Urban Revolution through Data

Urban3’s visual approach to understanding property values in cities and towns

Imagine you own a house on a 1/4 acre lot. Meanwhile, your neighbor a few blocks down has a full acre lot. What value does your land have, compared to your neighbor’s land?

By Rachel Quednau

Learning Beautiful

Building computer skills without computers

Computer science seems complex. From Boolean logic to algorithms, computer architecture and data structures, a dizzying spectrum of elements all weave together as an intricate system – a system almost as complex as language.

At Battery Park Montessori in New York, Learning Beautiful tools, like the Binary Tree shown here, are part of everyday play.

By Kim Smith, Co-Founder & CEO of Learning Beautiful; photos courtney Lailey, Green Ivy Schools

And yet here I am, writing, composing words with grammar, and you are able to read it. We understand the same larger system.

We learn this system at a young age. Playing with tactile ABC blocks and hearing sounds everyday, we grow to explore small elements of larger ideas, like words. And then we develop an intuitive sense of even larger and more complex relationships, like analogies.

So why isn’t computer science taught the same way? After all, computational thinking – the concepts and practices we use to solve problems and organize systems of information that are central to computer science – is just one of many kinds of thinking that is relevant to our world today.

Creating Learning Beautiful has been a long journey of design, research, and testing, and it all began with that simple observation: computational thinking is a necessary skill for today, and maybe it can be taught in a tactile, playful way. First as a research project at the MIT Media Lab, and now a spinout company dedicated to providing young children with developmentally-enriching foundational skills, Learning Beautiful creates timeless toys that teach young children the basics of computer science – without using computers.

Media Lab Social Computing Group

In the Social Computing Group at the MIT Media Lab, we often had trouble defining what is was that we did exactly. But we always knew what we were about. Every project started with values, and perhaps a simple question, and grew collaboratively. We were artists, designers, computer scientists, architects, filmmakers, yogis, philosophers, and educators. My own background is in art, design, and education. Together, we designed crash-course sessions in the lab, and we would teach each other things like drawing, or programming, or have discussions about the philosophy of economics. We embraced large, complex ideas that matter to communities, and we used design to explore their basic elements. Our projects were collaborations that explored how to put the basic elements back together.

One of our biggest projects was to reimagine what schools mean to neighborhoods. A network of small schools, located in shop fronts, could be embedded in communities and use the neighborhood as a classroom. We called them Wildflower schools, and we have been inspired to watch them grow to 21 schools in the few years since the first shop front opened in Cambridge, MA.

The Montessori method was a perfect pedagogy to adopt in Wildflower schools, because it stressed child-driven learning, mixed age groups, intrinsic motivation, exploratory play, and above all, a beautiful environment. The Montessori classroom is filled with highly sensorial materials. These playful objects are, in many ways, physical models of abstract concepts. Children at young ages crave things that are concrete and literal – they are drawn to building blocks, beads, and sticks. And the beauty of Montessori is that the objects embody mathematical or linguistic or musical relationships, and they are sequential, aligning with children’s developmental stages. Playing with them encourages children to construct mental models and develop intuitive knowledge.

Most people can think back to a time in childhood and remember a specific toy or object that evoked a transformative experience. For me it was as simple as a set of pencils and my sketchbook. They were transformative because of the world they allowed me to create. Physical objects have the power to shape a child’s learning experience and establish deep models that will serve them throughout their lives. The architect Frank Lloyd Wright attributed his spatial intuition to Froebel’s Gifts, a series of objects that revealed proportional relationships. Seymour Papert, an early proponent of computer science education, was forever changed by the “Gears of My Childhood.”

Papert called his gears an “object-to- think-with,” because they were embedded with formal mathematical systems. He wrote of the importance of the gears in constructing his knowledge because they were part of his natural landscape, he could use his body to think with them – imagining how they work through understanding how his own body turned. In this sense, an experience with a physical material has the transitive quality to build the mental models in our minds. “Anything is easy if you can assimilate it to your collection of models,” wrote Papert.

The more we considered the relationship between abstract ideas and physical forms, and the more we learned about the Montessori method and its materials, the more we returned to this simple observation: there is an opportunity to provide hands-on computer science learning that enriches young minds in developmentally-appropriate ways.

Considering the beauty and effectiveness of a hands-on pedagogy, we were puzzled that today, early childhood education in contemporary skills such as computer science relies so heavily on digitally mediated experiences. Many educational materials and toys available further separate children from their physical world. The proliferation of educational apps, and intro coding lessons further instill a child’s role as a computer user, without allowing them to directly learn the basic ideas behind how a computer works.

When we started this project in the Media Lab, the concept was simple: create new Montessori-inspired learning materials that address skills for today. We organized all-day hack-a-thons that brought together our lab with computer scientists, and with Montessori experts and teachers. We organized ourselves into groups around simple concepts that were not already in the Montessori classroom. We sketched and talked and brainstormed, and pieced together cardboard prototypes, or laser-cut simple things in the machine shop. At the end of the day, we had several simple prototypes that all demonstrated new skills. We started fast, but learned to refine more slowly.

Together with my collaborator, Yonatan Cohen, we designed and developed new learning materials for teaching computer science to young children, using the Montessori- inspired approach that isolates core concepts in physical, sensorial materials. The result is a series of objects made with natural materials to demonstrate such concepts as binary counting, image representation, algorithms, data structures, Boolean logic, sorting, and patterns.

At MIT, we were surrounded by the world’s greatest computer scientists, educators, designers. We had an array of rapid prototyping tools at our fingertips, and we had the Wildflower classrooms as close collaborators. We developed our scope and sequence for computational thinking with computer scientist, Sanjoy Mahajan, to represent a broad foundation of computational concepts that the basic building blocks behind how computers work. As a network, the scope and sequence weaves concepts in relationship to each other; the materials can be used independently, and in some cases, integrated simultaneously with other materials.

We spent the better part of 3 years making quick prototypes out of cardboard and wood scraps. Digital fabrication was an important part of our process – it allowed us to explore new ideas, and get them to a point that children could interact with them. We’ve learned that the most important things to get right usually aren’t so obvious – how an object feels in a child’s hand, or the sound a lid makes when it clacks shut – those are at the center of a child’s experience. So we had to find ways of quickly scaling to the size of a child’s hand, or find out the right level of detail, or try different materials that clacked and clattered and thumped. We also had to scrap or redesign the materials that either were confusing to teachers, or of little interest to the children.

And the Wildflower Schools were also a prototyping tool. We designed the shop front schools to be settings of constant creativity. The classrooms were a place for testing new ideas, and parents were excited to participate in the pursuit of innovative education. We would put our simple prototypes in the classroom, and see what stuck. Children are honest (sometimes brutally honest), and it is easy to quickly assess the effectiveness of a material. For over a year, we tested and refined materials, looking for what naturally engages a child’s attention. What calls to them? What are they returning to again and again? How are they (mis)using things, or developing whole new processes or games that we hadn’t thought of? Over the course of this design process, we cataloged our observations, constantly working to knit them together with pedagogical goals, through our ideology of learning.

Designing Greentown Labs

The Largest U.S. Clean Tech Incubator

Imagine a world where the sun and wind are our main sources of affordable power, where solar-powered robotic boats navigate dangerous waters, where fuel cell vehicles are the norm, and where all food production is safe and sustainable. This is the world the innovators at Greentown Labs are creating.

Greentown Labs is a new type of incubator for the Boston clean tech sector.

By Felice and David Silverman, Principals, Silverman Trykowski Architects

Autonomous Marine Systems builds sailing drones that collect data about our oceans. Ivys Energy Solutions is designing hydrogen fueling tech. Domovi is designing and building the next generation of home appliances, reimagining how your stuff is cleaned and dried — think one washing machine for your dishes and your clothes.

Founded in 2011 and located in Somerville, Massachusetts, the 100,000 sq. ft. Greentown Labs Global Center for Cleantech Innovation is the largest cleantech incubator in the United States. Their mission: enable a vibrant community of startups to realize their visions by providing access to the resources, labs, and funding they need to thrive.

Working Together

What type of environment will support this mission? How can design be the catalyst for innovation? These are the questions our team at Silverman Trykowski Associates (STA), a Boston-based architecture and interior design firm, sought to answer. Our first step was to fully understand the Greentown community, their goals, and their business model.

Greentown Labs is an incubator, and while this type of environment shares many of the principles of a co-working space, it is also quite unique. Research shows that the number of small startups, contract workers, and self- employed people is increasing dramatically, and many new forms of workspaces are responding to the need.

In co-working spaces individuals and small companies occupy shared-office space on flexible terms with common resources such as conference rooms, cafes, and equipment — but typically co-working environments are not industry or market specific. That is, they could have a software startup, a lawyer, and a writer working in the same space. The incubator model is a more deliberate and intentional opportunity for businesses in a similar sector. The goal is an environment where like-minded innovators, sharing ideas and resources, work alongside, support, and inspire each other. Instead of a collection of individual businesses sharing space, it is a community with common goals – in Greentown’s case the shared goal is saving our environment.

We’ve worked with a number of incubators over the years, each within specific markets. MassRobotics is an incubator space for the robotics sector in Boston’s Seaport, The Record Company is a non-profit offering rehearsal and recording space to Boston-area musicians, Flextronics’ Flex Innovation Center is a design and production facility that supports startups and large multinational customers, and Miraki is investing in the future of medical innovation, while inviting their entrepreneurs to share their office and maker space.

While each of these incubators has unique needs and requirements, there are common threads: the environments are equipped with the support structure, facilities, and resources necessary to enable the companies and individuals to thrive — and perhaps most importantly, the inspiration that comes from co-location of like-minded visionaries. As Arron Acosta, Co-Founder of Rise Robotics states, “As a hardware startup, you have to surround yourself with believers – it’s the only way you’ll survive. Greentown is great because it’s a gathering of a bunch of people who believe in big ideas.”

A Growing Community

In 2011, our first project with Greentown Labs allowed them to grow from four startups to 20. Then in 2013 they tapped STA again to design their 33,000 sq. ft. facility in Somerville with expanded lab and office space for 50 startups. With the increased exposure and a waiting list of startups, the idea to create the Global Center for Cleantech Innovation was born.

The new site is the original location for American Tube Works, the first manufacturer of seamless brass and copper tubes for locomotive, marine, and stationary engines. The steel and brick building is an open, three-story volume constructed in 1908, and most recently was the home of a Maaco Auto Body facility. The building’s location offered a great opportunity to create a Greentown campus, and the building’s industrial history was a perfect shell for the new innovation space to come. But the building was not without its challenges. As a former auto body facility, a lot of remediation was needed to make the building safe and fully representative of the leading-edge environmental design and performance inherent to Greentown’s mission. The new space had to serve Greentown’s growing community — made up of Greentown Labs’ staff, the member companies they support, and the thousands of people who rely on Greentown as a resource for sustainable technology thought leadership. Member companies may be as small as one person or over 20 people — events can welcome hundreds of people to Greentown in one evening. The goal of the new Center was to create 450 seats for workspace and 15,000 sq. ft. of dedicated lab space, as well as flexibility for knowledge sharing through public and private events.

Designing with Innovators

How do you design for a group of brilliant entrepreneurs? You bring them to the table. The design process for this unique facility was inclusive, collaborative, and dynamic. Greentown Labs’ spirit of community and inclusivity was paramount. As CEO Emily Reichert directed, we were to do “whatever is best for the members.”

Inclusion Applied Creatively

Kat Holmes

Kat Holmes began her career in mechanical engineering, but found her design calling while working on many different technologies at Microsoft. Her path of curiosity revealed a common theme in her work: inclusive design improves our interactions, both with humans and machines.

Kat Holmes is the author of Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design and Director of User Experience at Google

CoDesign Collaborative recently caught up with Kat to learn more about her new role at Google, staying curious, and finding the beauty in complex challenges.

Mary Lewey: How did you find design? 

Kat Holmes: Growing up, I didn’t know anybody who was a designer for a living. I knew engineers, I knew artists, and both had a big influence on my life. I wanted to find a way to merge the arts and sciences through something that was both technology and human focused. My role in design became clear while I was at Microsoft. It was the first time I worked for a software company and I was able to work on so many projects from mobile phones, to wearables, to holograms, and more. Every team I worked with struggled to some degree in thinking about who exactly we were designing for. That became the heart of design for me, which is: how do we think about diversity of people? How do we develop new methods, new ways of working, that help us do better? 

ML: When did inclusion become part of your career path? 

KH: Inclusion became a deep interest in college, especially because of the potential of what technology could do, if applied creatively. How it could connect to people, be a part of their lives? Why are we here making all these complex technologies if not for some human purpose?

At Microsoft, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to make it my job. My first introduction to accessibility coincided with working on new digital assistant and voice-based interactions. Our team was designing a voice-based interaction with an assistant and met a community of people who have been talking to their computers for 20 years because they use speech commanding when authoring emails or writing code. Keyboarding wasn’t the primary way they used the computer. I started to see similarities in these separate conversations and they led to the first real clear steps toward considering what inclusive design is. How does inclusion show up in what we create? How does the make-up of our teams lead to designed outcomes? 

KH: I started my own company to advise and consult on inclusive design. After writing a book, Mismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design, the company is evolving into a platform called Mismatch.design, featuring educational resources, stories, and free content where people can read about inclusive design. I am also a UX Design Director for Google’s advertising platform. I’ve always had mixed feelings about advertising and wasn’t sure why. But it is the economic engine for such a huge portion of companies that are working to develop all these types of technologies that we’ve been talking about. My big question from an inclusive design perspective is: what does economic inclusion look like? How can businesses and the tools we use to build them be more open, more accessible to more people? When this opportunity came up, I was excited about: a. learning more about how that part of our industry works and, b. how that can lead to large scale types of economic inclusion. 

ML: What is fulfilling about your new role? 

KH: I work with designers, engineers, and project managers who love complex problems. When I was consulting, every company I met was thinking about how to design for complexity. For example, how do we design products that are going to be used around the world by people who speak dozens of different languages? For a long time, a lot of design and engineering methods focused on how to create simplicity. And that isn’t always the solution to complexity. It’s fulfilling to work with people who both appreciate and find beauty in complexity.

ML: What is challenging about it?

KH: Being new is always hard. And not knowing things. I love being in that space, but it can be challenging to be the person in the room who knows the least about something. New job, new topic, all at once, some days can be harder than others. 

ML: How did mentorship play a role in your design journey?

KH: Mentorship isn’t just someone more senior in their career or who’s more experienced. For me, it’s about finding people who lead with curiosity. I’ve never taken the career mindset of trying to get to the next level. I’m led by what I want to learn. When I start to pursue a new interest, I go out and find who else is curious about that topic or is asking similar questions. A lot of the time, what I pursue overlaps with other interests that I didn’t know intersected. Once I see how they may intersect, I find someone who is also thinking about that combination. It’s definitely shaped how I learn and taught me to seek out people who have curiosity about the intersection of unlikely combinations and then have good conversations with them on what’s possible at those intersections. 

ML: Who or what inspires you? 

KH: Unlikely combinations. Because they challenge the way I think about categories in the world and test my existing notions and assumptions.

ML: Of all your skills and talents, which do you appreciate most, and why? 

KH: My ability to listen for the connections and underlying motivations.

ML: What advice would you give to your younger self? 

KH: Courage is a team sport. Put yourself out there and know that you’re not alone.