The trajectory of symbiotic relationships and networks of solutions- Faryal Khalid- Team 1

** This is my first blog post. I somehow hit save and not publish which I just realized today. Sorry!**

Picking a topic of interest was not complicated for me since there were so many areas covered in the 100 days, 100 policy document. Initially I was interested in the more of the tech solutions since I felt I had more experience in that but the topic of immigrants and historic preservation was also pulling me because of its rich qualitative scope. In addition they are fields with very dense policy situations and I wanted to challenge myself on that account. When choosing groups I decided to go with the latter- the more challenging course. Our group had three big buckets that we looked into- blight, historic preservation and lastly, immigrants. Initially I was skeptic that these are very big buckets removed from one another but the lecture on integrative design combining two different fields and having them engage in a symbiotic relationship with one another inspired our team to creatively think about where the overlaps among these fields might occur. The problem matrix was one of the first exercises we did and really helped us in seeing some of those overlaps more concretely. To decide on a course moving forward we decided to split our project un 3 phases- exploratory where we gather information, generative where we create co-design experiences to gain insights and evaluative where we talk about fine tuning the implementation of a solution and that it will entail. We kicked off our research phase by assigning each bucket to one of the team members and looked at not only direct co-relations but also analogous findings and success stories. Through our research we have been able to identify the overall big picture concerns in each domain. Historic preservation is a costly matter and has a very slow return on investment since the building needing historic preservation are usually found in blighted neighborhoods. This made us question what if historic preservation and blight engage in that symbiotic relationship and cure one another? Additionally how we might reduce the daunting price associated with historic preservation if we got the neighborhood involved in construction and restoration like Habitat for Humanity does? Moreover, if people are on these construction sites they’re also learning valuable employable skills and if they are learning them may be it is the immigrants who could really benefit from something like this when they’re trying to look for jobs. Our research has shown that Pittsburgh city wants to attract more blue collar workers and this could also feed into that demand.

This is linked solution is what we want to pursue moving forward and have identified experts such as Habitat for Humanity specializing in building houses for the needy, Vibrant Pittsburgh specializing in immigrant affairs and PHLF specializing in historic preservation, that would be able to shed some more light into the individual workings of each of these through which we’ll be able to see if this network we have proposed even makes sense or not. This project is definitely panning out to be very exciting and I’m really looking forward to how the expert advice shapes our direction further.

Merging Ideas for Positive Change

by Ronald Chang

It’s been a month into our Energy Benchmarking project and we are honing in on a project that our group can meaningfully contribute to the effort of reducing energy usage in Pittsburgh without repeating work that has already been done by experts in this field. Innovation in this field is particularly tricky given the amount of people in this field who are passionate about making changes and are very focused on this issue and have approached it in many different ways. Nearly every idea we wanted to pursue, it seemed that they have already been thought of and are either a) in to process of implementing them in the near future, or b) tossed out because of infeasibility. Innovating here, then, would be expediting the process that is already planned down the line or revitalizing an idea that was tossed out before with newer technology that allowed for something that wasn’t possible before. Perhaps by leveraging the very different talents in our own team, we could also something that people already in the industry are lacking, i.e. design, software development, human-computer interaction.As a group, we’ve leaned towards aiding the larger effort of just collecting energy information. From there, people could think of various different ways to compel, incentivize, or mandate energy reduction. But even this first step is very challenging–apathy, costs, process complexity, privacy concerns, and awareness are the largest inhibiting factors. From a design perspective, the user experience of reporting data is complex and beyond the effort that most building owners are willing to expend. From a policy perspective, many building owners are concerned about privacy and wary of government mandates to disclose information. Finally, markets tell us that investments to reduce energy consumption are cost-prohibitive and without the data to show that the investments are worthwhile or that they are behind other similar buildings, it won’t happen. A classic Catch-22.Our meetings, class discussions, and readings helped our group develop many interesting ideas and allowed us to narrow our scope down to a few distinct project ideas (that have evolved after every meeting):

• Michael Schiller discussed reframing the discussion to air quality and getting business owners to invest in retrofitting their buildings to improve the health of tenants. This was also discussed in our discussion with Anthony Rowe regarding the use of sensors to monitor air quality along with other environmental data. In our visit to the CIC, they had also developed the Speck, a cheap way and portable way to monitor the amounts of particles in the air using an infrared sensor. We considered developing a DIY kit for businesses to easily monitor their energy usage and environmental factors that might incentivize them to make changes in energy usage.
• Our meeting with CMU School of Architecture’s Vivian Loftness introduced to us the existence of energy disclosure laws that have been enacted in various cities around the U.S., including New York, Seattle, San Francisco, D.C., and Austin. Searching around the internet, it turns out the possibility of such laws in Pittsburgh has been discussed in this article written by Green Building Alliance vice president Aurora Sharrard: http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/print-edition/2013/05/31/debating-merits-of-energy-disclosure.html?page=all. It seems privacy, building age, lack of commercial property data, and aversity to mandates are the major factors against energy disclosure laws in Pittsburgh. Perhaps voluntary disclosure is the only way to go?
• The discussion about Pittsburgh open data initiatives and Green Building Alliance really demonstrated the importance of data and how even collecting itself is a major step forward. This motivated us to think of ways we could get people to disclose their energy usages, which led to discussions of privacy, user experience, and public awareness. From there, we also toyed around with the idea of using design ethnography to get an idea of the major concerns of building owners and what motivates them to take action. We considered developing a way for utility companies to interface directly with organizations like the Green Building Alliance and government agencies collecting energy data to make the process as painless as possible.
• Improving Portfolio Manager to make it more intuitive and easy to use would be something that our entire group could participate in and produce a deliverable within the next few months. It seems like a real problem and fixing it would reduce the challenges of complexity while improving awareness.
• More recently, concluding our discussions with Isaac Smith from the Green Building Alliance, we’ve considered focusing on available incentive programs and simplifying the process to qualify for property owners. By working with utilities, we think we could make a platform that would summarize all the benefits that propety owners could take advantage of, such as Act 129, to reduce costs while also opting to disclose energy usage. It seems like this is a win-win-win for utility companies, property owners, and the government, since utility companies are required to reduce energy consumption by 1%, property owners can reduce costs, and the Pittsburgh government is one step closer to their 2030 goals.

A problem well defined is a problem half solved… but how?- Faryal Khalid- Team 1

In this phase we have focused heavily on conducting expert interviews. We spoke to Habitat for Humanity, PHLF and other experts in the field since we wanted to find a bridge between historic preservation and teaching employable skills to immigrants. While on paper the link seemed very clear to us since both overlapped in the area construction, the reality was much different. We quickly realized that both by themselves were such rich problems individually that combining them might not be the best idea. As Tim pointed out in class you must go for the low hanging fruit first and then aim for the one up top. A major break through for our group was when we realized that we need to make our problem space more specific if we are going to arrive at some meaningful insights and possible solutions by the end of this class. A problem well defined is a problem half solved. As a group we felt that we wanted to explore possible solutions for the problems immigrants face in job placement but the solution might not necessarily address the demands of historic preservation.

Policy making and implementation is still a new world to me and I still feel a little intimidated when approaching the policies that concern immigrants in the US. When talking to experts from the field I also felt that the people we spoke to were not very keen on discussing policies related to their field. After we decided our new direction we hit a lag since we just didn’t know where to start looking for policies. Since then we have started slowly researching some more and the information found there further pointed out that the topic of immigrants too was still very broad. I find it very interesting that design and policy are intertwined in more ways than meets the eye and this discovering these hidden nuggets of overlap are making my understanding of how policy impacts change more concrete. In design we do a ‘needs and frames’ exercise to see if a target audience we’re looking at has mostly analogous needs or not. (This needs and frames exercise can also be used to create a point of view statement, or solution brainstorming prompts, both of which might be design tools that we can use in this class). If the needs are not analogous then the scope needs to be narrowed down even further. Similarly if the policies encountered by a group are not similar then a similar exercise must be repeated because aiming to change any one policy in itself if a long undertaking and trying to change numerous policies at once is not the way to go about bringing change as is also mentioned in the reading from earlier this semester, ‘Why Good Projects Fail’. There are many different kinds of immigrants and the policy constructs each face are very different. Therefore, we’re now refining that focus even further and want to start focusing on refugees since Pittsburgh has a large Burmese refugee population.

With this new focus the iterative loop of design continues and we’re back into research mode. This worries me a bit since we don’t have that much time left in this semester and our group is really passionate about the topic but it has taken us a while to refine our focus and get through to the experts for interviews. However, a big part of the process of change is comfort with ambiguity and I’m still positive that the insights we discover will be meaningful to ideate on possible solutions of strategies.

Lastly, somewhat removed from our project but my reflection on this process as a whole- since that start of this class I have been struggling with the concept of ‘markets’ since I couldn’t understand what it essentially meant at its core and how it related to the topics we were addressing. I have been in the field of design for many years now but I’ve always worked in either a consultancy or business setting and the business model- how is an idea going to make money was always critical. I took this class because I am very unfamiliar with how the non-profit world works and I had assumed that there is no end money goal here. What is the overarching goal that one must strive for, then? Since joining this class I have gained quite some clarity on this topic and I realize I was very naïve in thiking that. The talk by Mark Schiller, CEO of Green Building Alliance, was very informative in this regard since he had come from a business background but had successfully channeled his knowledge for humanitarian impact. From his talk I learnt that just because a project is meant for wide spread humanitarian impact does not mean that money should not be a consideration. Money is a good incentive for stakeholders to get involved and overall an idea or solution proposed needs to be sellable. As a group we haven’t really tackled where the money for our project would come and I think that is a question to be posed at a later stage when we might be prioritizing an array of solutions for the problem space.

Overall, I really am enjoying how this class is structured. My favorite part is the guest speakers that come in. However, I do wish that we could be given some frameworks on how to break down policy analysis in our problem space just as we’re given frameworks for design thinking.

Blog #2: Diya Deb – Peer Pressure : After School “Not Cool”

The after school program has many stakeholders. From a day to day level like the children, the parents, the after school teachers, the after school workers, the school building, the after school volunteers and even to an extent even the school bus drivers or whoever is involved in their transportation. And from a policy level we have the institutions like the school, the after school care, the public school system, port authority bus transportation system, donators,  and the federal government for the funding.

A recent insight we got from one of our interviews with an after school director is that high school students do not find the concept of after school to be “cool”, a notion that is much influenced by their peers. This negative or “uncool” association can deter the students who might want to reach out for help to these after school centers. Additionally the parents of these students who already take part in after school care programs are not involved with the program which might deter the importance that the child gives to the program. Additionally our interviewee informed us that if they could they would prefer reaching out to the child when they are younger like in elementary school so that the child can be influenced early on to make a better informed future decisions based on awareness and not social pressure or peer pressure.

This intrigued us and we imagined what if we could rebrand and structure the after school care for high school students. Would this possibly influence their adoption rate for the service ?

Through our discussion and the design process during class hours we found that influencing the child early to make better decision would ideally be a more sustainable outcome. Since the child’s change in outlook would influence their peers and the progression of change could reach outwards to a much larger audience. The basis for the change in the child’s outlook could be caused by the child interacting with inspirational adults who may be outside their current social circle. Meeting such adults could influence the child. This exposure could lead to the child to develop a dream or goal towards which they can work towards, which in the end might become their motivation to better perform in school.

To further gain data we as a team are planning on implementing design methods such as  interviews with more stakeholders, meet the parent and child in low income neighborhood playgrounds and after school care program conventions and if we gain permission from these parents to shadow a child from school to their after school care.

Diya Deb (After School Care Pittsburgh)

Blog Post#2- Team 1- Sumiya Tarannum

Our project initially started out at intervening in 3 different disciplines; historic preservation, culture and attracting immigrants to impact the life of immigrants and help them better integrate as responsive citizens. We believed it is possible, we need to talk to stakeholders and identify the common intersecting area of this 3 territories. However, this changed as we kept moving in our journey to explore the opportunities that exists to solve immigrant’s problem. The key insights that were gained and the new creative tools that we intend to use will be narrated below.

We initially assumed that immigrants just need to be trained and have means to earn their livelihood and that is key to their well-being. Furthermore, we also assumed that they will be very happy to have skills in all the areas of preserving a historic building. The questions that we failed to ask are. Have we really investigated the problem enough, do we really know what immigrants want to define their happiness in the city of Pittsburgh. Is this what government really needs to get fixed at this point of time. Moreover, we were well aware there was a political mood to welcome immigrants to Pittsburgh but what were the underlying problems that local government was trying to fix isn’t known to us.

Well, conversations with few stakeholders helped us understand what to include in our scope and what not. Following were few insights; low-skilled workers left Pittsburgh after the steel mill crisis due to lack of opportunities for their skills. Now, even if we invite them back we need to have opportunities created and that was crucial. We still don’t have a comprehensive list of documented or registered immigrants and some efforts need to put into this area. Even the more, the data that already exists does not provide validity if the distribution of the immigrants type is relevant to current time. We have quite a few organizations who are extensively working on training these low-skilled workers and those organizations need to be investigated too.  Another useful insight was Universities have never intervened to help immigrants and this landscape could be explored.

After capturing these facts and insights, we felt that we need to capture the needs of immigrants and nobody talks about what they really want and everyone assumes what they require. I saw “Design Thinking” playing a critical role here where it can provide a creative way of capturing the needs of immigrants and support and complement the quantitative evidence we might have. The design thinking participatory workshops with immigrants might greatly help us to explore this area and provide more “convictional evidence”

We are currently in the process of using cultural probes like photographs and love/hate letter writing and using photo journals to capture their needs. We look forward to meet Vibrant Pittsburgh and help us out on this front to attract participants. On the policy interventions side, we are looking to propose our willingness to work on the welcome Pittsburgh initiative and try to understand what the Mayor’s office is looking to do. Also, we plan to do some existing law and facts analysis to create a baseline for our problem. We plan to use territory maps and build casual loop diagrams.

A Journey to Understand Design Thinking and Application – Beth Team 5

Design, especially as it relates to technology, is a new idea to me. I took art classes in high school and my mom is a seamstress, so I am no stranger to thinking about how things look, but never made the connection to design.

This was my senior year prom dress designed my myself and my mom.

Since I started this class I am realizing that I have done design and design thinking and I didn’t even know it. But I still feel overwhelmed by the idea of design sometimes. What if I do something wrong? On Tuesday (10/14), Professor Bruce Hanington, from the School of Design came to our class and talked about the design process. It was so valuable to me to have words and tools to put into actions. He showed us the process that was like this:

Now it started to make sense to me. But still, looking at some of the beautiful things that designers do, it seemed to me overwhelming to access them. But Bruce broke it down even more and gave some examples within each category. One that resonated with me was exploring through an ethnographic or cultural probe. I was shocked because I had actually done something like this before.

During my time at City Year, where I worked at an urban public high school, as a part of training we did an exercise to illustrate our individual experiences with literature and reading. The title of the project was a reading time line, which resulted in a drawing of our experience with books, reading and literature.

It comes out looking something like this (my actual one had a few more stick figure drawing but this can give you an idea).

This project was meant to show the cultural associations we all have with reading and how we each developed our own path through our individual experiences. This started a group discussion about how our students might feel and act towards reading. It was a cultural probe. Now, looking back I see the value of those drawings as a tool. I could develop something similar for the people we meet exploring Bank On and their experience with financial institutions.

Now that I was thinking design, I started seeing it everywhere. I recently started subscribing to WIRED magazine (it seems almost compulsory as a CMU student). It just happened that the October cover of WIRED was the design issue, but the title of the article is actually Wrong Theory: The Power of Imperfection.

This again made me uncomfortable because I don’t like the idea of doing things “wrong”. In the article, Scott Dadich explains from his perspective how the design cycle works. Surprisingly, it was very similar to what Bruce said in his lecture (maybe this is not so surprising to others, but making the connection was new to me). From Dadich’s perspective the design cycle goes something like this:

“In the early stages, practitioners dedicate themselves to inventing and improving the rules—how to craft the most pleasing chord progression, the perfectly proportioned building, the most precisely rendered amalgamation of rhyme and meter. Over time, those rules become laws, and artists and designers dedicate themselves to excelling within these agreed-upon parameters, creating work of unparalleled refinement and sophistication—the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, the Goldberg Variations. But once a certain maturity has been reached, someone comes along who decides to take a different route. Instead of trying to create an ever more polished and perfect artifact, this rebel actively seeks out imperfection—sticking a pole in the middle of his painting, intentionally adding grungy feedback to a guitar solo, deliberately photographing unpleasant subjects. Eventually some of these creative breakthroughs end up becoming the foundation of a new set of aesthetic rules, and the cycle begins again.” (WIRED, Oct 2014, page 129)

Both of these cycles give and important message. It’s ok to do things wrong and in Dadich’s Cycle that’s the point sometimes. From Bruce’s perspective, the evaluation process is a key component and doing things wrong can be good, even though it can be uncomfortable. Reading this article and hearing Bruce talk about the design process was really inspiring to me to get out there and explore the world outside my comfort zone. I also realized that design thinking is something I have actually done before, but didn’t realize it.

Possible Directions – Jay Liu, Team 2

There has been a lot of work done in the space of food insecurity. We were fortunate to locate and converse with many experts and key players, some of them who have been in this space for 30 years. They graciously shared their perspectives and expressed their thoughts on projects that could be done. In this post, I’ll go over just some that stood out to me.

Ken Regal from Just Harvest was among the experts interviewed, who has been in this space for 30 years, even before the term of “food desert” was coined. Interestingly, as we started out our conversation he mentioned that this was a perfect time for solutions to be researched and designed, which strongly resembled what Tim had taught us on how initiatives depend on having the circumstances be just right in order to really take off. Ken also expressed that there are many players who don’t understand each other’s roles, as if there were not enough coordination among the different players involved. He also mentioned a lack of awareness between the suppliers and the demand in the economy of healthy food. For example, convenience store owners may not be aware of any demand for healthy groceries. At the same time, those who may be looking for healthy groceries may not know where to find it.

Marisa Manheim of Grow Pittsburgh mentioned how there is significant barrier for people who want to reclaim land to use it for gardening. It appears that much of the data on whether a piece of land is already available for gardening, but just not in a consumable form (as seems to be typical of much government-sourced information, unfortunately). That adds to the already formidable barrier for people who want to start their own gardens, as people generally do not know where to begin.

Tierney Manning was very gracious in sharing her research with us on food desert classification. The article serves as an extensive primer on what has been considered within the scope of food deserts in Pittsburgh.

Blog Post 2 – Chris Taschner – Team 3

So far our team has met with a few people regarding green buildings and energy benchmarking. Out of these meetings we have gained a lot of insight into the problem space. So far we have been able to talk with a few people with different perspectives on the issue. These people have included Anthony Rowe who heads the Sensor Andrew project; Vivian Loftness in the architecture department; and Michael Schiller and Isaac Smith of the Green Building Alliance.

Anthony Rowe has a unique perspective on energy benchmarking. He designs and builds different types of sensors in part to provide data about building usage. One of the purposes of these sensors is to provide researchers with information about the efficiency of a building. Anthony has been working on the periphery of energy benchmarking for years and has provided Vivian Loftness with sensor technology for her work as well as studying the problem on his own.

Before talking with Anthony I had the presupposition that improving the efficiency of a building would lower the buildings energy bill enough to justify the improvement cost. Anthony let us know that this is incorrect. Energy is far too cheap and the improvements needed to make a building tend to be far too expensive for money to be a motivator for change. This insight significantly changes the way we approach this problem.

Another thing that Anthony told us was that the typical large building has a building manager whose full time job is to know everything they can about the building. These large buildings typically have a very good understanding of their energy consumption and will get little benefit from benchmarking. Moreover fitting these buildings with energy efficient improvements will be considerably costly. Smaller buildings, around 40000 square feet, are much better candidates for benchmarking. They don’t typically have a building manager, and the upgrades tend to be in the more manageable cost range.

Anthony pointed us toward Vivian Loftness as someone to talk to about this problem. Vivian researches green building in the architecture department here at CMU. She is the former head of the architecture department and has spent 30 years focused on environmental design and sustainability.

Talking with Vivian provided a lot of insights into this problem space. We found out that there is a debate within this space about the value of making energy consumers green verses the value of reducing the emissions at the energy source. Vivian informed us that the current thinking is that improving the emissions at the source might make more of an impact than reducing energy consumption at the sites. This is potentially a big shift in how we approach the problem. Vivian did down play the source verses site debate and emphasized the value of improvements at both the source and the site.

Another thing that Vivian told us was that a number of cities have recently enacted a lot of green building policies. These included disclosure laws in some cities. This gives our team a few good models to examine. Disclosure laws are controversial, but are also a solution to the problem of motivating people to upgrade their buildings.

Vivian also told us about the Green Button. The green button is an initiative led by energy.gov that provides easy access to energy usage information to utility customers. The green button is added to electric utilities’ websites and allows the customer to download a file containing their usage data that can than be used in energy management and conservation tools. This particular tool is not available in Pittsburgh, but would be an easy and cheap thing that utility customers could do to get an idea of their energy consumption.

This is the right time for this problem to be tackled in Pittsburgh. The technology is here to support energy benchmarking and green building. The city, county, and (soon) state governments support this initiative. Gathering the data about our energy consumption makes sense right now. Beyond gathering data, however, is not as feasible right now. The market is working against a real substantial push to curb energy consumption. Right now energy is too cheap and there isn’t another substantial motivator for change.

All of this information made our group rethink our direction. With these new insights we felt it might make more sense to go in a policy-focused direction rather than a product-focused direction. Determining the best direction has been a challenge. We used the problem definition sheet during the workshop class to help layout our problem area. We also have begun to look at the different cities that have moved in this direction before Pittsburgh. We have a very good understanding of the problem at this point; the challenge is to determine how to find the solution.

The design methods explored so far may yet reveal motivators for change. Surveys have been discussed, but who does it make sense to survey? Building owners are not motivated right now to spend a lot of money on upgrades to their buildings. A survey might give us insight into what might motivate them. Surveys, on the other hand, have the problem of not always being returned. Another option might be to find and interview four or five building managers. This might give us insight we haven’t yet gotten. The problem with this is the coordination and time it takes to complete.

Overall, the design methods discussed so far in class are providing us with insight and ideas for moving forward. In addition to what we’ve discussed in class we have found a number of resources for our particular problem. These include:

http://www.imt.org/

https://www.energystar.gov/buildings/facility-owners-and-managers/existing-buildings/use-portfolio-manager%29

http://energy.gov/data/green-button

https://www.go-gba.org/

Telling Stories About Millage Rates — Anna Malone, Team 2

A Failure

Yesterday, Ken and I tried to tour Hosanna House, a community center in Wilkinsburg. We went there per Kristin’s suggestion. So far, we have spent lots of time talking to experts on neighborhood revitalization and blight. These experts include CDC members, community building strategists, and gentrifiers. Many of these hard working people know a great deal about what’s happening in Wilkinsburg on the “front streets,” the streets that are the most accessible to visitors from outside the neighborhood or streets that are used as commercial spaces.

However, finding out what’s going on in the neighborhood outside of these areas has proved to be a more difficult task. What are the issues in Wilkinsburg, as residents perceive them? How are these issues being addressed or not addressed, and how can we become involved? Kristin suggested Hosanna House as a fruitful space to visit because information about activities, events, and projects occurring in the “back streets” of the neighborhood is generally advertised and shared there. Perhaps predictability, our first visit to Hosanna House did not go as expected. It didn’t really “go” at all. To enter the building, a membership pin must be entered in a keypad. We could not even get in the building. Therefore, we will need to set up a time to visit next week.

Active Research

Like Ken, I worry that our project does not have enough direction. At the moment, it feels like we are attacking the issue of blight from a variety of angles. These attacks often feel less than strategic, probably because the topic is so huge. We keep doing research, but we also want to start doing something that feels more tangible. Yet, to produce something concrete and physical so quickly requires a great deal of guesswork.

Can we continue our research by making things, physically placing them in the neighborhood, and seeing how people respond? Can iterative prototyping work in this context? Can iterative prototyping be viewed as rapid hypothesis testing, a process that begins blindly but leads us closer and closer to the “right” solution each time we throw the next iteration away? How do we move through this process without negatively impacting anyone, building up an unobtrusive presence in the neighborhood? When we are talking about problems associated with blight in a neighborhood that often seems inaccessible to us, what does participatory design look like? How do we make sure everyone is involved in that design process, not only artists and activists who have recently moved onto the front streets of the neighborhood?

Making Abandoned Buildings Interactive

This weekend, we are using Candy Chang’s portfolio as inspiration. As Robyn mentioned, Chang does a lot of work with abandoned buildings that encourages community members to interact with the structures. These interactions simultaneously bring new value to the buildings and reveal information about the desires, wishes, and needs of community members. Can we find out information about an abandoned building in Wilkinsburg by placing carefully designed stickers on said building? Can these stickers invite responses that help us begin to form a story about the building’s history and the building’s future? For examples, will stickers that leave spaces for responses to the prompts “This building used to be…” and “I wish this building was…” give us useful and inspiring insights about blight? We are going to put up some stickers on Saturday and see what kind of response we get, if any.

Storytelling

As our research has continued, we have begun thinking of storytelling as a design method or tool. For most activists, gentrification is a four-letter word. The five of us ended up working on this project because we wanted to find a way to deal with blight that did not involve gentrification. Only after we began working and Tim asked us “What’s good about gentrification?” did we realize that we had never actually defined or explored the phenomenon. There are positives to gentrification. Gentrification is economic revitalization of a devastated area, a theoretically positive process. Then why does it make us feel icky? During our discussion this week, I think we finally uncovered the element of gentrification that disturbs us, the aspect that we actually want to avoid. Often, when people attempt to revitalize a neighborhood, they forget to ask: “What did you use to be?” This question is incredibly important. A neighborhood that has fallen on hard times does not need to be erased. It does not need to “start over” or be returned to a blank slate. Before that neighborhood declined, it was something else, something that people remember or want to remember. What people are searching for in abandoned, falling down buildings is the secret of what that building used to be and what that building could be again. If we search for future solutions that do not account for the past, those solutions will be soulless. If we incorporate and take inspiration from the past as we design our solutions, those solutions will feel continuous, natural. They will be part of a living history. These are the solutions that people respond to, that community members can gather around.

We have decided to first try an approach that takes these ideas of history and storytelling quite literally. A Pittsburgh blogger named Jonathon Denson has a website called “Discovering Historic Pittsburgh” [http://www.jonathondenson.com/]. On this site, he posts detailed histories of abandoned buildings around the Pittsburgh area, followed by a call for someone to invest in the property. He won an award from the Pittsburgh preservation society for his work, and we are trying to set up a meeting with him to learn about his research methods.

Ultimately, we hope to use this information to write our own building histories for Wilkinsburg properties. We want community members and visitors to tour the neighborhood and interact with these buildings, to learn their histories and become invested in them. Can this personal investment translate into something bigger?

Millage Rates Suck

While we are all feeling inspired and excited about this plan, we also realize that we have another problem to deal with. When property values plummet, property taxes soar. In order to pay for services like trash removal in a neighborhood, the city needs to get that money from somewhere. Therefore, the tax rate on properties will be a higher percentage of the total property value if that property value is low. The millage rates, and thus the property taxes, in Wilkinsburg are very high. This system discourages potential buyers from investing in properties within blighted communities. A restored property in Wilkinsburg will ultimately cost the owner more than a nice property in a neighborhood with higher property values because the expensive house in Wilkinsburg will also still be subject to the higher tax rates. Once we get residents and visitors emotionally invested in abandoned houses in the area, what happens next? Who actually has money to invest in these buildings? How do we work around this policy issue? How might “storytelling” help us here? Definitely applying for tax abatement is one way to deal with the issue. Can we make the application process easier for people? Can we translate documents and requirements from legalese to natural language?

Blog #2 by Wenzhu Liu (Team 7)

Our project focus on how to improve the after school program, attract more children and help low income family children to attend the after school program. In the fist phase, we have done the amount of research on papers and online, and choose 3 main ideas on marketing, transportation and community. So during the 20 days after the first submission, we start to interview real managers, teachers and students in the after school program to get more practical  suggestions and data to help us pick up one specific idea and define.

After listening Bruce Hannington’s lecture, the methods in user experience are very useful and give me more clear thoughts on how to conduct our project for the design part. So I have read the research toolbook again and again, and try to finger out which methods are suitable for our project and make a plan about how to use them. There is the detailed plan about the methods I picked up as below.

1. Interview: We have scheduled time next week with Nina Marie Barbuto, who is the adjunct Instructor of school of architecture at Carnegie Mellon University. She is teaching Saturday Art Connection Classes at Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh. We would ask her some questions about one of our ideas that encourages students to spend time after school in museums. And we have talked with Stephen MacIsaac in Neighborhood Learning Alliance and Kathryn Vargas in United Way of Allegheny County. When talking with Stephen, he told us about how to encourage high school students to work hard to prepare for their future profession, and he also introduced one program he is doing. In this program, the high school students would be employed and trained by the alliance to teach elementary students reading books. For high school students, they get the experience about teaching, and for young children, they find a way to read the books what they like. So this program is good for both young children and high school teenagers. I think this program inspires us to think more about how to find a good program to help a large range of age students meanwhile and let them engage the program. When talking with Kathryn, she gave us more information about the after school program in the large Pittsburgh area and we would attend the activity the Afterschool Symposiumshe next Tuesday which is introduced by her.  We plan to talk with more students who attend or don’t attend after school program in Pittsburgh.

2. Knowledge Mining: For our project, I think the people who are uniquely qualified to offer insights are Nina Meria Barbuto, Stephen MacIsaac as Executive Director at Neighborhood Learning Alliance,  Wendy Etheridge Smith as Executive Director at Higher Achievement Pittsburgh, Kathryn Vargas as Manager in Programs for Children and Youth at present. And after we talk with them, we would collect more informations about more after school programs and then talk with more people.

3. Guided Storytelling: We plan to listen to teachers, volunteers working at after school program telling what they are doing during work time and what is their unforgettable experience staying with children at after school program. And for the second part, we would ask children to tell us whether they remember the happiest time in the program.

4. Guide Tour: For this method, it is a good way that teachers or volunteers lead us to visit their courses and activities.

5. Beeper Study: To realize it, I want to provide small forms for teachers to record what contents induce children’s interest.

6. Photo Diary: It is a good way to collect data that asking teachers or volunteers in the after school program to take pictures for their activities. For more details, the pictures are required to be special to record specific moment such as the time children use some new tools and they express their curiosity. And during the guide tour, we could also take some pictures under the permission of teachers.

7. Prototype Evaluation: After finishing the lo-fi prototypes, we should come back to the after school programs and conduct experiments with teachers, volunteers, staff and children. Without knowing the concept of our project, we need know what parts of our project confuse them and where we should improve.

8. Think Aloud Protocol: With the lo-fi or hi-fi prototypes, when conducting the user testing, we should give a task to them and when they try to finish it, ask them to say what they are thinking. Especially for children, it is a little difficult to know what they are thinking, so recording the process seems important if we get the permission.

9. Shadowing: After interviewing with enough directors, managers, teachers and students,  we would pick up some specific people as our main target audience and let them show their normal daily activities during after school time. This step is important to collect detailed data in ethnography.

10. Fly on the Wall: Sitting in the after school place, and watching the activities.

11. Video Observation: As mentioned in the method 8, we would record what children do under permission, and for teachers, if necessary, recording a video is essential.

12. Task Analysis: The method is visualizing the process of the after school activities.

13. Draw Your Experience: We have made 2 posters for each participates, one is for adults and one is for children. On the adult’s poster, there is one question “what do you want to do if you can live your childhood once more time”. We provide several hints such as activities, memory, favorites and so on. And for the children’s poster, the question is “draw your favorite place, thing or activity”. We want to children drawing whatever they feel happy and interested.

As a student focus on design part in the team, I would try more on how to promote our project more efficiently, provide a clear system for conducting research on people and visualize the ideas, process and results.

There is another useful toolkit for user research.

http://www.ideo.com/work/human-centered-design-toolkit/

IdaShiang /blog post #2 Group 6

Insight

From this experience I’ve gained a greater understanding of how community action works—about the role of Community Development Corporations and the network of community organizations that collaborate and/or engage residents. I’ve also learned about how interconnected problems are.  Our designated problem is about increasing food access, but the issue transcends other community issues such as how to expand urban farming to create a more resilient/independent regional food system, how to overcome employment barriers for people with limited education or criminal records, education (making health/nutrition/exercise a learning area/unit in school/out of school).

My conversations have taught me how integral gaining buy-in from key community constituents or having community champions are to the success of a project.  Many of our ideas are dependent on having strong community champions overseeing the idea to fruition.  This has been a challenge for the group in narrowing down a solution to move forward on.

Highlights

One great experience in my group’s research process was attending a service at the King of Kings church in Garfield.  We didn’t do any interviews; we just observed.  It was nice to absorb the environment and experience a source of community support and positivity.  I loved the gospel music worship and its raw, unrestrained emotion and movement.  Most of life is measured and restrained so it was nice to witness a completely opposite form of human expression. There’s a push in the church to empower women—they are having a women-led worship weekend.  This might be an opportunity to connect with moms in the community to discuss food issues.

Where Policy Fits In

This project has reinforced how big policy challenges can be.  When we met with Grow Pittsburgh, we learned about the challenges in securing lots for community gardens and the grassroots mobilization taking place to revise policies/encourage development of policies that will help expedite assessment and development of land for community gardens.

What’s Next

My group has done a lot of interviews with community organizations but has not connected yet with many local residents. My group will try to utilize the culture probes to get more insights from research sessions. I think it would be a good idea to use gamification to develop exercises that are short, fun, but informative as well. I was inspired by the small things project from code for America and the fitwits example in class.  I think it’s important to identify something small and implementable and to get our ideas or proposals in front of stakeholders, to have them experience and evaluate our proposed solutions.

Blog Post #2 – Ken Chu/Team 2

We have been working on our projects for about seven weeks at this point.  When I reflect on the speakers and the readings we have had, I find that while we have been exposed to a lot of good information, tools, and techniques to help frame our projects and our processes, I am still experiencing a lack of focus in terms of how to define the path forward.  And it feels a bit like I am falling behind on the timeline of this class.  Part of the problem comes from the magnitude of the issue with which we are dealing.  But also part of the problem comes from the fact that the lack of direction, which I think is a necessary construct in order to encourage creative approaches and the consideration of all possible processes and solutions, fuels our inability to define our path because the options are limitless.  And because we have such a diverse group and are working very hard to engage in a very democratic process, moving forward is further encumbered by a lack of proscriptive behavior from any source.  Furthermore, trying to remain open-minded with an eye towards “out of the box” thinking and creative solutions doesn’t always go hand in hand with a set 16-week schedule.  I think I have been hoping that the research phase will reveal a path – that the problem itself will proscribe our solution – but I find that I am frustrated that this has not been the natural evolution of the project.

I think Mitchell Sipus’s lecture and all the readings around failure have probably been some of the more useful resources for me because I think part of the problem is the whole idea of not being able to succeed.  Clearly, all of us are in this class because we are interested in learning how we can make positive social change.  Because we have a vested personal interest in the success of the project – not in a thorough exploration of the development or process, but in the actual efficacy of the project design generated – I find myself hesitant to define a path that will either be unable to effect the desired outcome or change, or that will be inconsequential and insignificant in light of the challenge.  Mitchell’s lecture was interesting because he was very clear about the whole idea of starting with an idea of what he would do and arriving at a journey that was completely different from his initial intent, although related.  The end result was his engagement in work that was no less important or successful, but was certainly different from where he started.

I find this whole concept of failure to be an interesting space to explore in social innovation because I don’t think that we are socialized to readily engaged activities that have a high likelihood of failure.  It’s the whole idea in economics of the relationship between risk and reward – the greater the risk, the greater the potential return and the lower the risk, the lower potential return.  Applied to this process, this idea would lead one to believe that in order to do something really innovative and to effect real change in people’s live, solutions with the greatest potential for success also hold the greatest risk of failure.  But we fear failure –or low return – and because of this, most of us tend to take smaller risks.  This fear of failure can likely be attributed, at least partly, to how we praise and uphold success and successful models and use them as examples of how things should be.  We want to learn from successful processes because mimicking those processes will likely breed parallel successful outcomes.  But the more we do this, the less innovative we become and the more traditional innovation becomes.  And in fact, innovation is only innovative until it becomes common.  So if we are trying to engender innovation, perhaps we have to first exorcise our fear of failure.

As a theater artist, there are many activities that we engage in that force us to embrace failure.  The process of making theater is extremely collaborative and so we rely on each other to perform unique tasks, but the efficacy of the project as a whole often comes from our ability to arrive at the story telling collectively and as a unified group.  To that end, much of our work is about the oversharing of our ideas in order to garner reaction, to engender reflection, and to shape our collective consciousness in regards to the work.  Early on in the process, our work is often singular, developing our own ideas and thoughts in a vacuum without the rest of the team.  But ultimately, there comes a point where we have to bare the work that we have done on our own for the rest of the group to see, knowing full well that the reaction – whether positive or negative – is what we, as a group, need in order to move the process forward.  Some of it will be garbage and some of it will provide the inspiration that shapes our journey.  But most important in this process is the lack of fear in sharing ideas – in vocalizing what we think and how we feel about the work and about each other’s work.

In theater, in order to allow our minds to find this freedom, we often start our rehearsals or our meetings with games that force us to stop thinking logically.  These activities are designed to make us behave instinctually and to align ourselves with one another.  Often, the activities and games are meaningless and live somewhere in the space of non-sense, but the challenge us to re-frame our reality by asking us to perform un-realistically in an attempt to free ourselves to take all risks necessary to engender a process that is rife with possibilities.  Also, in calibrating ourselves to one another, we find that we can be more responsive and more “in tune” with each other as we proceed through the work.  It’s a truly ephemeral quality, but can be really helpful in creating a collective consciousness about the work.

Perhaps a useful activity for us to have engaged in before we started any of the research would have been a WAG (Wild Ass Guess) session of idea generation.  A time when, prior to looking at barriers or stakeholders, we just shared with one another the most outlandish or unlikely scenarios for possible solutions to the problems.  At times, knowledge is power.  But power can also come from ignorance – ignorance of what cannot be done or what cannot be achieved.  This approach seems antithetical to my desire for greater structure or more clear direction.  But I also think it might have freed us from trying to frame the problem space, the design space, and the solution space in ways that are more logical or using tools that are more familiar to us.

When Bruce Hanington talked about design research methodology and the standard phases, it was linear and logical.  It was useful to see a step-by-step guide for how the work might be approached.  But on the other hand, knowing that there is a method for successful design research also makes me feel that there must be an existing template for successful design innovation and I think that I am searching for the “one” right method.  In hindsight, I think it might have been useful for me to start by being generative – to create many, many theses – before we engaged the research, which then informed the framework for the theses and shaped the exploration for possible innovative solutions.  I don’t think any of us are paralyzed by the fear of not performing well in the class, but I do think that I inherently want a successful project – one that actually effects positive social change.  And I fear that the more information I know and learn about our topic, the less creative I am about possible solutions.  My desire to do something successful is inhibiting my desire to take up a journey that is more innovative, more creative, more “out of the box”, but which is more likely to lead to failure.

Blog Post 2 – Liana Kong Team 3

Yesterday we met with Isaac Smith from the Green Building Alliance, which was very eye-opening in a positive way yet set us back a little. Last week we defined our problem using the worksheet given during one of the classes, which had us clearly outline the issue, whom it affects, social factors, evidence, etc. Low incentive for property owners to disclose energy is difficult, and forming solutions from the raw data generated from this is not much easier. Exposing users to the benefits of energy disclosure is a challenge, particularly in Pittsburgh because of low development rates and discomfort of loss of privacy. We have discovered so far that creating disclosure laws would combat with these challenges. Cities comparable to Pittsburgh such as Minneapolis or Charlotte have enforced energy disclosure laws, but it was more successful due to their rapid development and newer buildings. Because Pittsburgh already has many existing old buildings, it is difficult to implement or market implementing energy efficient power systems to buildings. In an even bigger picture, Duquesne Power & Light use an old system that makes it difficult to benchmark energy.

One effective way to sort out our ideas is to create a future wheel, where the main problem is sourced in the middle, while additional concerns branch off to give light to more elements. This would give us great insight to how certain issues might waterfall or affect other issues and to allow us to keep everything into consideration. This activity could even divert our focus to another issue we might previously oversee. However, this won’t give us much of an answer but more so a direction. It’s been difficult so far to pinpoint where we should focus because it seems that the problems we want to address are either impossible or are currently being worked on extensively.

In terms of participatory research, it would be interesting to give some of our contacts the chance to rearrange an affective UI of Portfolio Manager to see what would be an optimal format for the information needed to access and disclose energy usage. This would give them a chance to collage together something that would be meaningful to them. However, this might give a skewed perspective, and it might be useful to get into contact with property owners who would not want energy disclosure to receive information from the opposing party.

blog 2 sarah team 1

Throughout the course so far, I’ve learned that social innovation is all about designing things that help people make positive changes that are novel, improved, and sustainable. There are no rules or boundaries that define what forces can work together to encompass this type of social change. That is characteristic that makes social innovation so unique and such an infrequent yet valuable occurrence. It is both risky and uncertain, and involves numerous different stakeholders to shape an innovative idea into a tangible reality. Design and policy methods as well as consumer need for change can foster new ways of thinking which have the potential to transform people’s lives in monumental ways. By combing design methods and policy one can create a productive tactic to frame ideas and research within.
An example of this type of collaborative approach is Sanders’ co-design space. Sanders emphasizes that one of the biggest mistakes made in the design processes is that too much time is spent on one idea instead of exploring many possibilities due to lack of comprehensive knowledge. Participatory design is a solution to this problem. Participatory design is a design practice in various co-design activities throughout the design process. This technique makes use of a wide collection of tools by involving stakeholders (employees, partners, customers, users, etc.) to help guarantee that the end result meets their needs and is practical.
Green Building Alliance’s Mike schiller mentioned that green building has a huge health benefit for the public. Namely, reduced energy consumption, lower operating costs, positive marketing and promotion, and increased productivity. One of GBA’s initiatives was to create a framework for a two year long program for school districts to drive changes in energy consumption and green practices. The two year long project framework sought to build a curriculum where teachers promoted effective environmental and sustainability education to their students. Designing better codes, creating incentives for building owners, and monitoring performance and management, just to name a few, is where policy came into play. Results of this innovative idea was increased civic skills among students, improved health, increased environmental awareness, and a solid foundation for future college opportunities and workforce preparedness.
So if there is so much benefit in social innovation, why aren’t people doing it? Why could some of the ideas and experiments listed above fail? First, there are high net operating costs for completely novel projects/products ideas. Innovation is usually also limited to a few resources, and are often doomed to high startup failure rates. Or, perhaps the public lacks the knowledge and/or skills to needed in order for the product to catch on. Take GBA’s green and healthy school academies initiative for example. Why may schools not take on something that has the potential to increase positive student outcomes in the long run? First off, green practices may be too expensive for some school districts to take on, and some educators may lack the knowledge and/or funding for training to make the program effective being that it involves many different issues on a complex yet significant issue.
Going back to participatory design, there are also some challenges and limitations that may cause the co-design approach to fall short. First, it’s a challenge for find the appropriate place for various stakeholders in PD activities. With so many differing repertoires of tools and techniques involved, it can be difficult to organize such a broad skillbase. Participatory approach also prefers the face-to-face approach, which can be difficult to organize and cost-intensive. Also, the occasional need to travel to meet face-to-face may pose limitations of the size and durability of tools and materials.

Blog #2 – Siyun Li (Team 7)

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My blog #2 file: blog #2 Siyunli

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Here are some interesting websites/videos:

1. http://www.vestergaard.com/

2.  TEDx Talks. “5 Keys to Success For Social Entrepreneurs: Lluis Pareras at TEDxBarcelonaChange.” YouTube. YouTube, 29 Apr. 2013. Web. 12 Oct. 2014. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl8c5ooHfWs>.

3. (Watch this talk!!!One of the best Ted talks ever)Perf. Pallotta. Dan Pallotta: The Way We Think about Charity Is Dead Wrong. Ted Talk, Feb. 2013. 12 Oct. 2014.<http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_pallotta_the_way_we_think_about_charity_is_dead_wrong?language=en>

4. Mullainathan, Sendhil. “Solving Social Problems with a Nudge.” Ted Talk. Nov. 2009. 12 Oct. 2014.<http://www.ted.com/talks/sendhil_mullainathan?language=en>