rackauckas, Director of Learning and Interpretation Jennifer Jackson, Executive Associate Ryan Pflaum, Design Producer Sophia Richardson, Graphic Designer
We inspire people by showing what’s possible through public exhibitions, events, & content. We educate people to become creative problem solvers using design thinking & process. We transform, using design to take action and make change, demonstrating its impact.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS Austen Angell Jennifer Bryan Tom Di Lillo Ashley Dunn Matt Edlen Sana Gebarin Robin Glasco Josephine Holmboe Amy Lalezari Elizabeth Lowrey Kathy McMahon
Leila Mitchell Larry Rodgers Alan Scott Roxane Spears Scott Stropkay Tracy Swyst Matt Templeton Ashley Welch George White Amy Winterowd
Business Civic Innovation Data Visualization Diversity Education Entrepreneurship Healthcare Play Social Impact
ADVISORY COUNCIL Meghan Allen Hilary Alter Joe Baldwin Philip Barash Corinne Barthelemy Leah Ben-Ami Megan Campbell Jess Charlap Sarah Drew Katie Gallagher Adam Gesuero Dabney Hailey
IMPACT AREAS
Ruwan Jayaweera Lauren Jezienicki Emily Klein David Lemus Sarah Merion James Newman Tom Remmers Jamie Scheu Adam Stoltz Jana Stone Shannon Sullivan Shawn Torkelson
Sustainability Vibrant Cities Workplace Innovation
CONNECT Give • Contribute Expertise • Volunteer Learn more: designmuseumeverywhere.org Reach out: info@designmuseumfoundation.org @designmuseumeverywhere @design_museum
Copyright © 2020 Design Museum Everywhere
Contents. DEPARTMENTS 4
Contributors
12 Upcoming Events
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From the Editor
14 Recommendations
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This Happened
18 Q&A
News
20 Design Activity
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FEATURES 22
Legendary Streetwear A Profile of jeffstaple By Sabaat Kareem & Thais Jacomassi
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Gliding to Success The MBTA and thoughtbot Launch an App for Train Officials By Jaclyn Perrone, Design Director, thoughtbot & Katrina Langer, Head of Web and Content, MBTA
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Design Thinking for Rocket Scientists Removing Barriers for Innovation at NASA By Brian Romer, Director of Design, Thomson Reuters Labs
FRONT COVER: ILLUSTRATION BY SOPHIA RICHARDSON · PHOTO BY RAPHAEL NOGUEIRA
Summer 2020 • Issue 015
The Design Impact Issue
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Our Future World 2050: It’s up to us. By Jonelle Simunich, Senior Foresight Strategist, Arup
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Never Standing Still An Interview with Adèle Santos Interviewed by Sarah Merion
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Lessons Learned From Quarantine Designing for our New Normal By Tracy Dupont & Janine Byrne, Prellwitz Chilinski Associates
Have a great design impact story? editor@designmuseumfoundation.org
Interested in advertising opportunities? advertise@designmuseumfoundation.org
DESIGN MUSEUM MAGAZINE ISSUE 015 SUMMER 2020 (ISSN 2573-9204) IS PUBLISHED QUARTERLY BY DESIGN MUSEUM FOUNDATION. 100 SUMMER STREET, SUITE 1925, BOSTON, MA 02110. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO DESIGN MUSEUM FOUNDATION, 100 SUMMER STREET, SUITE 1925, BOSTON, MA 02110.
Contributors. Janine Byrne Janine is inspired by materials and the new, transformative ways in which they can be put to use. Her goal as a designer is to create spaces for people that improve and elevate their lives. She believes that interior design is personal, and aims with each project to understand the culture of a group, capturing its spirit and story, expressed through branding and good design.
Tracy Dupont NCIDQ, IIDA An accomplished interior designer with more than 20 years of experience, Tracy has created spaces for a wide variety of users. Whether designing a multifamily interior or corporate headquarters, her goal is to create environments that function well for people. An Associate at PCA, Tracy combines her refined aesthetic with practicality, designing nuanced environments that foster new ideas and relationships. For Tracy, the true measure of success is the extent to which an interior space allows its users to thrive.
Thais Jacomassi Thais is currently a student at Emerson College studying writing, literature, and publishing with a minor in history. She has worked as an Editorial Productions Intern for Design Museum Everywhere and is a published author with her work featured in literary magazines and art festivals in Boston.
Sabaat Kareem Sabaat is a recent graduate from Bryn Mawr College. She works as the Exhibition Development Intern at Design Museum Everywhere. She is interested in museum accessibility and decolonization within museums.
Katrina Langer Katrina Langer manages the content and design teams for the MBTA’s Customer Technology Department. This team brings good design, user experience, and language to a wide variety of riderand operations-focused software tools, impacting over a million public transit riders a week in Greater Boston.
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Sarah Merion Sarah’s passion for design, innovation, and community led her to the Design Musuem Council. With a personal interest in physical design but a professional background in data and software development, she has combined both to bring together the best of design principals.
Jaclyn Perrone As Design Director at thoughtbot, Jaclyn provides mentorship and support to the Boston design team, while assisting with sales, strategy, and client engagements. Prior to thoughtbot, she made her way to product design by way of account management, frontend development, and UX design. She has facilitated countless user interviews, design sprints, and workshops, and enjoys giving talks about all those things.
Brian Romer As Director of Design in Thomson Reuters Labs, Brian leads the distributed design team, which supports data scientists on new product prototypes with the full spectrum of design workshops, user research, wireframing, prototyping, UI, data visualization and user testing. Brian specializes in custom interactive visualizations to surface insights, map hidden connections that allow people to experience data in intuitive and memorable ways. His background is in design, animation, web development and communications.
Jonelle Simunich Jonelle has a formal background in urban planning and architecture, and now works as a foresight consultant to identify and monitor trends and disruptors likely to impact the future of the built environment and society at large. She is also co-leading the planetary boundary initiative at Arup, with an aim to design more regenerative urban systems.
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From the Editor. Design is Everywhere When we launched our Kickstarter campaign to fund the next evolution of Design Museum Magazine on February 11, 2020, we had very little idea what the world would look like 30 days later. The campaign ended on March 12th, as much of the United States and the world began social distancing measures to try to slow the spread of COVID-19. I’m so grateful to the 336 backers from around the world who collectively helped us raise $34,518 in support of this magazine—you can see their names on page 70, thank you all. The world has changed and we’ve changed right along with it. When I started Design Museum Boston in 2009 with Derek Cascio, we weren’t sure where the journey would take us. We knew we wanted to break the barriers of traditional museums, to meet the public where they are instead of requiring them to come to us. In 2014, the journey took us to Portland, Oregon, and we launched Design Museum Portland. Since launching the museum over a decade ago, we knew that design was everywhere, and that a true design museum needs to be everywhere too. It makes sense that in a time of physical distancing and global cooperation, Design Museum’s journey would take a new turn, in order to better serve and to grow our community—so we’ve changed our name, to Design Museum Everywhere. Our vision is to make Design Museum Everywhere the most accessible museum ever—a museum that comes to you, wherever you are. We’re here to give you that daily dose of design inspiration: • We’ve launched a new, weekly podcast called Design is Everywhere, to have regular conversations on design impact. It’s live now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, and more. • Our events are now virtual. Design Museum LIVE events can be enjoyed by anyone, anywhere in the world—our most recent event had attendees from Israel, Ireland, Belgium,
and Italy, as well as attendees across the U.S. beyond our branch cities. • We’re bringing all our exhibitions online, for everyone to enjoy—stay tuned! • We have a growing collection of youthfocused design education activities for parents and teachers to do with their kids and students, it’s called Design Together. • And of course, there’s the magazine you’re reading right now—we’ll continue to bring you inspirational and educational stories of the transformative power of design through these pages. And as designers continue to help solve the biggest challenges facing our world, we’ve snapped into action to make an impact and demonstrate design’s power. We launched Mini-Moonshots, calls to action to the design community. We’ve partnered with UShield.us, a grassroots effort to supply face shields to frontline healthcare workers—we’ve shipped 34,000 shields to date. I’m steadfast in my belief that design can change the world. I hope you’ll continue on this journey with us as we expand our community globally—and you can help. You can advocate for Design Museum Everywhere by becoming an ambassador in your town, city, state, or country, to help spread the word. Learn more at designmuseumfoundation.org/ ambassadors One last thank you to all our members, who we’ve listed in this issue—you are the fuel for this engine of impact, we’re so grateful for your participation and support. Sincerely,
Sam Aquillano Executive Director Design Museum Everywhere 11
This Happened. Distinguished Service Medals Awarded
At our Boston and Portland branches, we awarded six outstanding individuals our Design Museum Distinguished Service Medal! This year’s Portland recipients were Ed & Brittney Herrera, Associate at BRIC Architecture and Principal at HBx Studio respectively and Amy Winterowd, Vice President of Client Solutions at JE Dunn Construction.
Meghan Allen, longtime supporter, and David and Felice Silverman, Principals at Silverman Trykowski Architects, were awarded the Design Museum Distinguished Service Medal in Boston. As a nonprofit, we rely on the support of our community and of individuals willing to give their time, money, and expertise in service to our mission to bring the transformative power of design everywhere.
We Design Premiered in Portland
We Design: People. Practice. Progress. opened at our Portland, OR branch! Hosted by Clay Creative, our community came together at the opening reception to celebrate. We Design is all about creative individuals, from many backgrounds, sharing their stories in their own words and through their work.
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After the opening, the exhibition remained onview. Visitors of every age have learned about the different types of design, the statistics of the homogeneity of the field (and how we can all change that), and the ever-growing careers that use design skills. Stay tuned online for more We Design updates.
Design Museum Goes Virtual
We went virtual! During the COVID-19 crisis, Design Museum went fully digital, bringing you the same events, inspiration, and community that you know and love. Some updates include our new website, for easier access to content and events, consolidated messaging by rebranding our online and national presence as Design Museum Everywhere, and new programming!
We’ve launched Design Together, regular design activities for learners of all ages, Design is Everywhere, a podcast bringing you the latest design impact stories, and Design Museum LIVE, a digital version of our in-person events.
Maxwell Mitchell, high school senior, draws along at the first Design Museum LIVE Sketch Series, featuring Design Museum's co-founder, Derek Cascio.
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News.
Design is everywhere. So are we. The Design Museum team has been busy! In the last 11 years, we’ve been working digitally and physically, bringing design content, events, exhibitions, and transformational projects to different cities across the U.S. It makes sense that in a time of physical distancing and global cooperation, Design Museum’s journey would take a new turn, in order to better serve and to grow our community. We’ve always said, from the very beginning: Design is everywhere. So are we. And now it’s true. Design Museum Everywhere has stepped up to meet the needs of our community—we’ve launched a new name, website, magazine, and programs to be the museum that comes to you! Be sure to follow our new social media @designmuseumeverywhere
tions with design thought leaders around the world. We’re bringing together a global community around design impact using interactive live streams and webinars to share design stories, demonstrations, and actionable knowledge. This summer, we’ll host live sketching workshops with famous designers like Michael DiTullo, and break down complex design challenges, like the pain points of global innovation with Steelcase and visualizing data with Northeastern University.
Design Together
Design Museum LIVE Design Museum LIVE is our ongoing series of virtual events featuring talks and conversa14
There’s no better way to learn than by doing. Design Together is a catalog of activities you can do on your own or with family and friends. Each design activity challenges you to work through the design process by creating and executing your own ideas. Check out our library of activities for grades K-12, from empathy mapping to building custom chairs.
Design is Everywhere
Online Exhibitions
Our weekly podcast, Design is Everywhere features stories of people and organizations using design to make an impact and change the world. Hosts Sam Aquillano and Liz Pawlak discuss topics with guests across the Design Museum’s 12 impact areas. Sam and Liz explore topics like working remotely during and after a pandemic, resetting production and consumer practices, and the future of design education. Available wherever you stream your podcasts.
Didn’t get to catch an exhibition in-person? Design Museum is taking our exhibitions virtual. We’re bringing We Design: People. Practice. Progress., Bespoke Bodies: The Design & Craft of Prosthetics, and Extraordinary Playscapes: Imagination Needs Places to Thrive to our website. You’ll explore creative careers, dive deep into the world of prosthetics, and climb towering treetop playgrounds all from your home.
ARCHITECTURE & INTERIOR DESIGN www.sta-design.com
sta_design
Silverman Trykowski Associates
Silverman Trykowski Associates
sta_design
Upcoming Events. JUN 12 12pm EDT
DESIGN MUSEUM LIVE
The 5 Growing Pains of Global Innovation Patricia Wang & Lenka Cechova, Sr. Design Researchers, WorkSpace Futures, Steelcase The gap between the goals of an organization and its support structures often leaves workers caught in the middle, experiencing frustrations and feeling ill-equipped to do their jobs. Patricia and Lenka were studying this gap before COVID-19 happened, and they will share their research, walk through pain points, and discuss how they’ve seen organizations overcome barriers to global innovation.
JUN 26 12pm EDT
DESIGN MUSEUM LIVE · SKETCH SERIES
Footwear Sketching Michael DiTullo, Founder & Chief Creative at Michael DiTullo LLC Michael DiTullo, a renowned industrial designer, can draw anything. Michael knows shoes. He designed Air Jordans after all. Michael will demonstrate his sketching techniques using pen, marker, and paper, showing how he develops both form and details.
JULY 10 12pm EDT
DESIGN MUSEUM LIVE · SKETCH SERIES
How to Draw Anything Spencer Nugent Join industrial designer, illustrator, and "Sketch a Day" YouTuber Spencer Nugent for a live demonstration of his drawing techniques, and learn how to draw anything!
JULY 21 12pm EDT
DESIGN MUSEUM LIVE
Visualizing Complex Data: COVID-19 & More Paolo Ciuccarelli & Paul Kahn, Northeastern University Paolo and Paul explore design and data at Northeastern University. Together they will share what’s behind successful data visualizations and dive into data related to COVID-19 to determine how good design helps us better understand and respond to this crisis.
Visit our website for the latest information on what Design Museum Everywhere is up to! designmuseumeverywhere.org 16
SEPT 19 8pm EDT
SPECIAL EVENT
Design Night LIVE Members Will Enjoy Sketches, Prizes, Live Curation, and More! Design Night LIVE is a Saturday night filled with design sketches, games, familiar faces, and more! During this member-only virtual event, you will live-curate an exhibition featuring your favorite examples of great, impactful design. We will be giving away spectacular prizes, sharing the vision and impact of Design Museum Everywhere, and hearing from designers from around the world about the designs they can’t live without. The night will culminate in an online Design Museum Everywhere exhibition opening featuring design that is impacting each and every one of us! Become a Design Museum Everywhere member to attend, and if you are already a member just refer a friend and you’ll both attend for free!
Visit designnightlive.org for more information 17
Recommendations.
Sonder
Leah Ben-Ami Learning and Development Lead, C Space Design Museum Council
Sonder, an Airbnb-like apartment rental company, is really beautiful. It’s all about making you feel at home, no matter where you are in the world. The designers wanted to focus on inspiring people’s curiosity and sharing the local vibe, while making people feel cozy. When I used Sonder, it was one of the nicest places I’ve ever stayed, and I’ll keep looking to them when I travel for design inspiration.
100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People by Susan Weinschenk The book is a science-based approach to the way people perceive and interact with the world. I love this book because it literally holds the keys to unlocking impact through design. Jess Charlap Marketing Manager, Perkins Eastman Design Museum Council
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House Museums They often get a boring rap, but I’ve come to realize house museums are such a rare opportunity to see how real people lived and to learn about the design decisions they made. Plus, the volunteers/staff are intensely passionate. In the fall, I traveled to Milan, Italy and toured the Villa Necchi Campiglio, designed and built in 1935. The veranda was my favorite—a large glass room with greenery everywhere. I also visited the Hiwan Homestead Museum in Evergreen, Colorado. A former ranch house, everything was preserved from the multiple generations who lived there, from private chapels, to a kitchen right out of the early 1900s, to a kid’s bedroom from the 1960s. Jennifer Jackson Executive Associate Design Museum Everywhere
How Design Makes the World by Scott Berkun Scott’s new book teaches us how to understand what makes a design impactful, insights we use every day at Design Museum. With examples ranging from software engineering to city planning, everyone will find a design project to relate to. Sam Aquillano
Villa Necchi Campiglio, Milan
Executive Director Design Museum Everywhere
Home Diagnostic Tools
? George White Chief Innovation Officer, Cantina Design Museum Board of Directors
Something I wish I could recommend to everyone, but isn't available yet, would be a simple home medical diagnostic tool. We’re in a period of deep uncertainty thanks to COVID-19, and I’m sure I’m not alone in worrying every time I get a sore throat or a little cough. Designers, let’s make this one happen! 19
Q&A.
What’s the most impactful design you’ve ever experienced?
Video calling! Right now, in this particular moment in history, I think we're all realizing how important human interaction is. While video calling is still a charmingly buggy solution to seeing someone without being in the same room with them, it replicates a feeling that a phone call or a text message can't give you. Sophia Richardson Graphic Designer Design Museum Everywhere
One impactful design really sticks out to me. I was at a fast food restaurant about 10 years ago when I was grabbing some sweet tea and noticed the extra set of buttons that were installed, so someone in a wheelchair or of shorter stature could access the fountain drinks without needing to ask for help. Why aren't all buttons lower so they are accessible by all? David Lemus Design Strategist Design Museum Council
Visiting the Sagrada Família, in Barcelona, Spain, was the first time architecture took my breath away. I had a visceral reaction to the scale, the detail and the history. I’ll never forget the power of that place. Liz Pawlak Vice President Design Museum Everywhere
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Q&A.
What does design impact mean to you?
It means changing my life for the better! Tom DiLillo Regional Sales Manager, New England at Steelcase Design Museum Board of Directors
To me, great design makes you feel something. There are a lot of nice looking products, interesting buildings, and cool apps out there. That's good design. But, every so often you run across something that makes you pause. That pause, that's great design. Shawn Torkelson Director of Marketing, KPMG Design Museum Council
Design can change a mood, inspire, encourage, and focus us on thoughtfulness. Design can be anything you enjoy, observe, or learn from. Roxane Spears Vice President of Sustainability, Tarkett North America Design Museum Board of Directors
Design impact to me is making something possible for folx that wasn’t possible before. To me that’s the real power of design—making the seemingly (or purposefully) impossible possible.
It is a reminder that design shapes the world around us, and just how important it is. Every interaction—big or small—is a design challenge. There are the major pivotal interactions where design is crucial, and the small moments that compound into something equally important. Good design is aware of all those moments and understands their importance. Ryan Pflaum Design Producer Design Museum Everywhere
Diana Navarrete-Rackauckas Education Program Specialist Design Museum Everywhere
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Design Activity. With our Design Field Dice activity, we want to create space to learn about the design field. This activity will allow learners to see examples of design in their own daily lives and to create several concept ideas using the randomly selected categories. There are up to 216 combinations!
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Visit our website (designmuseumfoundation.org/designfielddice) to print out and build the dice.
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Have your learner roll each die and keep track of their results.
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Now it’s problem-solving time! Give your learner 5 minutes to think of as many problems as possible for their audience given the locations they rolled on the dice. Example: Infants on a Subway Platform: It’s loud (hurts their ears!), nothing cool to look at, scary things moving quickly!
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Challenge your learners to create solutions to the problems they came up with. Have them come up with 3-5 solutions for as many of the problems as they can, including a sketch/prototype of the design. Give them at least 30 minutes for this task. Instruct them to choose their top two ideas to present to you or a partner. Tell them to prepare a short presentation about their designs, including a section that addresses why their designs would benefit their audience in each location. Between each presentation, give your learner feedback on their design. Example: This is great! Looking at it now, what would you change? Can this be used by several people at once? How do you think we could build this? Who should we ask for more information?
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Debrief with them. Ask them about their experience and which field most closely aligns with their interest.
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Repeat this cycle as many times as you’d like!
Share your favorite measurement findings with us using #designtogether and tag us! @designmuseumeverywhere
@design_museum 23
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PROFILE
Legendary Streetwear. A Profile of jeffstaple By Sabaat Kareem & Thais Jacomassi In February of 2005, the shoe that catapulted sneaker culture to the masses was finally released. While not designed to be a hyped icon, this new shoe, named the Pigeon Dunk, was one of the most sought after silhouettes, and the limited number of pairs available caused chaotic scenes to develop in New York’s Lower East Side. Outside Reed Space, a now-closed landmark streetwear boutique, people began to pitch tents along the sidewalks days before the release. Through a blizzard, more and more came to await the coveted shoes. When the line got to be over 100 people, the police arrived. Arrest threats were made to those who refused to leave after so many hours of waiting, yet the crowd fought back. While sneaker culture had been largely underground, this riot catapulted it to the limelight. On that February day, jeffstaple became a household name. Staple Design is a creative firm founded by jeffstaple. Originating in 1997, the New Yorkbased firm works with some of the world’s most prestigious brands on design, identity, and marketing. jeffstaple is deemed one of the most influential designers in the streetwear world, and his firm’s expertise is highly coveted by brands like Nike, Adidas, and Puma. In addition to his brand, jeffstaple founded Reed Space, produced a creative magazine called Reed Pages magazine, became the creative director of TGS Hold-
ings, Inc. retail outlets, and created his own podcast called Business of HYPE. The man behind the design giant, Jeff Ng, was born to Chinese immigrant parents who moved to the United States to start a family. He grew up in a middle class, suburban city in central New Jersey as a minority in a predominantly Jewish-Caucasian community. Growing up, Jeff’s world was all about comic books, sports, music, streetwear, and sneakers. He followed athletes’ careers, the shoes they wore, and their collaborations with athletic and fashion brands. He was fascinated by the small differences in products like sneakers and jerseys and became an avid collector. Jeff explained that, more than the actual sport games, he was always interested in the players' costumes and how they would be marketed. Knowing that his parents wouldn’t finance his shoe obsession, at 13 he took various odd jobs and bought all the newest sneakers from the local mall. Those sneakers were his prized possessions, and he kept them lined along the walls of their dining room on display. Jeff called himself an “extremely average” high school student—“I wasn’t a phenom growing up in the slightest.” At his suburban public school the curriculum revolved around rote memorization, which Jeff was not interested in and did not excel at. While his parents dreamt of him being a doctor or a lawyer, it became evident that those were not viable paths for Jeff by high school. Back then, Jeff learned the most from his art teacher, Michael Reed, who taught PHOTO BY BRIAN ALCAZAR
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him the difference between being good at tests and being intelligent. His teacher taught him the value of education and opened Jeff’s mind to what it meant to truly intake knowledge. “My high school art teacher, Michael Reed, was really inspiring. He passed away my senior year, and it was his passion for education and art that pushed me to work even harder and pursue college. I was really into creative writing, but I didn’t think being a novelist could be a real job, so I took up journalism as the next best thing and got into NYU. There were a couple of Asian journalists, like Connie Chung, at the time so my parents were OK with it—if they saw an Asian person doing something successfully then they thought I could do it.” At NYU, Jeff’s world changed drastically. After coming from an overwhelmingly white community, being in a school with a large Asian population helped him embrace his ethnic background. Jeff said he had an identity crisis throughout his adolescence. Out of the 1,600 students at his high school he was one of only three Asian kids. Until attending NYU, he was embarrassed to be Chinese. He didn’t like to speak Chinese or bring Chinese food for lunch. Being a minority among so many students, he was subject to bullying and racist remarks. At NYU he opened up and found he was proud to be Asian. He joined Asian student groups on campus, even those of countries he had no attachment to. He began to really understand the personal ramifications of racial tension in the U.S. and reflected on his childhood relationship with race—a mediation that would lead him to success in the next few years. As a student at NYU, Jeff balanced his course work with his job clerking at a graphic design studio and other odd jobs. At his clerking job, his boss saw creative potential 26
PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFFSTAPLE
in him and began teaching Jeff how to use the Adobe Creative Suite programs (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, etc). Jeff says this was the first time he saw people making a living off of artistry and was enthralled. He decided he wanted a more creative education and tried to transfer to Parsons School of Design, but was not accepted due to his lack of formal art work. Luckily, Jeff found his way into some of the foundation 2D and life drawing courses offered at Parsons, and eventually got into Parsons’ Communication Design program where he excelled. Securing a solid foundation in digital programs, Jeff decided to try something more hands-on and enrolled in a silk screening class. “My second year at Parsons I took a silk screening class and fell in love. I got tired of printing on posters and started printing on clothes. T-shirts and fashion are such a powerful vehicle of communication. If I gave my friend a piece of art printed on a shirt one day it could mean ten thousand people are seeing my design. I was sneaking into the lab at night to make them with a friend since the teacher only let us print on paper in class. Then on March 7, 1997, I was walking around Soho wearing a political shirt I made. A boutique manager asked about it and bought a dozen on the spot. It was my first order, and those 12 shirts sold out in a week. They doubled the order, then another store put in another one, and before you know it, I got a big order from Japan for 1,000 pieces. I knew I couldn’t make that many shirts breaking in at school anymore, so I decided to leave Parsons and pursue this clothing line thing.” Jeff, shocked at the sudden success of his political designs, committed to the task of branding himself. He picked the name jeffstaple based on the nickname, “Staple,” that his friend made up for him. The success
Jeff sketches his now iconic pigeon logo, worn above on his jacket. PHOTOS BY STAPLE DESIGN
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Examples of jeffstaple's work range from footwear, to apparel, to toys, many of which proudly display the pigeon logo.
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PHOTO BY ERIK HERCULES (TOP) · PHOTO BY JEFFSTAPLE (BOTTOM LEFT) · PHOTO BY STAPLE DESIGN (BOTTOM RIGHT)
PHOTO BY STAPLE DESIGN (TOP LEFT, TOP RIGHT) · PHOTO BY COLE HAAN (BOTTOM)
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PHOTOS BY SLIM CINEMA
of his Staple clothing line led to Staple Design. Through his school internships, such as his internship at PNB Nation, Jeff learned that effective storytelling plays a vital roll in an artist’s success story. He explained that PNB taught him, "What separates the boys from the men is the ability to market an idea and tell a story.” He used these skills to make sure people were not only buying his designs, but buying a culture and a narrative.
I would love to create platforms where young creatives can access everything I have learned and use that as a starting point so they don’t have to take a decade like me. One of his earliest clients was Fadar Magazine. Fadar sent Jeff to Japan to conduct research on the rarity and exclusivity of Japanese Nike products. For the article, Jeff designed layout, did research, and wrote the piece. After an influx of commissioned design work, Jeff released a collaboration with Nike with his signature Pigeon logo. Designed in 2003, the Pigeon Dunk Low took two years to be released in a limited run of 150 pairs. Focusing on the grit and energy of New Yorkers, the Pigeon Dunk was created as a symbol of the New York hustle and remains one of Jeff’s most key legacies. When the shoe came out in 2005, the ensuing frenzy to obtain a pair was dubbed the “Pigeon Riot” and introduced the public to the sneaker craze. Although there was no money spent on marketing the Pigeon Dunk, the shoe is one of the best known icons in streetwear through pure word of mouth. The shoe’s wholesale cost was $30 and sells for over $7,000 today. While Jeff is considered an influencer, originator, and key opinion leader (KOL), he has always found the biggest reward through hard work. Jeff ex-
plained, “Other people had to tell me I was an influencer. In 2010, someone at Nike told me they have a ranked chart of people who move the needle, called influencers, and I was in the top five. Whenever a company had any initiative that involved trying to capture the youth audience, Staple Design was the go-to.” He now uses his extensive knowledge and success to guide up-and-coming creative entrepreneurs. He said, “I would love to create platforms where young creatives can access everything I have learned and use that as a starting point so they don’t have to take a decade like me.” He thought of creating a podcast as a passion project and like many of his ideas, it quickly became internationally popular. The podcast, Business of HYPE, advises new creatives about the complicated world of design and entrepreneurship. Jeff’s drive to reach out to the next generation comes from his business’ innate connection to youth and youth culture. He explained that as creatives get older they tend to lose their energy and drive, but have decades of wisdom and experience. Young creatives have limitless drive, but little experience and knowledge. To Jeff, helping young people is a two-way street, as the young people bring the raw energy while he provides the insight. In the future, he hopes to be able to streamline communication between these two groups by finding an effective platform to broadcast information. •
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CIVIC INNOVATION
Gliding to Success. The MBTA and thoughtbot Launch an App for Train Officials By Jaclyn Perrone, Design Director, thoughtbot & Katrina Langer, Head of Web and Content, MBTA The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA), known locally as simply "the T," is the leading public transportation provider in the metroBoston area. Before the majority of the city was restricted to the walkable radius around their homes, the MBTA and thoughtbot partnered for a digital communications project on the T's most complex line, the Green Line. The Green Line is a light rail system, with multiple branches and a two branch extension currently underway. Picture it: a trolley click-clacks through treelined streets, carrying baseball fans and college students down Commonwealth Ave. in Boston. It stops at Harvard Ave., where more than 4,000 people board the train every single day. Passengers tap their CharlieCards and load cash on their tickets, asking the driver where to exit for Fenway, or where to transfer to the Red Line. Meanwhile, cars cross in front of the train–over 4 lanes of traffic and 2 sets of railroad tracks to continue their journey up Harvard Ave. toward Downtown Boston. Then, the traffic light turns green, indicating that the train can cross the intersection, but a few people are still waiting to board. The operator holds, and by the time they’ve closed the doors and are ready to leave, the light is red. So they wait. Meanwhile, the train behind it is just leaving
Warren Street—it’s supposed to be 7 minutes away from Harvard Ave., but it’ll be there in 4 minutes at this pace. An official at Harvard Ave. radios the operator. “The headway gap is too short,” they say. “Wait at Warren Street just an extra minute.” At this point you might wonder, “Isn’t it a good thing to have trains arrive closer together, especially on a busy day when there’s a Red Sox game?” Well, not quite. In fact, maintaining even headways—the time between each train’s arrival—is essential to the efficient operation of the Green Line. Evenly spaced trains are safer, reduce crowding, and ensure there aren’t empty trains needlessly traveling through the system. The officials who make decisions about when trains can leave are called inspectors. During rush hour, there may be as many as 19 inspectors in the field deciding when to send new trains into service from the rail yard, assigning operators to trains and scheduling their breaks, monitoring crowding at stations, and yes, making sure trains are evenly spaced during service. They do all this over a radio station dedicated to Green Line operations, and with paper forms called train sheets. Radio communications and paper forms have served the Green Line well. As far as processes go, it’s easy to learn and keep consistent. But in 2018, as the MBTA's Customer Technology Department was wrapping up a significant rebuild of the technology that powers real-time PHOTO BY KYLE TRAN
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information for customers, they started to wonder: Could we use this technology to surface real-time train data for operations? They were pretty sure they could, but wanted to partner with a design firm that could bring leadership and rigor to the process—that’s where we came in. thoughtbot is a design and development consultancy that partners closely with clients to bring products from validation to success while mentoring them on the process. We kicked off a 3-month project with the MBTA team called Green Line Intelligent Decision Execution System (GLIDES).
Discovery In the initial discovery phase, we learned a lot about Green Line operations. It’s about way more than just monitoring traffic lights. When the MBTA came to us, they had an objective that they wanted to solve: How might we improve communication between officials on the Green Line? The first phase of design thinking is Empathize, which means learning about your customers and the world in which they operate. In order to do this, we interviewed 21 MBTA officials, operators, and supervisors to get a better understanding of how the Green Line operates as a whole, across all the different positions. We had a series of objectives for our interviews: • Get a sense of the different relationships within Green Line operations. • Evaluate where we can supplement manual processes with technology. • Identify
inefficiencies and communication gaps in their workflow. • Understand the broader context of Green Line operations. • Identify at what points officials need more information to perform a task more efficiently. • Identify user needs that are unarticulated. Focus on their feelings towards a particular workflow and their motivations in certain situations. thoughtbot and the MBTA team held one-onone, hour-long interviews with different officials over the course of a month. Oftentimes, our team would split up and interview multiple people in one day to cover more ground quickly. We asked questions such as: • Walk us through your typical day. • What’s frustrating? • What’s rewarding? • What types of decisions do you make throughout the day? • What types of information do you need to be successful? • What is challenging to access? • Can you tell me about a challenging experience you had on the job? • How did you handle it? • What tools did you use? • If you had a magic wand and could fix one thing right now, what would you fix? After a day’s interviews were over, we would come together as a team and synthesize. We captured our observations (things we heard, saw, felt) on sticky notes, and over time clustered similar ones together to form overarching insights. We came up with over 30 insights, all of which could easily spin off into their own product offering. The task at hand was prioritizing these insights
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ILLUSTRATION BY VENDELA LARSSON
Interviewing Jacques, Chief Inspector
and choosing one that we could tackle together in this short time that would yield the highest impact. This marked the second phase of the Design Thinking approach: Define. Now it was up to us to use these insights to determine an objective to work toward that focuses on a critical, common, unmet need that we heard throughout our interviews. In order to inform the priority of our ideas, we created a series of user personas to further document our findings. We aggregated our findings into seven different personas, featuring the Chief Inspector, Desk Official, Dispatcher, Operator, Pull-out Inspector, Supervisor, and Yard Master. The personas dove into topics such as: Goals, Behaviors & Habits, Technology Access, and Relationships. It was important to create and share artifacts like these from the research phase to help inform future MBTA projects. Once we established an understanding of the different players in the Green Line ecosystem, and the nature of their relationships—including the questions they asked each other and the blockers they experienced—we revisited our insights and determined that reducing radio chatter would have the greatest impact on their
community. At this time, Green Line operations used a single radio channel for communication in order to ensure that all operators and inspectors were kept informed of critical service information. However, there were times it was taken up with questions that could be easily answered through software (e.g. Who is operating a particular train?). Questions like these prevented more urgent information from being distributed, which introduced challenges into the communications flow. For the Green Line, timing is another logistical challenge. For example, operators have scheduled, paid breaks during their shift. If the train they’re driving gets stuck in traffic on Huntington Ave., it delays that break time. They’re still entitled to their full break, but then the next train they’re scheduled to drive will need to leave later. Furthermore, while inspectors can see where trains are scheduled to be according to paper train sheets, real-time information about train operators and locations was only available by radio. This makes it difficult to adjust train schedules according to breaks and shift changes. Finally, inspectors can (and do) use Green PHOTO COURTESY OF THOUGHTBOT
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911 Tro u b sh Wh oo ledri o is tin vin g Wh g? be y am ing H old he I ld? min for 2 ute I ca s n ne ’t do Cu xt s run Wh ser tom vic er sig eel c eQ na l p hair, s Tra rob loc in lem ati on Sm all ha pp even en ing t
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Prototype After developing a problem statement (How might we reduce radio chatter?), we were now ready to begin the third phase of the Design Thinking approach: Ideate. As a team, thoughtbot and the MBTA sat down and did a series of design exercises to help us generate as many ILLUSTRATION BY VENDELA LARSSON
Who is on break soon?
Where is the train?
Current headway
I am ld? hy he W ng i be
Line radio to find out where the trains are and who’s driving them. As a result, the radio channel is full of chatter-communications about break times being delivered right alongside information about emergencies.
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Who is drivng?
Need repair
Get me a train
station? Are you at eck-in ch ng ni or M
solutions as possible to solve our objective. We started with a round of Mind Mapping, which is used as a warm-up exercise to get our ideas out of our heads and onto paper. From there we did a few rounds of a rapid sketching exercise called Crazy Eights, to get as many solutions and ideas out as quickly as we can. Finally, we finished up with an activity called Story Boarding, which allowed each of us to develop an idea further by diving into the details of its interaction. After a few rounds of sharing and critiquing our ideas, we converged on a final storyboard that outlined the screens of the prototype we wanted to build.
The MBTA communication structure is a complex web. thoughtbot illustrated the major threads, to help identify the areas for improvement.
W
OW Heads up R m oble or track pr
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Our research revealed a number of opportunities for improvement, so we continued our process by building an app prototype that mirrored paper train sheets. Accessible via any browser on smartphones, it includes train location, operator information (the badge number and scheduled shifts for two people on each train), arrival predictions, and a visualization of headway gaps. This took us right into the last two phases of the Design Thinking approach: Prototyping and Testing. Our first prototype had a few key objectives:
• Provide more context about what’s currently happening in the system. • Create a way for Green Line officials to keep each other updated about non-emergency issues. • Improve the fidelity of our data by making crucial train sheet data digital. These objectives took the shape of an experience that showed train location, operator information, reported issues, and train sheets. We created this experience as a low-fidelity, clickable prototype to start, so we could get it in the 37
Grouped notes from the interviews helped us to identify themes and directions for the app.
hands of officials quickly to hear their feedback and iterate on the design. This prototype wasn’t functional—it was a series of static screens created in a design program called Sketch, and linked together in a prototyping tool called InVision. We went back out to our interviewees and showed them the prototype on our phones to get their feedback. We asked questions like “What’s happening on this screen? What information is missing here? When would you use this feature? What would you do next?” After multiple rounds of showing and iterating on our prototype, we started to have a clearer idea of what we wanted to build for our first version of the product, our MVP. thoughtbot and the MBTA created a backlog of all the features that we wanted to include in our first build, based on user feedback from testing. Once this list was created, we prioritized and honed in on which features would be required in order for our app to function and provide value. These features included train locations, train sheets (entering who is operating which car), and a way to collect user feedback. We also decided to integrate analytics from the start in order to gather information on usage to inform future iterations. With a plan in place, we started designing and developing the first version of the app. Designers honed in on visual styling and user experience, while developers laid the foundation for 38
PHOTO COURTESY OF THOUGHTBOT
the back-end functionality. After a few weeks, we had a real, working app! It was piloted by 7 inspectors on the B and C branches of the Green Line. We wanted to learn three critical things. Was the app easy to use or were there barriers to access? Did inspectors think it would help them do other parts of their job? Was this a scalable process, ideal for us across all parts of the Green Line?
Inspectors looked forward to using the app every day. They loved the automatic updates to train location. Expanded Pilot Once thoughtbot and the MBTA understood that the app was useful based on our prototype, we expanded the pilot to inspectors at Reservoir, Riverside, Harvard Ave., and Boston College stations. This part of the test was about efficacy—or, does this app do what we think it will? In particular, we hypothesized it could even out headway gaps the way previous research suggested it might (reducing customer wait time by as much as 30 seconds). We also hoped it would provide more holistic, real-time infor-
mation to inspectors and dispatchers on the Green Line, thereby reducing chatter on the radio, and helping everyone make better decisions about service needs along each line.
Results In the first few weeks of widespread use, the team uncovered that this app provided a more equitable, reliable source of information for inspectors and dispatchers, and it did improve overall employee morale. And, while it didn’t measurably reduce radio chatter, it did ensure a consistent source of train and operator location information if the radio was needed to communicate disruptions or emergencies. Anecdotally, inspectors looked forward to using the app every day. They loved the automatic updates to train location. Here’s the unfortunate news: About two weeks into our pilot last year, we ran into an issue with the GPS system. Essentially, unrelated to any of our work, the GPS service provider had switched network protocols, making location tracking unreliable (If you took the Green Line at this time and relied on arrival predictions through the MBTA website, Google Maps, or Transit App, you may have noticed this).
Over the next few months, all-new GPS units were installed on every Green Line train to accommodate the new GPS protocol. It wrinkled our hopes and dreams for the GLIDES app, but it did not deter our spirited approach: as of this writing, GLIDES is back up and running, to the relief of designers, developers, and Green Line inspectors, who, at least once a week while the app was down, emailed our team to say, “Hey, when is this app going to work again? We miss it!” Well, it's back now. The GLIDES app is now in use, creating data to help the MBTA improve communications among train officials and to deliver a more reliable service to customers. And although our work on the GLIDES project is over, we're excited to see how our partners at the Customer Technology Department will continue to build on the product development methods that we introduced and the research findings that we uncovered during our time working with them on the Green Line. •
IMAGE COURTESY OF THOUGHTBOT
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Design Thinking for Rocket Scientists. Removing Barriers for Innovation at NASA By Brian Romer, Director of Design, Thomson Reuters Labs
In the 1960s, the average age of a NASA employee was 27. As a brand new agency with a once-in-history mission to put a human on the moon and bring them back to Earth safely, the National Aeronautical and Space Administration was moving fast and loaded with young talent. This is where we get the term moon shot, meaning a plan to innovate quickly and achieve something big that was previously thought impossible.
PHOTO BY ANDY HOLMES
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Over the decades, NASA has grown and launched dozens of other missions beyond the Apollo Moon program, from Voyager to the Space Shuttle, the International Space Station to landing robots on Mars. At over 60 years old, NASA is still known as the pioneer and leader in space exploration, but multiple nimble competitors from the private sector now play a growing role in the field. Douglas Terrier, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer, stated “We’re at a fork in the road, not because NASA has suddenly started to do something different, but because the world is doing something very different in technology and culture. And we’re really at a decision point about how we’re going to adapt to that.”
The idea was to find these particular people—we called them Persistent Innovators. They’re persistently moving the needle and naturally becoming leaders within the organization. They’re at NASA because they have a vision and they want to make an impact. Leaders of NASA arranged for an external advisory committee in 2018, composed of innovation leaders in academia and business, who were tasked to organize a workshop, “focused on understanding barriers to innovation at NASA and providing feedback on NASA’s framework for creating an innovative ecosystem.”
Convening Around Innovation The advisory committee selected the approach of convening a two-day exploratory workshop that brought NASA leaders face-to-face with diverse experts and innovators. I had the good fortune of being invited to run a workshop initiated by Mona Vernon around innovation and 42
PHOTO BY NASA/BILL INGALLS
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culture, alongside Suzi Hamill, Cate Johnson, and Nick Jarema. In late November 2018, about 100 NASA employees, mostly from leadership, assembled in Washington, D.C. for the event. Our venue was the National Academy of Sciences building in Washington, D.C., with its oversize sculpture of Einstein out front, monochrome exterior, and soaring majestic interior. Every hall and room was lined with amazing photography, art, and sculpture, and the main atrium housed a pendulum that hung several stories from the ceiling. The people at the event were an incredibly smart and collaborative mix of scientists, researchers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and leaders. Interstitial conversation sparkled with talk of solid metal asteroids, a new lunar base, cosmic distances, and, of course, rockets. The first day was centered around three participatory workshops: one to explore NASA’s best possible future states, called Imagining Success 2030; one to discuss what could go really wrong, Pre-Mortems and Failure Conditions; and one called Leadership Diagnostics, our workshop session to connect NASA leaders with NASA innovators. Day two harnessed the ideas from the workshops to determine what steps NASA could take next, both short-term and long-term, to change the organization to better support innovative work.
Unique Environment, Universal Issue Staying innovative and effective is not a NASAspecific problem. Anyone who has worked on innovation inside an organization that’s been around for a while, especially a larger one, can relate to the challenges that led NASA to create an advisory board seeking solutions. As organizations grow, so do layers of management and oversight. Common approaches and methods must be documented to preserve knowledge and create a consistent culture. Successes must be maintained and supported into the future, requiring new teams of people and added layers of bureaucracy. Over time teams become larger, more process-heavy, and more risk-averse. How can or44
ganizations deliberately foster and incubate the capacity to innovate as they mature? Our hypothesis was that certain people in the organization were already doing amazing innovation work despite hurdles in the work environment, and we could learn from them. The idea was to find these particular people— we called them Persistent Innovators. They’re persistently moving the needle and naturally becoming leaders within the organization. They’re at NASA because they have a vision and they want to make an impact. Next, we wanted to bring them together with senior leadership, and then structure a workshop session to coach and prime leaders into listening empathetically to these Persistent Innovators. The interviewers would be tasked with capturing the stories of the innovators, learning what their day-to-day work life is like, and what their greatest achievements and disappointments are. Then they’d be asked to dig deeper, find common themes, and map the ideas according to impact and feasibility.
The Persistent Innovators NASA nominated a total of eight people for us to work with, all of whom are exceptionally talented, resourceful, and who were very open to participating. At work they play different roles at different locations, but their common trait is a combination of technical brilliance and a natural instinct to push beyond boundaries and lead others. We met Georgia De Nolfo, who studies the heliosphere—the “atmosphere” of the Sun. And Kevin Antcliff, who has been designing and inventing autonomous flying cars since he was a kid. Annie Meier is solving problems around waste and recycling in space, which will help power future Moon and Mars missions, and help us with waste challenges right here on Earth. To prepare for our workshop, we had conversations to learn about their backgrounds, as well as their motivations, frustrations, and joys of their work. We encouraged all of these innovators to bring photos of their workspaces and things they were proud of in order to help the interviewers understand who they are as individuals.
Georgia De Nolfo
Georgia’s specialty is the heliosphere, or the atmosphere around the sun. Flaring, active regions of our sun are highlighted in this image combining observations from several telescopes. IMAGE BY WALT FEIMER, COURTESY OF NASA/GODDARD · ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK CASCIO
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Annie Meier
Members of NASA’s Orbital Syngas Commodity Augmentation Reactor, or OSCAR, team are hard at work, including Annie (pictured at far right). OSCAR studies technology to convert trash and human waste into useful gases. A prototype has been developed, and the team is in the process of constructing a new rig for a suborbital flight test. 46
PHOTO BY NASA/CORY HUSTON · ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK CASCIO
Kevin Antcliff
Urban air mobility means a safe and efficient system for vehicles, piloted or not, to move passengers and cargo within a city. Kevin’s expertise is put into practice imagining the future of transportation in the sky. IMAGE BY NASA · ILLUSTRATION BY DEREK CASCIO
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Engaging the Innovators The structure of the first day was to split the attendees into three groups of 25-30 people, and have those groups rotate through each of the workshops in 90-minute blocks—so we had an hour and a half with each cohort to run through Leadership Diagnostics. We started with an introduction to design thinking, focusing on where it came from and how designers use a human-centric approach to frame and solve problems. In the short time we had available, we focused on empathy—understanding the people you’re helping—and define/ reframe—getting to the right problem—phases. We mentioned ideation—generating a wide variety of ideas, prototyping—building a quick version of your solution, and testing—seeing if it works for real people—as future phases in the process which we wouldn’t have time for. To lay the groundwork for the interviews, we discussed why we look for people’s stories instead of a list of facts. Stories contain more complete frameworks of value systems, assumptions, and expectations; and they’re the most powerful and memorable way to transmit information between people. We asked interviewers to lead with questions like, “What was your best day at NASA like?” and, “What was the most challenging situation in your role?” and then to listen actively to the answer and ask further questions to gather more detail. Participants were divided into groups of four or five interviewers for each innovator, at separate tables. Multiple group interviews went on at the same time, and the room was buzzing with conversation. After five minutes, we asked interviewers to look at the stories they’d collected and find an interesting or surprising area to probe on and get more information about. The highlight of the workshop was watching five NASA leaders listen to one innovator. That innovator could rank from five to sixteen levels below those leaders in the organizational hierarchy. It was inspiring to see leaders learning from innovators who they likely would have never met otherwise. An organic side effect of the workshop was that by the end of the day, the innovators had 48
established a peer network. Having met each other for the first time at the workshop, they pooled ideas on how to continue working together to change the organization.
What We Learned The workshop we ran came out of a surprisingly simple idea: talk with, and listen to, the people in your organization doing great work, and you’ll discover where things can improve for everyone. It’s much easier said than done, but it helps to have a structured workshop designed to elicit these conversations and capture ideas. We focused on reversing the dynamic of reporting lines, to have leaders seeking answers from people under them in the hierarchy—and to structure it in a way that was engaging, playful, and different from their typical work conversations or brainstorming sessions. The scientists and engineers at NASA could easily accept higher-paying jobs in private industry, but they work at NASA because it’s NASA, and they want to contribute to the greater mission of human space exploration. The level of mission-loyalty is high, and something every organization should aspire to—but like many large organizations, the layers of management and approval are formidable obstacles. NASA projects can move so slowly that innovators can miss their window of opportunity waiting for approval, while startups and private companies solve the problem first. Actively cultivating a culture of innovation from leadership down to individual contributors is key—our advice: use design thinking, be aware, practice empathy, and listen to colleagues across the hierarchy to uncover and encourage persistent innovative behavior within the organization. •
HOW TO BRING THIS WORK TO YOUR ORGANIZATION
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Start small: pull together a small group of leaders to learn design thinking principles, particularly empathy and defining/reframing problems.
Interview one another about the drivers and blockers for innovation for each of you. Articulate a point of view on the problem and write it down in a place everyone can see.
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Then identify individuals in the organization who are doing amazing work, no matter their level or title.
Outline or create simple sketches of the problems you identify.
Decide what you can change. Share your perspective and brainstorm with others to see how they can help. 49
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VIBRANT CITIES
Our Future World. 2050: It’s up to us. By Jonelle Simunich, Senior Foresight Strategist, Arup At Arup, I work as a foresight practitioner, where my job is to consider the future of the built environment and how today’s designs can make an impact; as well as thinking about the future impact we want to make to consider how we can design things today to achieve a future that is fit for us all. Challenges In writing Arup's 2050 Scenarios: Four Plausible Futures, a report recently published envisioning city life in 2050, we struggled when we got to one particular scenario, the Post-Anthropocene. While the other three scenarios (Human Inc., Extinction Express, and Greentocracy) consider both positive and negative aspects for society and natural systems. The challenge for Post-Anthropocene—where both society and planetary conditions improve— lied in that we all thought we knew what the positive future would looked like; harmonious, green, peaceful, plentiful, and so on. This is meant to be the future we all want to see, to live in, to inhabit, yet it was the most difficult to envision. How can we design a city, building, system, experience, glassware, document, anything, when we are tied to making planetary improvements; mapping, analyzing, and adapting systems; and doing things in a way no one has ever done before, or that no one really knows how to do?
And, to be honest, trying to paint a picture of peace and harmony does not produce the most attention-grabbing results. Humans thrive on tensions, on struggles, on the leaders for negotiations and conflict. Designing “utopia” and a world that considers “Spaceship Earth” is much more challenging than one might initially envisage. Consider what world you might want to live in, what impact you might want to make on the world, and how that impact could play out in the future. Many of us are able to start by listing out pieces, aspects, and elements we like, want or wish to see. But designing that in 3-D is more of a struggle. As such, my design challenge to you is to design the 2050 YOU want to see. Take into consideration the impacts you want manifested into reality. If you had unconstrained conditions, what would you envisage? My challenge to you is not to design any future, design one you really and truly think will be better; while considering the impact it will make on future people, planet(s), cities, systems, processes, wellness, on anything and everything. We all want a better life, for us, for our families, for our friends, for our people. But have any of us ever really considered the detailed design? Here are some questions to get you thinking. Will it mean more money or less? Will it mean constraints, and how so? What will success look like? Will it mean happiness? What will we have to sacrifice, if anything? What does resource consumption look like? What might the various PHOTO COURTESY OF ARUP
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FOUR POSSIBLE FUTURES
Post-Anthropocene A path to a regenerative world where society consumes resources at a rate in which they can be replenished. Humanity recognizes and values ecosystem services, in turn helping to improve the quality of life for both the planet and society.
Extinction Express Natural resources that had been previously taken for granted and consumed led to the destabilization of natural systems. Resource and energy shortages are pervasive around the world. Society is driven by fear of the ‘foreign’ and ‘different’ as isolationism has been on the rise for years.
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ILLUSTRATIONS COURTESY OF ARUP
Greentocracy The Earth and its health has the highest priority on every national and transnational agenda. Global efforts for climate action have been made at a significant cost as humanity lives in self-imposed servitude to the environment.
Humans Inc. This period reflects a business-as-usual trajectory from 2020. The condition of humanity has continued to improve, but it comes at the expense of the environment. Climate considerations have become subordinate to economic development and societal well-being.
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economic models look like? Are they the same everywhere or will it vary by location? These are the kinds of questions I ask myself and our clients daily. The future is unknown, yet one thing we know is we all want to design, build, construct, and inhabit a future that is better than today. Which bodes the question, “What does better look like?” Our existing social constructs tell us that “better” means more money, more stuff, more consumption, more, more, more. Well, what would a future look like if we didn’t have more, but had less or some other model? Is there even an option of having a better future that doesn’t consist of “more, more, more?” Is there a way to have more that doesn’t endlessly extract resources? The planet, and her resources, have underpinned our modern economies, and been the only model many of us in North America and Europe have known.
The future is fiction. It is a story we tell ourselves. A story we create. A story we have the ability to take actions toward, or not. Each and every one of our daily interactions is a step toward the future; be it knowing or unknowingly. Impacts The future is fiction. It is a story we tell ourselves. A story we create. A story we have the ability to take actions toward, or not. Each and every one of our daily interactions is a step toward the future; be it knowing or unknowingly. Did you decide to drink water today, or a soda? Did you walk to work or Uber? Did you say hello to your co-worker or rush to your desk? It’s the daily decisions we take that make the biggest impact on our collective lives. With the changing world we’re living in, questions around what the future could, should, and 54
PHOTO COURTESY OF ARUP
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A graph of the four plausible futures and what implications each represents. 56
DIAGRAM COURTESY OF ARUP
must hold is increasingly prevalent. Will it look like X, or Y, or Z, or Q? There is no way to really know, but we can get a bit closer by looking at trends, data, and by delivering scenarios to help us start to approach this question. In my role as a foresight practitioner, I help people think about the world we want to live in, and the ones we don’t. Scenarios are one way to help us. By juxtaposing positive with negative, or the desirable with the undesirable, we can start to paint the future we want, the future we don’t want, and the future we think is most likely. Following scenario development, we can then start to think more practically about how we want to construct that vision. Arup’s recent publication looks at the world in 2050 and considers all these things. In this document we designed four different plausible futures based on planetary health and societal well-being improving or declining as drivers for our communal future. What would the world look like if planetary and societal conditions both improve? Could people and the planet live in harmony? The Post-Anthropocene depicts such a future where people only use the resources they need and consider their everyday impacts on each other, as well as on the environment. What would happen if both planetary and societal conditions degrade? Extinction Express outlines the grim conditions for the majority, where decades of desires have stripped the planet of resources, where chaos rules, and every-person-for-themselves is the modern mantra. What if we put our planet before the needs of the people? Restricting resource use, restricting access to nature, restricting people’s lifestyles in an effort to get to one-planet-living. Greentocracy illustrates what the future might look like if humanity is able to transition from using 1.7 planets per year to using less than one. What if we carry on as we are? Using up resources as we see fit, building cities as we see fit, but all in honor of improving the lives of humanity globally? Humans Inc. describes a world where resources are used frivolously
in honor and effort to better the quality of the human condition; but at the expense of our oneand-only habitat. None of us know what the future really holds. But we can imagine. We can begin to design, plan, and build toward it. We can put the planet or people at higher priority, but with either option we will have unique consequences and benefits. Or shall we consider the reality of what a planet in harmony might look like? I hope my questions have left you curious, puzzled, inspired, and determined to think about how you might design better for both the planet and people. •
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WE DESIGN INTERVIEW
Never Standing Still. An Interview with Adèle Santos Interviewed by Sarah Merion Whether Adèle Santos is transforming the MIT School of Architecture and Planning into a world-renowned institution, designing clothes and coats, creating public housing, re-building cities that have fallen victim to natural disasters, gutting and re-imaging her warehouse home that was once the site of a children’s circus, starting an architecture school, or merely being the wonderfully stylish and magnanimous force of energy that she exudes, she is never standing still. She first started her design education by gaining a diploma from the Architectural Association in London before moving on to Harvard, where she completed her Master of Architecture in Urban Design. After these, she concluded her formal education by completing her Master of Architecture and Master of City Planning at the University of Pennsylvania. Adèle has held various leadership roles in academic institutions and most recently was the dean of the School of Architecture and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She was recruited in 2003 to come to lead the school, which she did for a decade from 2004-2014. In a testament to her ingenuity, the MIT School of Architecture and Planning received the esteemed award of #1 School of Architecture by QS World University Rankings in the final year of her deanship. Since stepping down from being dean, she has continued to be a valued MIT faculty member, co-director of the Levinthal Center for Advanced Urbanism, and active in continuing her private practice, Santos Prescott and Associates, which has garnered an international reputation. Adele is an advocate for gender and racial diversity and has spoken in various lectures about the importance of representation. I sat down with Adèle to talk about her life dedicated to forging new paths in design.
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Sarah Merion: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up, and what was your childhood like? Adèle Santos: As an only child growing up in Cape Town, South Africa, I was used to having to motivate myself in finding ways to make friends and to make my own fun. When I was young, I attended a school that was 1,000 miles away from my hometown. In the beginning, I flew to school when the year was starting, but then my family decided it was a time for me to take the train, so I had to take a train, which took at least two full days. It was a very long train ride, and I was only eleven at the time. I usually went alone, except on the rare occasion another little girl would come with me. The fact that my mother even let me do this is shocking! My life while growing up was an adventure and, in a way, I came out of that experience sort of fearless. Those journeys to and from school on the train have made a significant difference in my life and my ability to perceive the world, problem-solve, and find those small joys in life. It doesn’t really surprise me that I would later be chairman of a school of architecture, as I’m not afraid of much. SM: Wow, it’s hard to imagine a young child taking a two-day solo trip these days. How did you use that fearlessness to discover your leadership potential? AS: During my time in boarding school most of my friends were the “naughty” girls in class. They also hated sports and while I was around them, I found myself being in a position of leadership just from trying to help guide them to the right directions. By the time I graduated from high school, I knew I not only had leadership potential then, but that it was something I always had. It seems to me that for young people, leadership is something you have or you don’t. It was just one of my personal traits. My leadership was the same trait that distinguished me and helped me pave my way in architecture school. I was the only woman in my year, but I was the top student. I had to have momentum and conviction that didn’t let me stop long enough to let myself and anyone talk me out of 60
anything, especially in that environment. I use those leadership skills in my work now by acting as a community builder intent on building discourse. SM: How did all of these early lessons about your strengths and capabilities impact your career in design? AS: On those long train rides to school, I had to test the limits of my surroundings, so I learned how to explore and engage with the world around me. Creative problem solving has played a large part in my career. It impacts everything from how to get a loan all the way to designing a city. This skillset has helped me in all my projects, from designing clothing, to buildings, to salvaging international, environmental disasters. SM: So then you started your career in architecture. What was the first big project you participated in? AS: The thing I have always loved to do and will continue to do throughout my life is to build my own projects. The first project I remember being a part of was in Cape Town. There were these fantastic row houses, each with multiple units, on a hillside and one by one the tenants were leaving. I had a vision for the transformation I could make on this property and I decided, along with my cousin’s uncle, my mother, and my uncle, to buy the property and rehabilitate it. As we renovated the place, we decided that each collaborator could keep one of the units for themselves. I was ecstatic about that because when I house myself, it’s got to truly be my place. SM: Your first formal architectural project was with your family, I’m sensing your bold decisions. How did you choose who you wanted to work with on projects that followed? AS: In all of my projects, I created a cast of characters or “playmates,” as I like to call them. These “playmates” took the form of faculty, collaborators, designers, financial managers, and even videographers. I think the way I brought people along the journey was by having enough conviction in my vision and making them want
PHOTOS BY BEN GEBO
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to be a part of it. The credit I get for being able to assemble these wonderful teams and collaborators has to be given to the fact that free spirits attract each other. All of my friends are wacky and a bit out there, but the most important thing is to have a sense of humor. SM: You continued to lead when you became the dean of the School of Architecture at the University of California San Diego, how did that opportunity come about? AS: I was on the faculty at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, which is also where I had gotten my Master in Architecture and Master in City Planning, when I was told there was a new school of architecture being created in San Diego and I was asked to become the founding dean for the school. In the beginning I told them to go away, but they were persistent and eventually I agreed to go out to interview with them. I was hesitant at first because the economy in the late 1990s didn’t provide a very good opportunity to start up a new school. In evaluating whether I should do it or not, I made sure there was enough support and enough funding before I agreed to anything. I was intrigued by this opportunity because architecture hadn’t evolved at that time and I saw this change in the economy as a chance to be a part of transforming how architecture was taught. SM: Having people from different backgrounds and experiences working together no doubt enhances a final product. How important has it been to you to ensure that you weren’t the only woman working on a project? AS: It’s definitely a priority. When I went to California to lead the School of Architecture, my first task was to find my “playmates.” I had to recruit members of faculty, but I didn’t want to go about it in a conventional way. I amassed my chosen faculty after having a series of weekend discussions with folks from all over the country, all over the world, and from all different disciplines. More is more, in terms of diversity of thought, and it produces incredible results. By the end of my weekend discussions, my four chosen faculty came from disciplines spanning
art and history, technology, social justice, and design. The most important part of building a faculty group was to have gender diversity and people with various backgrounds working together. Gender diversity was definitely a priority for me. As a woman in a place of power, I felt I had this massive benefit to be able to impact this value onto my work, during a time that it likely wasn’t a priority in many fields. SM: And how did you end up in Boston? What has made Boston feel like home? AS: In 2003, I was living in San Diego, and received a call asking me to consider leading the MIT School of Architecture and Design. It wasn’t an easy sell, but I was heavily recruited from across the country, and at that point it was a great opportunity to build something new. When I arrived in 2004, the school didn’t have a great reputation. But I feel very proud that in my decade of being dean, I transformed the school into being #1 school worldwide for architecture by QS World University Rankings. That was a highlight in my career. When it came time to make Boston my home, I found this place we’re sitting in now. It was in total disarray. The building was a former children’s circus school run by a community-oriented woman, and then it fell victim to a fire. So, I decided to rehabilitate the place, to bring it closer to the life it used to have, and now I call it my home and studio. SM: What is your advice for someone who is just beginning their career? AS: There are two really important aspects to having success. The first is to be optimistic, that’s the main thing. You have to believe in yourself. The second is to go out and experiment. A lot of people are timid, but you have to experiment with different things otherwise you won’t know. One other aspect that isn’t spoken much of is the need to be in a position of power. And if you fail or you go broke? You bounce up and do it all over again. I’ve been through all of that and that hasn’t stopped me. •
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WORKPLACE INNOVATION
Lessons Learned From Quarantine. Designing for our New Normal By Tracy Dupont & Janine Byrne, Prellwitz Chilinski Associates As interior designers, we design places where people want to live, work, and play. However, the COVID-19 crisis and the need for social distancing has led us to question—what happens when work, life, and play all collide in the same space? Historically, when we’ve created multifamily environments, we have designed smaller scale units enhanced with robust communal amenities, which now during quarantine have gone unused. Our new reality sheds fresh light on how to design spaces that can accommodate all of life’s twists and turns. After a month of social distancing measures, we posed a simple question to our office of architects and interior designers in an effort to illuminate the shortcomings of the work/ home environment that have been uncovered while staying at home: “How have you altered your personal home space to best suit your current needs?” Though the results are anecdotal, themes arose that gave us a glimpse into how we can enhance our design to better accommodate for present and future needs. Working from home comes with its challenges, which are exacerbated with the need to stay indoors even in our free time. Our co-workers employed small environmental changes, such as moving furniture to create makeshift office spaces, opening windows, and gathering houseplants, to try to create their ideal home environ-
ment. These simple changes can be translated into large scale design efforts, which combined with more scientific approaches, can help make our combined “live, work, play” spaces better.
Apartment Interiors, From the Outside In Currently, apartments in urban settings are often smaller to increase density, with in-unit auxiliary spaces appearing only in larger dwellings. To balance the opportunity for work from home, and potential needs for social distancing, we should consider the usage mix in the standard apartments as well as the general look and feel we view as standard in design. We can improve the look and feel starting from the outside in by increasing visible green space. Creative building massing and setbacks can make way for balconies and windows overlooking mid-level roof decks, gardens, and broader vistas. We often use unique and memorable apartment views to help differentiate apartment concepts—improved access to daylight and overall apartment aesthetics will only become more desirable in the future.
Taking Cues from Micro-Units Inside of apartment walls, change starts with flexible furniture. Designing in flexibility allows residents to make the space fit their needs, whatever they may be. We’re hired to design apartments sized from micro-units to 3-bedroom condos, each with their own challenges related to spatial needs. As the most chalPHOTO BY ANTON GRASSL
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Using techniques from micro-units, we can design apartments to maximize the potential of available space. Built-in shelving, lofted beds, and convertible desks create flexibility in small spaces. 66
IMAGE COURTESY OF PCA
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lenging, micro-units offer significant lessons learned that can be applied to other unit types when attempting to maximize flexibility. There are multiple techniques we use to create efficient use of space in micro-units, ranging from built-in storage, stacked beds, and nooks to create space for multiple usage while maximizing available floorspace. By using these techniques for future unit design, we can get the most out of apartment square footage. First, we can consider stacking and mounting furniture— we can “go up.” By wall mounting shelves, we create more floor space. Taller kitchen cabinets, hung higher, create more storage. Though they are stationary, built-in cabinets, bookcases, and furniture, give space for tenants’ personal furniture within the unit. A built-in desk combined with a bookcase creates a dedicated workspace. More unexpected elements, such as murphy beds, can add a bit of whimsy along with extra floor space. In a micro-unit, we design everything to be functional. Hallways include storage, and former dead spaces (such as under the bed, and the corner of an apartment) make way for shelves and pull-out drawers. There’s a space for everything to reduce clutter, making the home a more inviting place to be. Elements from micro-units can be used when building in privacy for any size apartment. Going forward, we imagine that apartment design will continue to move away from including dining rooms, and instead include multifunction “nooks,” or workspaces tucked away for visual privacy. Using pocket doors instead of traditional swinging doors can maximize usable floor space, while creating separate rooms. Leaning away from the current standard of open concept design, we can design for multi-bedroom apartments to have generally separate common space (e.g. living room, kitchen) giving tenants places to hang out outside of their bedrooms.
Common Spaces Outside of Apartment Walls The current era of social distancing has reinforced the necessity for flexible design of public spaces to ensure that they can meet our evolv68
ing needs. Modern urban apartment buildings are designed to include many communal amenities, such as libraries, demo kitchens, fitness, and work spaces. We will need to treat these spaces differently—more like health and wellness facilities—to ensure cleanliness. Until this point, we’ve designed communal spaces with warm materials such as reclaimed woods and soft cushions, that are not hyper-cleanable but rather aesthetically beautiful and comforting. We may need to revisit priorities in communal spaces, should the worldview on shared space change.
The current era of social distancing has reinforced the necessity for flexible design of public spaces to ensure that they can meet our evolving needs. We need to build in the capability to sectionalize these communal spaces. Creating smaller, more modular amenity spaces will allow them to be cleaned as needed and closed to create space for social distancing. Small “think tanks” or single-user work spaces can be used as places for tenants to get out of their apartments. In the future, the ratio of enclosed to open spaces should skew towards enclosed or enclosable. Small mitigations such as built-in sanitizing stations, and touchless technology where possible, can be integrated within shared spaces in attractive ways. Taking cues from health and wellness facilities, we can design spaces with non-porous surfaces for easy cleanability, as well as natural viral and bacterial resistance, and mechanical systems that keep air from spreading contagions. For example, copper door handles can help reduce the spread of infections, as copper is inherently an anti-microbial product. Instead of a reclaimed wood work table, we may consider black metal, for easy cleanability. Advanced HVAC design & filtration systems within the walls and above the ceiling can help mitigate the spread of contaminants through the air between adjacent spaces.
Enclosed common spaces create private spaces outside of apartment walls. Common area amenities that combine open and closed areas allow residents to choose what suits their needs at the time. IMAGE COURTESY OF PCA
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Changes such as these clearly extend to all markets—office, retail, hospitality. The conversation about cleanliness and anti-microbial design will continue to evolve, with more solutions coming forward in the coming years. As designers, we intend to look toward changes in materials and industry.
But What You Can Do in Your Home? Clearly, the COVID-19 pandemic will affect all aspects of our lives. The extent of that effect is currently unknown, however we can reflect on lessons learned and evolve our best practices. In our own homes, we can make ourselves more comfortable by taking inspiration from what our coworkers did. Based on our team’s experiences, and lessons learned from many interior spaces designed for multifamily apartments, one could start by implementing the following changes: • Adding a second monitor to your home computer or laptop 70
PHOTOS COURTESY OF PCA
• Setting up a video-friendly light source and background for video • Creating sound control or mitigation with drapery and rugs • Gathering desktop organization tools— keeping things organized and separate • Making the most out of underutilized corners and empty storage • Bringing plants indoors to improve green space By improving the interior design of our environments, we can make our homes more comfortable for all of life’s unexpected changes. •
PCA’S DESIGNERS ON MAKING THEIR COVID-19 HOME OFFICE
I started out working from home transferring from the couch, to the bed, to the kitchen bar, and would repeat as each space was never good for working for long periods of time. After my coworkers posted about their work spaces, and realizing this was going to last more than a week, I got inspired. I moved the desk tucked away in the corner covered in things next to our large floor ceiling window, where my fiancĂŠ and I can sit across from each other staggered. I put my plants all around me, and now I love it more than my desk at work. Each day I get to watch the flowers get taller in the garden comfortably from my desk chair.
Finding a quieter space where I will be less interrupted by noise and traffic in the house was key for me. With all the video calls, I moved around the house to find a good spot that is quiet and yet had a decent backdrop because it's like inviting people to your homes. Good lighting is so critical, I got better lighting to surround my space given the limited natural light at my desk.
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FOUNDATIONS & GRANTS Barr-Klarman MA Arts Initiative Bloomberg Philanthropies Boston Cultural Council Boston Society of Architects Foundation Cambridge Community Foundation Cornelia T. Bailey Foundation Deborah Munroe Noonan Memorial Fund Lovett-Woodsum Family Foundation The Malka Fund Massachusetts Cultural Council National Endowment for the Arts Oregon Community Foundation Regional Arts & Cultural Council Sappi: Ideas that Matter
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An integrated creative agency generating brand power. Women-owned, PDX Est. 2008
T H I N KJ O U L E .C O M
Architects and designers exert enormous influence through product specification.
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US GDP Spend
Tons Waste in USA
39%
+
Global Carbon Emissions
The experience of every human being leaving their home.
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