This is an interesting report I came across from a UN-Vodaphone partnership designed to provide “research and recommendations on how to use technology and telecom tools to effectively address some of the world’s toughest challenges” (found via THDblog)
The story I was most interested in was Case Study 10: Environmental Monitoring with Mobile Phones (Ghana) carried out by Intel Research. I was struck by this paragraph, detailing the convergence of locative sensing and personal health status:
Another area for further exploration is the ability of mobile sensing to contribute to public health by linking health with environmental factors that have not been available before. For example, even though we know that there is a link between asthma symptoms and air pollution, previously it was not possible to directly correlate an individual’s symptoms with their exposure to air pollutants. Measuring people’s lung performance while measuring ambient air pollution exposure could shed new light on the links between air pollution and asthma, perhaps resulting in better treatments.
Clearly there are many thorny privacy concerns, but that’s the difficult (and fun) part to work out and begin to address.
Still, I think this example is on the mark in trying to link infrastructure, natural or man-made and population health patterns.
I was up this morning thinking about the kinds of spaces, communities and interactions I would like to see. Somewhere between physical computing, synthetic biology, evolutionary ecology, and design is a space where species can speak and be recognized by each other, where urban infrastructure becomes adaptive in the space of days and not decades, where the threshold of difference is lowered to such a degree that new networks between otherwise unrelated groups and individuals can find common ground.
Perhaps for the first time, I am beginning to see how things can be connected for the purpose of builing empathy. Whereas previously, I think the difficult work of etting to know a species was largely out of many peoples’ desires and time banks, perhaps there are now ways of making the opportunities both immediate and resource-efficient.
Rather than always seeking to decouple tightly-linked host-parasite relationships, can we find ways to make new ones…perhaps ones that can grow into mutualisms and symbioses? Is hardwiring a step in the process? What are the costs, benefits, sources and sinks? Can we create or link networks of co-dependence? What models of covariation should we adopt: linear, dominance, epistatic, topological?
This semester I have the pleasure of being able to lead and help two teams of students create engaging, socially-embedded, interactive design projects. The experience was a success both for me and the students. I learned a lot about my students and what they needed to do excellent work. I think we also found some new ways of working here at Srishti that may prove valuable in the long-term.
The teams also took part in a competition in which the winning team is invited to present their work at the Microsoft Research Design Expo, part of the Faculty Summit held in Redmond, WA in late July. We’re all looking forward to attending because we are very proud of the students’ accomplishments.
The ‘Moon Vehicle’ project consisted of a system to create interactive storytelling experiences around themes of the moon, space exploration and colonization, and India’s forthcoming launch of the Chandrayaan-I moon satellite.
Screen captures from the \'Moon Vehicle\' project design.
The Moon Vehicle team’s design developed in part from the Bangalore Space and Culture Initiative, an interdisciplinary endeavor of artists, scientists, designers, and technologists that began in late September, 2007 and coordinated by Srishti, NIAS, and ISRO.
The Play Revolution project changed many times, but it was always focused on the idea of building a socio-econo-technical system for improving the knowledge-networking opportunities of children living in slums in and around Bangalore.
The lab itself and the social interactions were influenced in part by the GROCS lab at the University of Michigan. Thanks go to Linda Kendall-Knox for her willingness to share aspects of their process.
The course started as a relatively straightforward user interface design series of topics, but this plan was quickly abandoned for a more socially-embedded model that would adapt to the different concerns and questions we were going to encounter. The primary article guiding this process was entitled “Products and Practices: Selected Concepts from Science and Technology Studies and from Social Theories of Consumption and Practice” (Ingram et al. 2007). The article stressed six stages of technological adoption: acquisition, scripting, appropriation, assembly, normalization, and practice.
We used these stages to guide our design process.
The students were given a design brief that consisted of two challenges: one consisting of Srishti’s existing commitments to cultural, educational, artistic,and design-based engagements with society, and another consisting of a more general challenge to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education. They were asked to develop a project that synthesized these challenges into one unique approach that incorporated the concerns, commitments, and constraints that were implicitly and explicitly embedded in the issues raised.
The theme of this year’s competition was “Learning and Education”, and students were challenged to design a user interface and/or interactive experience around the theme of learning and education that improves the daily life of a wide variety of users through learning and education, promotes creativity and curiosity in new topics, demonstrates novel ways of providing instruction, and rethinks education systems and tools.
Here is a new visualization of the cell cycle using a combination of Virtual Reality Markup Language (VRML), Flash, and database-driven graphics. This new version from Chris Landau and Jamie Cope’s nformation design demonstrates the yeast cell cycle in 3D cycle stages along with educational information about the process.
Try zooming in and see changes in the nucleus as the cycle progresses.
Yeast Cell Nucleus During Metaphase
This project started as a collaboration at the University of Michigan with Anuj Kumar’s lab in the Life Sciences Institute and first led to the OrganelleView project.
At the end of last year Innocentive had one of their many competitions for innovative solutions to difficult problems. Innocentive was developed by an Eli Lilly employee as a way to essentially find the essential skills needed to solve difficult problems, mostly in the area of life science.
Keep in mind that Innocentive’s approach is markedly different from a systems like Kluster which engages a collaborative process that depends on their ability to assemble a diverse group. Innocentive relies only on a large pool of potential solvers to get the expertise they need to solve problems. There is no overt collaborative process in Innocentive’s system.
The Rockefeller Foundation has also supported the initiative and has been using it to find solutions to problems for so-called bottom of the pyramid users, primarily around novel technology for basic living situations.
I submitted a solution to the problem of viral marketing for the purpose of building users of these resources. Because I believe strongly in the ability of diverse groups to engage in creative problem solving (perhaps because of my formative involvement in Future Problem Solvers), I crafted a proposal that I thought might be a difference for them. For these ideas, I drew on the work of Scott Page and Ronald Burt. I share the text of the proposal here:
Many people have the expertise to solve difficult problems, yet they and the organizations that seek their skills lack the ability to sense these opportunities. This is the core service that Innocentive provides. By transforming human capital into social capital, Innocentive can increase its brand awareness and turn post-niche strategy into new market segments. Here are six heuristics:
1. Transform human capital into social capital. This means engaging the contradictions of diverse constituents. For difficult problems, diversity trumps ability (Page 2006). Some (but not all) of Innocentive’s clients and problems require diversity to solve key problems. Find ways for people with alternative expertise to contribute to the problems at hand. Diversity creates opportunities to broaden Innocentive’s solver base.
Innocentive’s current strategy revolves around commercial enterprises, state and local governments, and not-for-profit entities. Why not engage individuals that represent constituencies beyond these boundaries? These solvers could come from all walks of life, not just “highly qualified and creative Solvers recruited from the best research and educational institutions.”
Viral marketing encourages people to pass along a message voluntarily. This need not depend on any particular medium like video or games. Providing ways for people to enhance their own opportunities and leverage their own expertise will transmit the message. Google’s blank page provided enormous opportunity in this respect.
2. Provide social capital solutions for individuals and organizations. Creative problem solving, opportunity sensing, and implementation all rely on the ability of an organization or individual to access social capital. Without clear way to build and leverage social capital they are limited in their opportunities. Innocentive is poised to provide mechanism for individuals and organization to access and assemble diverse social capital with minimal obstacles. For an individual or a small organization, this can provide significant value.
3. Provide social captial solutions for Innocentive by providing ways for individuals to exploit their own existing social capital. For example, many individuals are already seeking solutions to their own problems via their social network. This is cumbersome in some respects and could be improved greatly using Innocentive’s model. With Innocentive providing this free service, individuals can then turn to Innocentive when no opportunity is found within their personal social network. Innocentive becomes the solution. “Innocentive helped me find a solution so maybe they can help me now.” Partnering with a social networking service (especially LinkedIn; see #6) can provide the social networking capabilities while Innocentive provides the opportunities and arrangements.
4. Create microtransactions for bottom-of-the-pyramid expertise. People already have skills. Sometimes someone just needs a simple piece of code written and doesn’t have the skills or someone in their network that can do it. While this may seem overly simple for some, for others it may as well amount to curing cancer. Allowing individuals and organizations the opportunity to offer everyday problems will make up in volume for what it may loose in overall value. Even if a task is small, there are many that could solve it and possibly add to the social capital of Innocentive.
5. Identify network-entrepreneurs. These are individuals that position themselves as hubs within social networks (Burt 2005). They tend to identify opportunities and create social capital. They also have the ability to identify potential problems that could be served by Solvers. Identifying network entrepreneurs may take work, but they tend to use positive and negative words to express ideas, use more words to express ideas, have greater number of days between key contacts, have outstanding evaluations, and have job descriptions other than those commonly listed.
6. Identify and work with a strategic partner. LinkedIn would be an excellent choice. Given their large social network size, emphasis on business and opportunity contacts, and upcoming API availability, they could possibly provide the network through which to leverage the above heuristics. Other partners could be identified as well, but they should provide insight and opportunity that Innocentive does not currently have. Diversity should be the first goal.
This is an interesting report I came across from a UN-Vodaphone partnership designed to provide “research and recommendations on how to use technology and telecom tools to effectively address some of the world’s toughest challenges” (found via THDblog)
