design · environment

UW students focus on how to get local food to their dining hall tables

Beth Kelley
local food madness
getting local foods to a big institution can be tricky.

As you’ve probably figured out by now, I am a huge proponent of consciously choosing locally sourced food and products for consumption. Not only does it use less fossil fuels, I think buying and eating local also creates a better, healthier, and more enriching environment for us all.

It’s easy enough for individuals to choose and cultivate local food, but how does a larger institution like a university, or individuals living on campus, get access to the same local goods? One class at the University of Washington did a problem-solving project to come up with solutions to eating local. From the University of Washington:

Recipes that come boxed with fresh ingredients ready to cook? How about a monthlong incentive program inspiring a commitment to fresh local food? What would it take?

The class was Introduction to Interaction Design, Art 381, and the assignment Tad Hirsch gave his students was straightforward: Design a way to improve access to fresh local food on the UW campus.

“The students looked at how the UW community currently feeds itself,” Hirsch said, “and considered a range of factors that currently make it hard for students, faculty and staff to eat locally.” He said they took an interaction design approach to the problem, asking what experiences they wanted to provide for people. “They then had to come up with concrete proposals to make local food more accessible.”

It’s all pretty theoretical for this undergraduate class of mostly juniors, he said. “But we hope to take some of these ideas and make them tangible. There’s the notion that this stuff is meant to go out into the world.”

Hirsch is an assistant professor who came to the UW a couple of months back from Intel Corp. in Oregon. He said he is pleased to be part of the UW’s “small but mighty” program in interaction design.

So, what did the students come up with? Some pretty interesting stuff, actually:

Read their solutions at From crate to plate: Students study how to improve campus access to fresh local food

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architecture · design · disease · health

Designing and Building for Wellness

Beth Kelley
An overlay of two images: one of a river delta...
What does it mean to design with a person's wellness in mind? One architect has an idea. Image via Wikipedia

Great blog post from The Patron Saint of Architecture about what it means for her to be an architect and build and design things for people’s overall health and wellness:

As architects, we seek to inspire those who move through the environments we create.  It’s also our job to understand how the space will be used and create elements that support that use.  The last leg of the stool, a part we often overlook, is the need to make buildings that support wellness.  Even architects who design healthcare buildings often forget about this one as they work to meet many other challenges related to budget, program, operational  and code requirements.  Maybe it’s because wellness is such a slippery term.  Much like the term “green,” “wellness” is often bandied about, a buzzword that makes some aspect of a product, design or organization sound like it’s good for us. So how do we know if it really is- much less translate that into design elements?  I have been thinking about this issue for a while and even found an interesting website devoted to defining wellness complete with helpful questionnaires.

I’ve come to the conclusion that true wellness is multidimensional and positively impacts our physical, mental and social state of being.  With that in mind, I have also observed that, as a profession, we kind of, sort of, dip our toe in the waters of designing for wellness.  We embrace sustainable building standards, evidence-based design, lean design, even socially conscious strategies.  However, these are just quantifiers.  Building blocks of the wellness leg of the architecture stool, but not enough as stand-alones.  True architecture of wellness must incorporate all of these measures, but spring from a much deeper intent.

Read her recommendations for building spaces that promote wellness at her blog post: architecture of wellness

 

Uncategorized

TSA improving the airport experience through music

Beth Kelley
Christmas card "Happy Christmas!" wi...
The TSA at LAX will sing you a merry Christmas. Image via Wikipedia

The airport can be a stressful and harried space, and usually isn’t helped by security. However, at LAX that same security crew is hoping to make the airport more, well, jolly:

Travel isn’t usually a highlight of the holidays, but at Los Angeles International Airport some of the Transportation Security Administration workers enjoy the season so much they sing.

True to its duties, the LAX TSA Chorus isn’t joking. Its singers are actually TSA employees who don Santa hats during the holiday season and perform in the middle of the airport.

Ray Matute, the director of the chorus, tells Weekend Edition Sunday host Audie Cornish that the quizzical looks the singers get from hassled travelers soon turn to smiles.

“It really puts the good face — and the human face — of TSA on the map,” he says. Matute’s passion for music led him to found the chorus a few years back. “It gives all of us creative people here within the organization an outlet.”

During its 45-minute show, the chorus sings the usual Christmas carols — Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman, Silver Bells — but also slips in some of the singers’ own favorites, like What a Wonderful World and You Are So Beautiful.

There’s video of the chorus performing during last year’s holiday season here, with a report from USA Today.

more at NPR: At LAX, TSA Workers Sing Cheer Into Holiday Travel

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behavior · community · emotion · happiness · play · youtube

Laughter infects Berlin Train – the power of others and place

Beth Kelley

People often wonder just how powerful the people and spaces around us can be. Well, it turns out they can be pretty dang powerful! Just check out the video. Thanks Guy Kawasaki for sharing this out:

Giggles spread through an U-Bahn train in Berlin after one woman starts laughing. Happiness: the best infectious thing you can catch on a train.

 

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architecture · community · creativity · environment

Yarn bomber decorates public statues for Christmas

Beth Kelley1 Comment

This time of year, when it gets dark and cold, we make our spaces brighter and cheerier with lights and greenery and sweet, rich food. Or, in this case, some nicely knitted decorations to share and brighten up a public space:

Everett Herald Yarn Bomber
Three-year-old Kirsten Mitchell can barely contain her excitement as Renee Walstad helps her "yarn bomb" a statue outside of the Imagine Children's Museum in Everett on Tuesday afternoon. Walstad handed out several knit ornaments and other decorations for children to place around the intersection. By Julie Muhlstein, Herald Columnist

A pompom here, a knitted ornament there, Everett has been hit by a yarn bomber.

“I just wanted to spread some Christmas cheer,” Renee Walstad said.

Walstad is part of a warm-and-fuzzy movement being embraced by creative types all over the world.

Her efforts are modest compared with the ways some yarn artists decorate public places. For some yarn bombers, what began as a covert operation has blossomed into commissioned public art projects.

Since early this month, Walstad, 28, has been putting knitted and crocheted decorations on Everett’s downtown sculptures. She calls it a “Yarnvent calendar.”

“You know, like Advent,” the Lake Stevens woman said. “Every day before Christmas, I put up an ornament.”

If you stopped for coffee on Everett’s Colby Avenue on Wednesday, you may have noticed Walstad’s cheery calling cards. Near the Starbucks shop, the statue of three little girls holding hands — Georgia Gerber’s “Along Colby” — finds the girls dressed for the season in knitted red and green anklets. One of the bronze figures held a knitted Christmas ornament.

read more about her creations: ‘Yarn bomber’ leaving her knitted mark on Everett’s public art

Merry Christmas!

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anthropology · creativity · culture · learning

Slow school movement

Beth Kelley
lutin waldorfThe holidays are a time to reflect on our lives, our jobs, and what we want for the new year. It might also be a good time to think about ways to cut back on our obligations and “must dos”. Especially for our children at school.

I appreciated this op-ed piece questioning the value of play versus academic work in kindergarten, pre-k, and the lower grades. The piece is US-oriented but it does refer to data from elsewhere, and to the ‘ethnographic record’ :0)

While the U.S. pushes their kids to excel earlier and earlier, science is finding it might not be the most efficient way to learn:

Students from countries where reading is not taught until age six actually do better on standardized reading tests than those from countries that begin at five or earlier, as in the USA. Children who start even later catch up quickly: Suggate collected extensive data from about 400 students in New Zealand – some in public schools and some in private “Waldorf” schools, where reading teaching doesn’t even begin until age seven. Difference in reading achievement between the two groups disappeared by age 10.

Research comparing Waldorf school students’ academic skills to those of public school students shows even more encouraging results. In a report exploring the value of the Waldorf approach for public school reform, Ida Oberman found that second-graders from four Waldorf-style schools underperformed in comparison to 10 “peer-alike sites.” Yet by eighth grade, these students could match and even outperform comparison sites on state school achievement tests.

If nothing is lost from academic achievement when training starts later, and some competencies even may be gained, why then the rush to begin it? Why buy toddler flash-cards, fund pre-K academies, and start kindergartners on reading and math when children could be otherwise engaged, developing other kinds of skills and dispositions, such as empathy and creativity?

more at: What can slow schools teach us?

There is also great research coming out of Denmark vs. the U.S. that find kids that aren’t taught to read until 6 or 7 (Denmark) vs. 4 or 5 (U.S.) do better overall, similar to the study in New Zealand.

Interesting to see how taking it easy can sometimes be better for learning.

brain · happiness · mental health · music

Treating the Whole Patient

Beth Kelley
Icon from Nuvola icon theme for KDE 3.x.
Treating the whole patient, including mind and body, is becoming "cool" again. Image via Wikipedia

The faculty at University of Washington is pretty progressive in a lot of its research surrounding neuroscience and the mind, especially when it comes to Mental Health Care:

Researchers and professors at the UW, such as Dr. Jürgen Unützer, are driving innovative ways to improve access to high quality mental health care delivered in a manner that treats the whole person. Their efforts are focused on health care models that integrate behavioral health services into the primary care clinic and other heath care arenas, where the patients already receive care and have established provider relationships. Known as collaborative or integrated care, these models put the patient at the center of a health team – including their physician, a care coordinator and a psychiatric consultant – that collaborates on a patient’s treatment plan.

Unützer says he knew his research into new models of mental heath care delivery was on the right track when a patient described feeling like a tennis ball. This patient had a combination of health problems associated with diabetes along with alcohol problems and depression. As is common in the current health care system, the patient was being bounced around to different specialists to treat his individual symptoms. Dr. Unützer was concerned that patients like this, with a combination of behavioral health and medical conditions, were falling through the cracks and not receiving care that treats the whole person.

“The patient expects that the various providers are all talking to each other, but that is often not the case,” he says. “Who’s connecting the dots? Patients expect their care providers to sync up and know what’s going on with all of their conditions.”

More at UW Professional & Continuing Education.

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Uncategorized

Kinect Helping With Senior Health

Beth Kelley
Tiger Place, an independent living center in Missouri, uses technology such as Kinect to closely monitor seniors’ movement to help prevent functional decline that can lead to falls and decreased mobility. From Microsoft.

From a Microsoft press release, but still really interesting: a researcher is looking at using Kinect to track a senior citizen’s walking more regularly than the usual once or twice a year to make sure they’ve still got that pep in their step:

What if technology could help prevent falls, and in some cases even prolong lives?

Marilyn Rantz and her colleagues at the University of Missouri are researching just that, using Microsoft’s Kinect to measure and monitor subtle changes in the gait and movement of older people. Using technology to measure the way people walk more completely and daily, rather than at bi-yearly doctor’s appointments, can give healthcare professionals a chance to intervene sooner.

[Independent Living Center] Tiger Place focuses on monitoring its residents with a network of sensors placed in apartments, a monitoring network that now includes Kinect sensors in many rooms. What’s more, Tiger Place is an “age in place” facility, meaning seniors don’t have to move to different housing as they get older and require more assistance – the new services they need as they age are brought in to them, Rantz said.

Several apartments in Tiger Place have a Kinect mounted near the ceiling in the living room, where day after day the devices gather a mountain of data about the resident’s movement and motion.

Helping seniors is just one of a growing number of healthcare applications for Kinect.

Doctors are also using Kinect to help stroke patients regain movement. Surgeons are using it to access information without leaving the operating room and in the process sacrificing sterility. Healthcare workers are even using it to help with physical therapy and children with developmental disabilities or Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).

Thus, the genesis of the so-called “Kinect Effect” – a term coined in the hallways and conference rooms of Microsoft to describe the device’s increasingly widespread appeal and diversity of uses.

Read the entire release at Kinect Effect Reaches Into Hospitals, Senior Centers.

I’m a huge fan of Kinect hacks, especially when a Kinect is modified to help people move better in their homes and everyday surroundings. It is relatively cheap compared to a lot of other medical equipment, and the hack is often fun to use as well as being practical.

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behavior · design · happiness

Designing for solitude

Beth Kelley

Sometimes we need to be alone. But it can be hard in an urban environment. How do we design a space to provide a quiet place to re-center ourselves, or just hear a phone call.

From IxDA, designing for solitude:

We live in a world where our ability to be connected and constantly available has changed in a remarkably short period of time, with profound effects on our behaviour. As designers, we are often asked to reflect this always-on state in the products, software and services we help to create.

Because of this, finding solitude – our ability to switch off and contemplate – is becoming more difficult. What are the affects of this on us and our relationships with each other? Is it important for our creativity to detach ourselves from the world around us? And what might the products and services we design for an off state look like?

 

creativity · environment

Friday guerilla art

Beth Kelley

While I don’t condone defacing public street signs, I liked the sentiment. It made me think about how easy it is to make people smile and make a space more friendly with a word.
Happy Friday!