NYC BigApps 2013: Hacking for Healthy InterEarth

Human use, population, and technology have reached that certain stage where mother Earth no longer accepts our presence with silence.

Dalai Lama XIV

There’s a quote from the fourteenth Dalai Lama, cited above, that alludes to a current crosswalk between technological and ecological interests in our collective environment, within and without of the internet. With the profusion of digital projects mapping our lives to a google maps topography, we’ve become culturally fascinated by charting and comparing our trajectories via a pool of open data programs, both past and present. CG is no stranger to this trend, having initiated a few transit mapping projects in tandem with extracurricular programming. A few months ago, our support of Hack n’Jill’s Hacksgiving led to a cross-town hack collaboration with the CartoDB team’s EcoHack on a post-hurricane Sandy cooperative mapping project, and previous blogposts have pitched and promoted efforts like 596 Acres’ project to map the potential for community greenspace in NYC, or the Million Tree’s Project and Canopy’s initiative to track tree planting throughout the five boroughs in the name of greater bio-diversity and networked eco-hacktivism.

BigApps_smallGiven our interests in civic infrastructure and eco-friendly technologies, I was privileged to be one of four judges at the Big Apps Hackathon at New Work City this past weekend. The day-long event hosted a pretty awesome suite of internet of things projects, hardware and software mashup apps all promoting clean web and environmentally green practices for NYC. The Cleanweb Initiative aims to support these continuous events and efforts as well as a greater program aimed at targeting social media and open data for sustainable, cleantech solutions to our contemporary ecological issues.

All of the projects that resulted from Saturday’s Hackday can be found here: Clean Web Hacker Page. And winners are cited below. Please support them as them as they move to the early-June Big Apps competition. Interested parties are also invited to join the Cleanweb team for social drinks this evening, and or at the next Cleanweb event, entitled “Is IT the Secret to a New Energy Future?”
Wednesday, May 22, 2013 7:00pm-9:00pm
The WNYC Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, 44 Charlton Street, NYC

Winners

  1. SolarList: way of enlisting college activists to conduct solar surveys of homes via a mobile app, and then submit that information to local contractors
  2. Smoke Connecter: a modified smoke detector to text you with air quality updates and map these data eventually
  3. Climafy: an assessment application to make your property green and automated RFP service to connect you with contractors that can make this happen

Honorable Mentions

  1. Waste Check: way of enlisting college activists to conduct solar surveys of homes via a mobile app, and then submit that information to local contractors
  2. SolPatch: a text service for remote monitoring of solar panels
  3. PKG Shrink: a way of instagram-shaming companies who over-package their products, thereby encouraging their more eco-conscious repackaging

Just in Time Transit: Virtual Queues to Eliminate the Real Thing

As designers of products and services for transport spaces look to innovate in the sector, I believe passengers will see concepts borrowed from related sectors like supply chain logistics and manufacturing. OnTimeArrival is a smartphone application that, using realtime information and predictive algorithms, helps passengers arrive “just in time” to the gate at the airport, borrowing from “lean manufacturing” practice.

I’d like to propose a slight humanizing tweak to the OnTimeArrival concept, recognizing the realities of the typical airport and passenger. My proposal is twofold:

First, to encourage the use of OnTimeArrival-like applications to manage when people arrive at the airport. The goal should be to have as few people at the airport as possible, freeing capacity to serve those who need to be there in order to catch their flights on-time.

Secondly, as Ronan Delaney argues, passengers hate queues at the airport–I agree. I disagree on why–people are used to waiting for things in life. Passengers hate queues at the airport because they don’t know where they truly stand (in line): the entire process is disjointed, and therefore unknowable. This is not only anxiety provoking, but also misses opportunities for new and differentiated levels of service.

What if we addressed this anxiety with a smartphone-mediated “virtual queue” of the journey from arrival to gate, so passengers could always be assured they were on target to catch their flight? Furthermore, through a combination of real-time airport metrics, incentives (e.g. discounts, free passes to lounges, etc.) and clear instruction, passengers’ entry into various control zones/touchpoints (unsecured, security checkpoint, terminal, concourse and finally gate) could be managed, having the passenger present only when necessary. Crowding might be reduced, customer experience improved with better communication, and passenger/airline brand engagement improved with differentiated offerings.

In 2012, Control Group worked with OTG Management to re-imagine the restaurant and retail experience at La Guardia, Minneapolis-St.Paul, and Toronto Airports. With free and accessible iPads, passengers can now sit by their gate and order food and sundries directly to their seats, while being able to surf the web, check E-mail and remain updated about flight status. What if service touchpoints like this were placed in even more locations throughout the airport, becoming places for passengers to wait before being told to proceed to the next control zone?

With this “virtual queue” strategy, variability and exceptions can be addressed by an algorithm that accounts for current passenger position in the queue and scheduled takeoff time, promoting those that are late for their flights and telling those that are still early to grab another (discounted?) drink and wait, freeing capacity to serve those who are in a rush.

A big source of frustration at the airport is a lack of control–expectations are placed on passengers to be at a certain place at a certain time, but success relies on many things beyond the passenger’s control. If an airline can share some of that cognitive load and responsibility, even symbolically, by managing the passenger’s trip through the process with a smartphone-mediated “virtual queue”, both the passenger and airline can benefit from the efficiencies.

 

The State of the 3D Printing Industry

The 2013 3D Printing Expo at the Javitts Center in NYC hosted the leaders in the burgeoning field of 3D printing to showcase the state of the industry.

brepettisA majority of vendors were presenting versions of a desktop 3D printer. With the star-power of CEO and History channel star – Bre PettisMakerBot still stands as the leader in desktop 3D printers. There were eight other vendors looking to undercut and/or out-feature the original MakerBot desktop 3D printer with printers of their own. Thanks to open competition in the desktop printer field as well as the commoditization of lower cost outsourced 3D production shops like Long Island City’s Shapeways, the cost of 3D prototyping continues to drop.

One field that is experiencing growth and innovation is in real world 3D source creation. There is a great need for being able to precisely scan and/or create 3D models based on physical world objects. 3D artists working within the theorectical boundaries of SolidWorks, AutoCAD or other CAD software can only go so far. With the eventual goal of 3D computer aided design being the output of an actual physical item many of the tricks used by visual 3D designers have to be revisited and reconsidered.

phantom3D artists looking to get a more realworld “feel” for their works can look to Sensables’ Phantom Desktop Haptic Pen system.  As the artist is working with a 3D model on-screen, they can “feel” the item by tracing the pen across the virtual form of the object. Haptic sensors give the 3D object a hard surface that the pen cannot penetrate, so as you drag it across the surface of the virtual object, the haptic sensors give it the feel of impacting a solid object.  With an example of a human face on screen I was able to hold the pen and push into the browline of the face; as I traced down the pen pushed out as the contour of the nose undulated. Once I got the hang of the hand-eye coordination of feeling an object with my right hand while seeing my pen nib on the screen, the illusion was very real.  Using the pen I could sculpt my 3D model using additive or subtractive tools and felt the immediate change in the virtual surface.

Leonar3do-DemonAnother input tool geared for the 3D creator is the Bird system from Leonar3do. The Bird system is comprised of an airbrush looking hand-tool peripheral, 3D goggles, creation software and a set of 3 sensors. Once set-up and running – the virtual system is very immersive.  As I approached the booth there were a  handful of free paper 3D glasses that I tried on to see what the demo was about. This was okay but hardly impressive – not being the main operator in front of the computer makes for a lackluster experience.  But once it was my turn to try the system, I put on the USB connected 3D goggles and adjusted the monitor and had one of those “oh my god!” moments where the promise of what you were hoping virtual reality could be was finally delivered.  As I pulled and manipulated the model on screen I could pull it out of the screen and get as close as I wanted to inspect minute changes to the 3D form.

At this year’s SXSW in Austin, TX Makerbot debuted their take on 3D input with the Makerbot Digitizer, a device that can take a real world item, scan it and convert it into an editable 3D CAD file. Makerbot CEO Bre Pettis said “the digitizer we showed in Austin was only an early prototype. We will be releasing it globally in September.“ The industry has reacted quickly to this innovation in 3D scanning and is fast filling in the marketplace.

creaformCreaform has the Go!SCAN 3D, which is a handheld 3D scanner that uses the white light technique for scanning real world items. Simply point and shoot a few inches from the items to be scanned and the scanner will work it’s magic. The demo I saw was for scanning a hubcap and took less than 2 mins of scanning to get a complete wireframe CAD file of the hubcap. The final product was not quite 3D print-ready as there were some slight clean ups needed to be done before sending it to print. But it was much quicker than building a model from scratch in a CAD application. The Go!SCAN 3D is marketed towards prosumer level 3D artists. With a price tag of $25,000.00 you would need a great deal of 3D scanning to do in order to make it make sense price-wise.

microscribeAlso in the handheld scanner space is a combination laser scanner/point scanner called eMicroScribe from GoMeasure3D. This is a stylus on the end of an articulated armature than has a laser scanner in the tip. As you trace the contours of the object you want to scan the laser scribe captures thousands of data points of the object outline. This laser based scanner is meant for industrial applications that require a very high level of precision. This device has a price point around $7000 and is marketed towards hobbyists and 3D modelling pros.

Our AWS Consulting Partnership

Most of the CG DevOps team were at the Amazon Web Services Summit in New York a few weeks ago learning about new services, exchanging ideas on techniques, and meeting with customers and the AWS team. Events like this are pretty cool from a tech angle, and it’s also great to see the innovative things people are doing with the cloud. This was definitely evident to me when I attended the AWS partner summit in NYC. I think that the New York Times sums it up pretty well today:

You can tell when a technology is really taking hold. In addition to picking up customers, it generates other businesses that require their own care and feeding. And some of those businesses can illustrate how much more business is out there.

Control Group has been an AWS partner for a couple of years now and because of our skilled team and the great solutions we’ve built on AWS for our clients, we are classified as an Advanced Consulting Partner. I didn’t realize how neat this was until I found out that only 6% of the partners at the summit were advanced partners!

Amazon is a very customer focused company and AWS is really defining what cloud computing is. It’s been great to work side by side with them to use their tools to build great things for our clients. Whether it’s launching a new business, simplifying IT operations, or creating new realities for our clients, AWS and our partner relationship is a key part of our toolbox for providing innovative solutions.

 

Lessons in Design: Typography Dos and Don’ts

I recently gave this presentation to fellow co-workers as a primer for typography (the study of type) and its role in graphic design, as an adaptation of a presentation that I gave to my Type 2 students at Queens College. The goal was to get as many non-designers in the room and expose them to something that they probably hadn’t even considered before. If people came out of the talk knowing the difference between a “smart” quote and “dumb” quote, then I consider the presentation a success.

Unused Doesn’t Mean Wasted

As creators, we hate to see the things we create go unused. It pains us to throw away something we worked hard to create. Whether you’re an author flinching at discarding a carefully-worded, but ultimately extraneous paragraph, a programmer who worked hard on a feature that’s getting cut from the project, or a painter who realizes his painting of Saint Sebastian probably doesn’t need quite so many arrows, it can be really difficult to let go of something you worked hard to create.

This happened to me recently. I’d written up an idea to be submitted to a client, and had some of my fellow CGers look it over for mistakes, suggest improvements, and generally give feedback. One person, Matt, deleted a line that I’d spent a good amount of time on trying to get it exactly right, and which I was very reluctant to remove. I asked him about it:

Me:  Why’d you edit out that line I put in the first paragraph?
Matt:  Because I thought it was an unnecessary generalization that doesn’t add to the concept and weakens your overall point.
Me:  Dang.  I worked hard on that, too.
Matt:  The thing is, your overall idea is really good concept, and I think the deleted line only detracts from it.
Me:  Notice I didn’t disagree; I only groused that I’d worked hard on it.

The annoying thing was that Matt was absolutely right! As much as I’d worked on that line—and it was a good line—it didn’t belong in the pitch. Truth be told, the pitch was better without the line, and the client loved the idea.

The more time we put into any one part of a work, the more loathe we are to cut it out. It is all too easy for us to fall into a mindset that won’t allow us to even consider removing something if we’ve put even a modicum of work into it. And that’s a perfectly understandable instinct. But we must nevertheless fight it.

The important thing to keep in mind is that, as creators, our loyalty is to our creation as a whole, not to any individual parts of it. It can be difficult, but we continually take the proverbial step back to look at the big picture and cut out what needs to be cut, and don’t mourn it as a loss or a waste.

Because it is not a waste.  No matter what we cut, if we remove it for the right reasons, the end result will be the better for it, and there will be that much more to be proud of.  Moreover, in many media, from carpentry to code, you can save what you’ve removed and use it later on another project. Finally, the more effort put into part of a project, even a part that doesn’t make it into the final creation, the more we learn from the process. It’s never a waste so long as you walk away having learned from the experience.