“We spend a lot time designing the bridge, but not enough time thinking about the people who are crossing it.”– Dr. Prabhjot Singh, Director of Systems Design at the Earth Institute
Example of Next Nav in Action
What would the world look like if designers did more than design attractive products? What if they were also involved in creating policy for the future and creating solutions that put humans first, in times of emergency? Government and healthcare agencies are beginning to reach out to designers to solve some of our toughest challenges.
“At the start of the Pandemic, one thing remained constant – Anthem’s commitment to the communities we serve. We knew that we had to quickly develop solutions that helped government, business, business and community leaders make informed decisions around COVID-19,” says Anthem vice president Bobby Samuel. “Our work with ecosystem partners, like TM, helped us leverage the vast amount of data related to the Pandemic and make it useful and intuitive for decision makers.”
Anthem worked with ecosystem partners to develop these needed tools. They needed a way to be more agile so they could respond quickly to an array of variables and constantly changing data. For example, where would COVID rise next? Which hospitals would need ventilators? In a collaboration of Anthem, TM, CloudMedx, and XY.ai, the group developed the tool called C19 Explorer. The tool aggregates information from many public and private sources, including the CDC, and provides crucial real-time insights and predictive data that Anthem and its clients have been using to accurately gauge risk and readiness across the country.
When the pandemic began, TM also partnered with the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to spearhead Project Salus (named for the Roman goddess of safety and wellbeing), which brought together tech giants, government organizations and universities to develop a predictive dashboard that would help identify critical supply chain shortages if they were to occur. As part of this collaborative effort, the TM team worked with the military’s decision-making system called the OODA loop, which stands for “observe, orient, decide, act.” It’s the creation of the famed 20th century fighter pilot and military strategist Col. John Boyd. The TM team found many parallels between the OODA loop the design process, so much so, that they’ve now incorporated some of its methods into their own design process.
“In the military you see a total focus on mission.” “There is no room for personal preference or ego. People work around the clock to keep everyone in our country safe. Teamwork is key. In the military, the chain of command has a longitudinal and latitudinal cascade of impact with different user personas to solve for, much like the steps in a user journey.”~ Shaun Modi, TM
One doesn’t often think of design in the context of government, healthcare or national defense, yet, history is filled with monuments to the power of design to create solutions that both aid and inspire generations. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt commissioned the Gold Gate Bridge to create jobs. Almost 100 years later, it inspires thousands of people every day, while also connecting them to the beating heart of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. The Golden Gate bridge is a fitting metaphor for how design aesthetics can join together with utility to create solutions that connect and support human greatness.
Today much of design is invisible, working with artificial intelligence, blending the tangible with the intangible. Unseen, AI brings with it the power to make fast, accurate decisions, while traditional graphic design delivers compelling visual stories about information that multiple users can all understand. Together, these create a common language between industries and people, avoiding the mistakes that occur through differences in terminology.
Modi, who is a huge fan of the civic-minded 20th century design giant Raymond Loewy (who helped shape everything from America’s railroads to Air Force One’s iconic livery) firmly believes there should be a designer in every boardroom and high-level government office in America. Why? The design process is powerful because it can often close the gap between what a client thinks its customers want and what they actually need by putting the human beings they are trying to solve for at the center of their research. Design can provide quick solutions to crisis because it is creates a common language where different groups can meet. It is iterative, fast-moving, and collaborative.
NextNav, another project the TM team worked on, is a great illustration of how design can create solutions for emergency response and help start-ups communicate their value to investors. NextNav is the creator of a GPS-like system used by police and fire departments called the Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS). Unlike GPS, MBS functions indoors and includes a Z axis (altitude) in addition to X (longitude) and Y (latitude) axes. TM was tasked with making the data as legible and useful as possible via a mobile app in high-stress situations.
TM began the project by interviewing first responders up and down the chain of command and discovered that a key challenge in emergency situations is simply coordinating efforts between response units from different districts, each operating under its own commanders. In an office-tower fire, for instance, there could be firefighters from multiple units working together throughout the building. There was no easy way to share critical information such as how many firefighters are on a floor, which floors they are on, or their names. TM worked on honing NextNav’s interface to synthesize numerous data feeds and render three-dimensional information into a quick and easy-to-read screen. “The real challenge with this project was capturing that other dimension, the vertical dimension, in a simple and clear way,” says Ashenden. “Was there an alternative to a 3D view? I was concerned 3D could be stressful in a mobile phone to pan, zip and zoom around. We wanted something that would feel familiar in terms of patterns to those who have used mapping apps.” (The solution? An altimeter-like overlay that sits on top of a two-dimensional map.)
NextNav raised $120 Million in series E funding in the wake of TM’s work, and NASA has said it will use the MBS network as part of its research into urban drone delivery and automated aerial vehicles. According to NextNav, TM’s refinement of MBS’s usability was the key factor in the latest round of funding. “The buildup to getting that money was being able to credibly articulate to investors and the board of directors what this raw technology could enable,” says Rob Rovetta, Vice President of Program Management at NextNav.
We are facing a difficult future thanks to our part in creating global warming. Many would argue that we are where we are precisely because we have not put human well-being in the center of our decisions. Human centered design is powerful precisely because it puts human well-being first when making decisions. Over the past six years, TM has worked with clients ranging from Google to Volkswaggen, and their design-driven approach has produced measurable impacts for clients – saving them money and speeding up workflows. For example, working with the German startup Konux, TM designed AI-enhanced software to help trains throughout Europe run on time.
Design has always held a unique place in our history. It is clear from early records that aesthetics have always been important to us and now doctors are discovering that it can also improve our health. Will it one day also create solutions that become legacies the way Olmsted’s design for Central Park has inspired and supported generations? Bio inspired design through material innovation is creating solutions for reversing Global Warming so that Earth can become a legacy to our ability to change, to revere beauty over profit and human well being over greed. TM’s work is an example of how, design together with government, can create solutions that impact the lives of people around the world in an instant, an instant that may well ripple forward for years to come.
