a HowlRound.com Research Project
Category Archives: Coordination of Resources
You want this…and I have this…You can borrow it: Peer-to-Peer exchange
The core idea of peer-to-peer exchange is so simple, but you have to strip away decades of consumer behavior and culture to actually see its value as an incredibly exciting and efficient coordination of resources. The regional theater movement in the U.S. – for the most part – lives and dies by the values of [...]
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It’s not the tool, it’s how you use it: Nokia’s SMS program for rural Indian farmers
Here’s an article from the MIT Sloan Management Review about Nokia’s Life Tools program for farmers that piloted in India and is rolling out to China, Indonesia, and Nigeria. For a $1.20 per month subscription, farmers receive SMS information in their native languages about weather, farming tips, crop cycles, and market prices for crops, seeds, [...]
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Developing Local Economies and Culture through Online Infrastructure – FoodHub
The simplest idea behind FoodHub - my favorite winner among the 2012 Interaction Design Awards - is that it’s a matchmaker and community organizer for local-food professionals: producers, distributors, buyers, suppliers. FoodHub’s online tool (a website) continuously evolves and responds to its community’s needs and feedback. The site is the infrastructure to help connect the community together and to [...]
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Designing for the entire life cycle of the thing, I love my toothbrush
I am using a Preserve brand toothbrush, and I bought it because of its beautifully designed innovation in life cycle planning. I should have bought it for “saving the environment” as the marketers would have me believe but I was feeling cynical in my neighborhood food co-op. So instead, I bought it for its creativity. [...]
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Public Transportation and Data to help my Commute
One of the things I love about the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority is their data services for passengers. I believe they installed their “Next Bus” system a little over a year ago. Every bus stop across the Washington DC metro area – and there must be thousands – has a Bus Stop number that [...]
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How to be Lazy
I’m developing a formula or a ratio for work processes that I’m taking half-seriously for the moment. When I feel like procrastinating, it’s a concept that I like to try to get my colleagues in the HowlRound.com office excited about (but I guess my timing’s always off. They are always working, like all the time). [...]
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Participatory Design
Here’s my favorite Wikipedia article today: Participatory Design. This is related to “Creative Placemaking” Definition: In participatory design participants (putative, potential or future) are invited to cooperate with designers, researchers and developers during an innovation process. Potentially, they participate during several stages of an innovation process: they participate during the initial exploration and problem definition [...]
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Overcoming Obstacles to Cultural Exchange
I am currently at the Under the Radar Festival that has flown in several international theater companies to perform in New York City. #NEWPLAY TV is livestreaming several of the conversations and panel discussions for the festival to allow for people around the world who are not able to attend in person to watch the conversations. [...]
Video: “The Story of Broke”