Design Research Studio

8/28 Introduction to the Design Research Studio

Beginning the final fall semester studio, I didn’t have clear expectations for what the structure of the course would be like. However, my experience over the summer at Fjord gave me a lot of insight into what type of work I am interested in pursing in the future. It also helped me refocus what I am passionate about learning before leaving university. I was excited to see many of the learning goals I had for myself coming out of this summer experience were addressed in the goals of this studio. Examples of these are as follows :

• Understand how to explore a system and intervene
• Discover and design new frameworks to communicate the organization of information/systems

The overview of the course, and brief lecture by Terry, both touched on how we will start to unpack some of these goals in the following weeks. My hope is that in framing these goals I may be able to better frame my learnings from the studio, and what I take-away from the semester.

Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System by Donella Meadows

As much as we talk about systems throughout our studies in the school of design, Meadows’ writing is a refreshing perspective into what a system is, and how we can think about it. Addressing the idea of the systems that surround us in terms of how one would intervene in one was, personally, impactful because of the foothold it provided. The reader becomes system’s analyst/critic/designer/intervention, etc alongside Meadows. The steps to intervene raised questions about how I might go about addressing the systems that surround me on a day-to-day basis.

I found Meadows’ sixth intervention point: the structure of information flows interesting because it was able to articulate the power of what I see to be a core part of communications design. That is, in bringing visibility and understanding to a certain set of information, a designer is able to shift the mindset (or if not mindset maybe behavior) of the audience.

9/2 Wicked Problems in PGH : Public Transportation

After having lived in Pittsburgh for three years, I have become comfortable with my routines and go-to places here. It has become easy to overlook the unfamiliar parts of this city, for what is comfortable and familiar. Lecture on Wednesday was a reminder that every city struggles with wicked problems that are a product of their history, culture, environment, etc. and Pittsburgh is no exception. Many of the issues we discussed in the eight topics were familiar, but I was not aware of the extent of the problem that Pittsburgh faces. My group picked the Public Transportation wicked problem. I had no previous insight about this problem in Pittsburgh prior to this class. However being a student in this city without a car, I am very familiar with the inconveniences of public transportation (especially in bad weather).

Terry Irwin’s Ojai Workshop

A particular method of approaching a system level problem is looking at how its solution would affect scales of contexts, namely “Lifestyle Scales” (below). This is an intriguing method to start telling the story around the wicked problem — or the story around how its solution might look. In the case of the issue of public transportation in Pittsburgh, Lifestyle Scales could help frame how this issue manifests itself in immediate/intermediate/broad context, etc. I can see this framework being a helpful jumping off point to guide my research into public transportation in Pittsburgh.

Sustainable Lifestyles: Today’s Facts &
Tomorrow’s Trends p. 96 (SPREAD)

Research in Pittsburgh’s Public Transportation

As I begin to research the topic of public transportation in Pittsburgh, I have become more aware of this conversation between the people of Pittsburgh (through Pittsburghers for Public Transport) and Transit provides (Port Authority and government). It is inspiring to see that amount of not only interest but activism by the Pittsburghers to address this need. A bit resource for me so far has been reviewing the recent activity of the Pittsburghers for Public Transport (PPT) website. It have given me an inside look into what issues they are currently faced, and what local news has to report on these events.

A couple of categorization methods have begun to arise:

• timeline of important events
• important figures in this conversation
• statistics/tid-bits
• solutions proposed by PPT

9/9 Researching and Clarifying Public Transportation in PGH

As we continue to dive into the problems of the Public Transport system, our initial pass at research leans toward infrastructural, economic and social issues. Some problems that have continually risen to the fore-front is the break-down of communication between the struggles of the under-serviced riders and the stakeholders in charge of the transit system, as well as the budget of Port Authority themselves.

Deep Ecology by Fritjof Capra Response

The difference between looking at something in a “holistic” or “ecological” way strikes a contrast between seeing something as “parts in a whole”, and the “whole embedded in a system”. These two ways of viewing an actor in a system may be helpful in moving forward with actors in the system of pubic transportation in Pittsburgh. On a whole the deep ecology concept that Fritjof Capra describes in his writing, is personally most related to a shift of worldview. This shift is described to be an ‘ecocentric’ one, that prioritizes nonhuman life. It is easy to see why this would be so difficult for us as humans, as we are intrinsically self-absorbed and self-serving. Capra contends that a realization of our unique place in this ecological system surrounding us would produce in us an involuntary response to care for it as we do ourselves- to protect life. I tend to lean towards a doubt that this is achievable for us as humans, due to our immense lack of intrinsic fore-sight. (Not that his should discourage us from the pursuit).

9/16 Public Transportation Stakeholders Map and Empathy Exercises

Community by Peter Block

I appreciate that Block begins by laying the foundation of the concept he is discussing: Community, described as “the experience of belonging”.

First and foremost, to belong is to be related to and a part of something. It is membership, the experience of being at home in the broadest sense of the phrase. (Block, xii)

I reflect on the “community” I experience in my own life:

• My family
• Pittsburgh
• Carnegie Mellon University
• Senior Design majors
• Church and the body of Christians

The list could go on to many more examples, yet it is surprising the Block would define this age as the age of isolation. One reason he provides is that “there are too many people in our communities whose gifts remain on the margin” (Block, 2). This is particularly interesting because it articulates a belief I hold as well, that in giving of yourself in time and effort you sense of belonging increases. Though we have discussed it a number of times, the explanation of the importance of imaging the futures of our communities in the transformation of them was described in a way that I felt truly convinced of. How can we create a transformed future if we can make no distinguishment from the past?

Future Workshops by Robert Jungk

Jungk describes a type of ‘open planning’ pursued at his time, where architects and designers would publish their plans and host forums, etc to get feedback, however “for the victims it is always too late”. By this Jungk explains those that would possibly be stakeholders in decisions that would alter the future for many years to come, do not have a voice in shaping those futures. Which is reminiscent of the recent events of Pittsburghers facing walls in voicing their concerns about Public transportation. This has a crippling affect to whatever plan, product, or strategy eventually put in place, because it rarely meets the needs of the people who will be directly affected.

9/18 Looking to the Future(s)

The lecture on Monday was a helpful reminder of the futures concepts we learned in the design elective taught by Peter Scupelli. The acknowledgment of how we often mis-conceivingly regard the future as a set-in-stone scenario out there, does not help us start to predict what that could be > “futures”. As an exercise producing Haiku’s about the year 2050 was very telling of hte collective future we imagine. The two I wrote were:

Different faces, more converging ideas, are we still unique?

Too busy to rest, juggling expectations, did I miss the point?

My Haikus are in the form of a question because as I regard it with more curiosity. The first deals with the globalization that comes with technology and the loss of appreciation for culture. The second addresses the current state of our work culture and how expectations of the collective for lifestyle is becoming more unreasonable for the sustainability for time spent resting and investing in family.

9/20 Futures Reflections

A dive into the study of futures and how the designer’s role in future-thinking was a helpful refresher. Our discussions brought to mind the many type of frameworks and approaches to the study of futures that we explored in Peter Scupelli’s class. The scenario framework presented by Borjeson, Scenario Types and Techniques, was particularly an interesting example of one of these frameworks. If time allowed, I would have liked to discuss how it is argued to help organize futures scenarios uniquely to other methods we have studied. In investigating this framework, I began to reflect on the role “frameworks” play in the work of a designer. The power in the framework is the articulation of the method of organization so that thoughts and ideas can surface through association. Therefore, in questioning the sub-sub categories of Borjeson’s framework, I was prompted to consider how its articulation may surface revelations about the future scenarios we are considering- in this case Public transportation.

Moving forward, after our exercise of the STEEP framework, It would be interesting to see where some of these other ones would lead us in terms of brainstorming. I felt that in addition to the four futures archetypes and STEEP, additional guidance and promptings would have been helpful to narrow the communication of this 2050 scenario.

9/23 Collapse Scenario of 2050

Politics

The Political climate of 2050 in Pittsburgh is tense under the pressures of financial burdens facing the city, growing unrest in underserved areas of the city, and internal strife. The withdraw of Port Authority as a regulated public transportation provider left a bunch of private businesses competing for the customers left in its wake. These transportation companies gained power and resources from the high demand on their services. In turn local politicians sponsored by these companies began to form tight, but dangerous alliances with these private businesses. It manifests itself in unfair biases in the law/regulation making and distribution of resources around the city. Meanwhile the underserved and less desirable ares of Pittsburgh quickly became transportation deserts, which was followed by defunding of pubic resources and mass migration. Without tax payers, the government undergoes even more stress. The decrease in the population begins to take its toll of the participation of valuable community voices and stakeholders that lobby with the politicians for rights and resources of Pittsburghers. The voices that become clearest are those that have the opportunity to participate in the conversation with their access to the meetings, information, transportation and influence. This group of people are primarily outsiders that moved to Pittsburgh and have glamorous tech job, big wallets, and lots of resources. Desperation deepens for communities that have had mass layoffs due to transportation deserts. The government is unable to contain the rioting, vandalism and crime that breaks out between underserved communities against these pockets of wealth in Pittsburgh. Because tax income has decreased so dramatically, both communities suffer from safety compromises from law enforcement. Meanwhile, the segregation caused by this increasing wealth gap has created strong class and race tensions. Those that have power are more and more often white, privileged, and not local to the city. Rather than combing efforts to rectify the increasing decline of the city, left wing and right wing politicians argue about different approaches to fix the problem. This leads to disjointed “solutions”, implemented without the necessary steps to ensure success. A unified approach to the many crumbling issues Pittsburgh faces is becoming more and more impossible with the current politicians in place.

9/28 Three Horizons of the Ideal Future

3 horizon exercise

With our ideal future at hand, the three horizons exercise began to introduce a time element to this future scenario. In pros it is difficult to represent a timeline of events that proceeded this scenario, so I felt that this process was an important step in validating the thought process. The 2nd horizon was particularly interesting to imagine, because the associated questions prompt me to imagine the side effects, conflicts and tensions that need to be addressed before this can become a reality. The framework also served as a type of skeleton to the events leading to this imagined future scenario. I can see this being helpful in the future as a means to diverge my thinking.

9/30 Timeline to the Future

With the

Our imagined timeline of the ideal future’s history

The process of filling in the blanks of our “future scenario’s history”, has been one of my favorite exercises thus far. I expected that I would enjoy creating the ideal future more, but imagining how we as a society, and a country, could actually get to this idea future scenario has been even more intriguing. Porritt’s book, The World We Made, was particularly helpful because it was as if I were reading a journal/blog of somehow who had actually experienced this transformation. This shifted my perspective to see these events in a more personal way, which stimulated my imagination more. It also made the tensions and issues we are facing now more real to me- for example climate change and growing natural disasters. If we want to see this ideal future come to be, we have to be able to imagine the path to that future.

I appreciated the depth of research in the excerpts of Porritt’s book that supported the realistic vision of his future. In the epilogue of the book, I identify with Porritt’s closing comments about the general lack of optimism and techno-centric expectations of the future. Spurred on by most media we consume today, I agree that the general person holds these perspectives of the future. Without more literature, media, and education around articulating the future we desire, how can we move towards it?

As we populated the timeline with events to the future of 2050, artifacts that represent these events support the imagination of this future. Below is an example of one such advertisement that the newly prevalent ‘Hyperloop’ company, Public Loop (or PubLoop for short), connects both coasts with its high-speed transit.

10/4 Needs and Satisfiers

As an exercise in understanding Max Neef’s Needs and Satisfiers, I chose Netflix and compared it to an amphitheater as two ways we satisfy similiar needs. An amphitheater is an example of a synergistic satisfier in how it bring together people to participate, understand, share affection, and engage idleness. I see this as an extrapolation of how tribes would enjoy meals around a fire, or small towns would gather in the square. It is important to have a platform to experience many forms of entertainment in a physical location that forces engagement. Whereas Netflix is a service that exists for mostly individual engagement and could be best explained as a Psuedo-Satisfier.

Pseudo Satisfier and Synergetic Satisfiers

10/8 Synergistic Interventions

With synergetic satisfiers in mind we pursued solutioning around interventions that would get us to the ideal 2050 scenario we articuated earlier in the course. Our solutions focused mainly on transportation, but also included important steps in our 3 Horizons that ould provide steps towards this ideal future. The six recorded above are:

• Life Day: A government sanctioned National Holiday, off of work, that celebrates the environment, as well as reflects back on natural disasters that have affected the US and the lives taken. Activities would include workshops and community demonstrations of environmental awareness created by members of the community itself.
• Fuel-Vehicle Restrictions: Legislation that passes to limit the amount of fuel-running vehicles on the road, for example, no driving on a certain day of the week. Considerations are made for those in an economic situation dependent of this transport.
• Shared Community Vehicles: A new service that provides a set amount of autonomous vehicles for every community that service members as they require transportation. When the vehicles are in low demand, like at night, they support lower income areas with transportation.
• “Life” Focused Education: Incorporation of environment awareness in every subject taught in the public curriculum, which is also provided for free on a web based platform to support families that may be misplaced from their homes/schools
• Relocation Strategists: A board formed under FEMA that provide strategies to support mass-migrations off the American coasts, utilizing private companies to support the move with free transportation and relocation services.
• Community Center Kit: A group of social inovationists that bring a kit to communities to stimulate conversation around forming community centers, particularly where the shared vehicle hubs are, that will encourage participation, shared-services, and affection towards diverse/new community members.

As we did this exercise we felt that the framework was lacking in that it considered only human needs and satisfiers, without identifying the responce that the earth/environment might have to the satisfying of those needs. So the team dedicated a large amount of time to representing this “Impact of the Intervention of the Earth and Individual’s Experience”.

My initial sketches (below) tries to express how in satisfying one need, the consequences threaten to corrupt other satisfiers of future needs- for example satisfying the need of participation with an iphone, may threaten my chance of satisfying subsistence of myself or my children in the future. Furthermore, the more needs we satisfy in a non-sustainable way, the more difficult it is the satisfy these needs.

The next iteration of sketches (below)we pursued was how to use the mass of needs satisfied by the intervention to reflect how synergistic it was. However, in this visualization, the metric of “how satisfying” it was, was unclear and non-exact. This method also did not provide a clear way to surface the impact on the earth through the intervention. One frustration we continually faced was incorporating this framework of needs that was obviously created for the needs of humans to make sense in the context of the earth. Even in personifying the earth, we felt that assuming how its needs were met were also inexact.

We then decided to break up the needs and look at each individually over time. Using time as the indicator of how much or how little we would expereince the impact of the intervention was a good way to frame both the individual and the earth’s needs.

In this diagram you can see that in the example of the Fuel-Vehicle Restriction Intervention, the individual may have a negative experience of the intervention’s impact on their freedom, however, this will eventually lessen as they restriction is eclipsed by new tech to overcome the inconvenience. In contrast, the earth, from the beginning of the restriction, will begin to experience a positive impact by the lessening of carbon emissions. This diagram goes one step further in identifying how these interventions may be experienced by a second generation who is already enjoying the positive impact the intervention has on the earth- reenforcing out finiteness. This framework still has a ways to go, but it helped our team begin to understand the impact out interventions, and the satisfaction of our needs will have on the environment.

10/10 Service Design Quick Dive

10/12 Speculative Transportation Interventions

The interventions that our group brainstormed reflect a good sampling of the solutions and events that must be realized in the 2nd horizon in order to reach our ideal future. On a whole, the interventions are not ‘flying on the same level’. One idea I would like to pursue around these interventions would be to use the lifestyles diagram that Terry introduced to us earlier in order to organize the interventions. Another suggestion we may pursue is categorizing the STEEP qualities in each intervention to ensure we left no holes. From the ideated interventions, our group chose to present the Fuel Vehicle Restriction Intervention. This is one of the most critical in the 2nd Horizon to begin transitioning the population of Pittsburgh to the ideal future imagined.

• Fuel-Vehicle Restrictions: Legislation that passes to limit the amount of fuel-running vehicles on the road, for example, no driving on a certain day of the week. Considerations are made for those in an economic situation dependent of this transport.

We extended this idea by identifying qualities of similiar programs: for example, in Beijing China, to deal with pollution control and traffic, a regulation in in place that only allows license plates with either an odd or even number to drive on a certain day. Furthermore, we sketched out an additional service that may be a result of implementing this regulation: Car Pooling Service. Though this already exists today, it would have to become much more robust to take on the needs of half of the drivers who are not allowed to drive. This service would match community members with opposite license numbers to be car pooling buddies. If the match is comfortable they would be ‘favorites’, if not they would continue hopping. The exploration of this additional service felt necessary to us, in order to reflect our considerations of the consequences of our proposed interventions.

Fuel Vehicle Restrictions, Car Pooling Service

In addition to using this framework to express our interventions we wanted to extend it by diagraming the impact of the earth’s vs. the individual’s experience. As mentioned above, we pursued this diagram that capture how we might experience our needs being inhibited or satisfied, and how the earth experiences the needs of those needs being inhibited or satisfied. Our close-to-final draft of this diagram (below), maps out each of these needs and with the earth’s and the individual’s experience super imposed on one-another.

10/16

Intervention #1 — Shuttle Loop:

The Shuttle Loop is a fleet of vans that service communities to accommodate the rush hour times of members. These shuttles work a lot like the corporate transit systems such as Google that, or even a school bus, that picks up community members at shared point in the neighborhood, and drop them at their closest work location. This way the need for personal vehicles, the weight of traffic, and the environmental burden is lifted from Pittsburgh. Mid-day and on the weekends the shuttles have a varied schedule that suits the needs of other non-working community members, such as children, the elderly. A handful of these schedules could be modified on-demand by the potentials riders that day.

Intervention #2 — Water Taxi Service:

The Water Taxi Service revolved around how we can start getting people to both enjoy the city of pittsburgh from a new vantage point and be able to move around the city quicker if they live on route with a river. This would be both a hub for local business and culture to flourish as well as a way to cut down on evening/morning traffic.

Alex Palatucci’s scenario

Treat’s Water Taxi Map

Lena’s Water Taxi Hub

10/17 Fish

This studio session was another reminder that we are operating as tiny cogs in the midst of countless systems encompassing us. One of which is the system that delivers us the seafood we enjoy regularly. I was shocked to understand what a precarious state the fish industry is. It made me both thankful for people like Sheryl, who have taken on this issue to contend with. I was very engaged with hearing about her progress and how she attacks her observations in the field with frameworks. Especially the Complexity x Scale 2x2 evaluation of interventions. I experienced something similiar in my experience at Fjord, and I felt that it was really useful, whe nthe context of hte ideaswere framed right.

One hesitation I had with the exercise of ideating around the information presented to us, however, is I felt that the context presented us did not match the framework directed for us. If we were ideating for the fishing community of this island in Indonesia, all solutions would fall in quadrant 2 and 3, un the lower scale. One of the main take aways form Sheryl’s talk was that the fishing community has very specific culture and customs that are unique to the area and the people. Therefore it felt counter intuitive to apply the cultural observations from one community and extrapolate those to interventions on a larger scale. When I brought this question up to Sheryl, she responded that it would be “interesting what we come up with that could apply to a larger scale”. Unfortunately, I believe that would only be interesting to her, because we do not have enough context to understand if we have ideating and intervention that would actually be effective (because of lack of information). I don’t expect to have been given more information or anything in that time frame- but that the framework would have been scaled to the context of information provided to produce more narrowed and grasp-able fruits of the activity.

10/23 Narrowing the Points of Intervention

Social Innovation Intervention:

Service Intervention:

10/25

Personal goals going into this project:

Straddle the realistic and speculative options to intervene in the issue of transportation and food, by specifically meeting the needs of the underserved in Pittsburgh’s ‘transportation and food deserts’

Goals for the Intervention:

• Distribute/share resources in the community (JH)
• Strengthening the neighborhoods/communities in Pittsburgh (JH)
• Connect people to culture and resources (JH)

Problems that Lead to Interventions:

• Poor funding of Port Authority leads to issues in accessibility of underserved and distant neighborhoods, creating ‘transportation deserts’
• “Efficiency” is valued over accessibility for the at risk community of pittsburghers
• Resources (food/transportation access) are not readily allocated to underserved neighborhoods
• Pittsburgh topography and weather leads to tough conditions for people to access food conveniently and efficiently
• Bulky, heavy, yet healthy fruits and vegetables cause many people who use buses as their primary transport to not buy those items, and instead buy processed foods with less nutritional value
• Failing and underfunded infrastructure poses a threat to public transportation systems (buses on breaking bridges)
• Infrastructure and geography result in segregated neighborhoods in Pittsburgh
• Delocalization of food resources in neighborhood communities to less accessible suburban superstores; decline of local urban grocery stores.

List Research Methods:

• Talk to Pittsburghers for public transit (set up a meeting)
• Research similar precedents for food + transportation, understand where successes/failures have been

List Research Questions: what do you want to learn? What impact do you want to make?

• Which communities in Pittsburgh are the most at-risk in terms of both transportation and food?
• How is food transported between farms, grocery stores, and the consumer? Can we circumvent that? E.g. pooling together resources
• What have local businesses done to address the lack of local food and transportation (close, carry groceries, etc)?
• What are users expectations and needs of their public transportation (recreation/work/errands/school)?
• What does public transportation do to address the needs of food travel for both users and

Design Opportunities: What might you achieve/what’s the shift in power?

• Empower people to feed themselves/provide resources for themselves and the community
• Empower food pantries to expand their service or create partnerships that would help to get healthier food on their shelves

11/1 Refining our Plan

During our Wednesday’s class-time we took a stab at clarifying the question (or sisynct learning take-away) we aim to cover in our project this part of the semester. Overall we were feeling trapped in the initial ideas of interventions we had talked about in the and of the first half of the semester. This is what prompted us to reach out to pertinent stakeholders and find out the challenges they have and the needs that are not being met. As we discussed the type of questions we may start to zero in on, we came up with this proposal:

In two phases we ask the quesiton:

Who do the main providers of public transportation in Pittsburgh aim to serve, what challenges do they face in accomplishing their goal, and what are their rider’s primary needs?

To answer this question we have set up several interviews with stake holders from services like AgeWell, Traveler’s Aid, Pittsburghers for Public Transit etc. Yet we still felt that we would not get closer to crafting a meaningful narrative of the answers to these questions across stake holders if we did not supplement our questions with an activity that interviewees could respond to. The goal of this activity would be to test some of our initial intervention ideas with someone who is deeply familiar with their rider’s needs, etc.

Though this may not be the most polished prompt, due to the upcoming interviews we are forced to make fast and test early. Our approach is to put one of our interventions in story-board form and present it at the end of an interview as a hypothetical extension to the service we are interviewing about. Through this story board we hope to take away what are the riders needs, what are the services’ limitations, and what are the opportunity spaces. Another function of this type of interviewing is to start to weave in some of the food related issues that we wanted to address into the services.

Intervention Storyboard Options (for the Age Well Interview):

A shuttle scheduled to do grocery store runs once a day, every day of the week, and to different grocery stores

• Mary is too old to drive her personal vehicle anymore, and it has been more difficult for her children to make sure her groceries are stocked. Mary also misses picking out her own groceries and whats the chance to get out of the house more.
• She hears about the Age Well grocery shuttle when she is at the JCC for her gym class and decided to talk to them about the program.
• She finds out that she can call to be on the shuttle route to the grocery store any day of the week and it will pick her up right at her house.
• Mary calls and signs up for the Wednesday Gorcery Shuttle because it goes to Whole Foods, her favorite grocery store
• Wednesday morning the shuttle calls to confirm that it will be picking her up on that day, and when the shuttle comes Mary gets on and finds several of her neighbors already on the shuttle
• Inside it is situated so she can easily talk and get to know the other people on the shuttle, she even meets a mom and her two young daughters on the shuttle
• When they get to the store, the bus driver reminds them how much time they have to shop, and they go get groceries.
• After they are done shopping, the volunteer helps load all the groceries onto the shuttle and they are dropped off at their homes and the groceries is carried into their home.

—

A shuttle scheduled once a month to bring neighbors in the community to visit local farms and help pick in-season veggies/fruits.

• Jeff lives alone in an assisted living facility, and one day when he is in the JCC he hears about the shuttle that goes to local farms. Remembering the days when he would go to pick-your-own farms, Jeff is interested in trying it out
• Jeff calls and signs up to go, and when its time, the shuttle come and picks him up at his house.
• Inside it is situated so he can easily talk and get to know the other people on the shuttle, he even meets a mom and her two young daughters on the shuttle
• When they get to the farm they are told that they can have whatever they pick, and if they pick more than 2 baskets it will be donated
• After a full afternoon of picking veggies Jeff is dropped back at home, and the extra produce that they picked was delivered to a local food drive

11/6 Defining the Process

Revised (digital) process

In order to meet our goals of Phase 1…

Goals :
provide visibility into various transportation/service providers goals, needs and challenges

Deliverables:
1. Stakeholder interviews
2. A framework to visualize the outcomes of our interviews
3. Opportunity areas in transportation and food in PGH

We discussed ow we could form a framework that will help us evaluate our interviews on a consistent basis so that drawing connections between the two would be more clear. We decided on a 4 step process to evaluate our interviews: challenges related to STEEP, stakeholder relations, future orientation, and opportunity areas.

11/8 Drawing Conclusions

Once we took the interviews of Ellen at AgeWell and Aaron of tiramisu app, we used the framework we formed to take down notes from the interview. This way both interviews are transcribed in a similiar way, so that it is more apparent the areas a of challenge, the stakeholder opportunities and the possible futures. Some challenge areas that jumped out to us in discussion are:

• Social: Systematic discrimination against lower income areas in need of resources, and there is a discrepancy in the transportation tolerance of different areas
• Tech: We have to orient solutions around the “lowest common denominator” of tech that will reach both lower income and elderly residents.
• Economics: Those in most need of transportation are captive to the public transportation (don’t have the means for other transit)
• Environmental: The winters in Pittsburgh exasperate the challenges of those in need of the transit

Speed Dating Pitch

for our presentation we prefaced our intervention idea with the two areas we felt our interviews lead us to. The first is changing the infrastructure or physical buses themselves, and the second was raising awareness and sharing information. We ultimately decided to go with the second option because of the feedback from our interviews. Aaron Steinfeld, a robotics professor researching accessibility on public transit, made the point that most buses stay on the road for 20–30 years so trying to change physical aspects would be a slow process. There is also this ideal world in which all these people who we interviewed would be able to have easy access to each other’s thoughts; a divide plagued by the difference between academic and organizational settings.

We want to incite a mindset change that affects not just the local policy makers and people living in food insecure areas, but all citizens of Pittsburgh. By creating visuals that display previously not accessible information about the demographics that shop at the individual grocery store, we hope to give people the resources they need to move forward. This might be a location where 412 Food Rescue that is active or the location of a town hall meeting PPT is hosting, it could even be a statistic that sticks in a shoppers mind that is then recalled when the PGH transit system is in the news.

The inquiry we are making is:

How will visualizing and collecting data on grocery journeys bring awareness to Pittsburghers’ access to transportation and food?

and then…

How can we leverage the data we collect and visualize it in a way that will make impacts on accessibility of transportation in pittsburgh?

My job was to visualize how this may be undertaken in the viewpoint of a shopper who has participated in reporting their trip to the grocery store. The left image imagines personalized fliers or email reports giving participants and idea about how they are in relation to the whole and how they could help those who have a harder time. The right is a map generated by the information provided that may be in a grocery store.

Researching Data Visualizations

Through feedback from our speed dating exercise, and also from Stuart, we decided to scale our intervention to the visualization piece- and not the collection piece. This decision was made because the information being collected is largely known about food deserts and can be inferred by layering public transportation maps. Now we seek to create a robust map tool that visualizes the transportation and food piece of Pittsurgh’s food insecurity issue.

This tool aims to bring awareness to the food insecurity and transportation issue Pittsburgh faces, as well as provide resources for all users. In order to do this we identified different user stories of how one may approach this tool and what type of functionality the map would have to have.

The first user story I did was that of a Pittsburgher living in a food insecure areas using this map tool. Their goal being to find more resources to get food and find better routes to go shopping.

The second user story focuses on a potential volunteer for one of the many services we interviewed such as Agewell and 412 Food. Their goal would be to gain awareness into the food deserts and transportation issues.

____

I also researched what other maps of food deserts are out there and came upon a couple different ones…

Food Desserts and Diversity Map
This map shows food deserts in relation to the percentage of diversity and gives summaries of data.

FeedAmerica
Provides a lot of good data but cannot be easily understood and shows little implication on the personal level.

2015 Food Access map
USDA food map shows a lot of particular data, but again, shows little implication on the personal level.

You are Here
Has very high level data about Food deserts.