Pleased to see the DRAFT IDEF Baseline Functional Requirements v1.0 have been released. I am proud to serve as the Vice Chair of the User Experience Committee and would love to hear comments on the Usability guidelines.
World IA Day: City Data
I had the chance to fill in for Andrew Nicklin, NYC Director of Research and Development at DoITT, at World IA Day on February 11, 2013. The event was held after Winter Storm Nemo hit the region. We had anticipated up to 330 attendees, but the storm knocked out commuter trains, and road conditions in New Jersey and upstate New York kept many home. Still, an unexpectedly large crowd of 130 came out to celebrate Information Architecture.
I presented an updated version of my IA for Emergency response presentation, this time focusing on the collection and dissemination of city data and community engagement and how information architects and design professionals can participate.
Information Architecture and City Data from Noreen Whysel
I am working on a collection of presentations and talk summaries that will be posted to the World IA Day website.
The Information Architecture of Emergency Response
Now that I have been accepted into the Pratt Institute Masters of Library and Information Science program, I have started a journey to document the convergence between two of my favorite disciplines, Geographic Information Systems and Information Architecture. In the past few months, I’ve noticed an explosion of conferences and meetups addressing the geolocational aspects of digital applications for the web and especially mobile. I am a member of 16 different Meetup groups, eight of which address some aspect of the User Experience umbrella, four of which specialize in mapping and/or GIS, two somewhat general technology groups and two more that approach these disciplines from the fascinating perspectives of digital semiotics and data visualization and infographics. Each have hosted topics on user experience and location based design at some point. Many maddeningly scheduled for the same evening.
Commiserating with some of my colleagues with whom I helped create the NYC GeoSymposium 2001-2011-2021 back in November, we have found that in each of our practices, cartographers, GIS specialists and those working with visualizing location based information are finding a great need for design assistance. This seems natural, if somewhat belated and perhaps even surprising. Think of some of the most beautifully designed images and one must of course reflect on the maps of National Geographic magazine, those gorgeous squares of folded paper that come in every issue. Certainly, there is a longstanding sensibility around the design of useful and pleasing maps. Increasingly, these maps are in our hands on tablets and smart phones, so optimizing the display of information that used to be represented in enormous, rolled or folded pieces of paper is a challenge for our community.
Let’s Talk About Maps
So I am doing my part in continuing this discussion of the place for design in online mapping. In March, I presented a talk in New Orleans at the 2012 IA Summit on The Information Architecture of Emergency Response. The presentation explored the evolution of technology in emergency response, with a special focus on advances in geographic systems, incident management, social media and policy in New York City since September 11, 2001. In it, I cover questions like:
- What technologies do emergency responders in NYC use?
- How have events like 9/11 and other incidents influenced technology advances?
- What effect, if any, has the change from a Law Enforcement Mayor to a Media Mayor had on data policy?
- What are the challenges and opportunities of open government data?
- How is social media being used in NYC and elsewhere to engage the public in emergency preparedness and response?
- And, finally, are app contests and hackathons an effective way to improve public services in difficult economic times?
I reprised the presentation, modified somewhat for an emergency responder audience for the Office of Emergency Management’s annual Women’s History Month Breakfast, where I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Dr. Irene Osborne of Mount Sinai Hospital, who treated patients’ internal injuries during the Haiti earthquake, and IA Institute founder and Development Manager, Bev Corwin, who presented on language translation in crisis situations, in particular a handheld Creole language translation device that she developed with colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University.
Continuing the Discussion
I have been asked to present another redux of Information Architecture of Emergency Response at the IxDA NYC’s July meetup. I hope to conclude the IxDA with a Town Hall discussion of how the IA community can support emergency response efforts throughout each of our own neighborhoods. I ran out of time in New Orleans and would like to get a good conversation going with the UX community on issues and ideas for further exploration. My daughter’s 6th grade graduation is June 7, so I will be missing the IxDA meeting that focuses on the Social Lives of Maps, with UX designer Ray Cha and Green Map’s Thomas Turnbull. But I understand the GIS community will have someone there. If you attend, please introduce yourself to Jack Eichenbaum, who founded GISMO, a 20+ year old, NYC-based GIS user group. In the meantime, stay tuned for RSVP information for the July event.
It may also be interesting for my UX friends to hear (as I’ve heard through the grapevine) that ESRI, leader in GIS software, is developing an internal UX practice and should be hiring soon.
Slide decks of my IA of Emergency Response talks are now available at Slideshare:
March 23:
March 28:
This Roadmap Could Use a GPS
I just finished reading Roadmap for the Digital City: Achieving New York City’s Digital Future (PDF 2.17MB). A glaring economic concern struck me, which the report acknowledges but does not address adequately, despite devoting several pages to it, and that is the issue of access by underserved populations.
Solutions offered by the plan include noble goals. Free wireless access in parks, training and services in public libraries, senior centers and public housing facilities, a pilot project to bring computing into the homes and schools of 18,000 sixth grade students. These programs directly address the cost of access and a disparity of technology learning in our community. I don’t want to discount these efforts, but do wish point out that the issue of access of the disadvantaged goes well beyond free wireless access.
It is disheartening to learn in the NY Times today that “free” Wi-Fi means, “The Wi-Fi in the parks would be free to all users for up to three 10-minute periods per month. Beyond that, users would pay 99 cents for each 24-hour period in which they log on.” The Times reports that, “It would be free to all subscribers to the broadband services of Cablevision or Time Warner,” which may include public housing where these services are available. In fact, the free Wi-Fi deal was a condition for renewing the cable franchise with the City. I would be interested in learning how many public housing residents are broadband subscribers with these services.
Here is another example: I have been providing computer training to an acquaintance who is a senior citizen and retired bookkeeper. She lives alone, is seeking employment, has worked with computers extensively in the past, but is about 15 years behind on the latest accounting technologies. She has a netbook with internet access but no mobile phone. For her, an iPhone app is useless and Twitter is bewildering (though she does like Facebook). Nothing really works the way she expects it to, including NYC.gov.
A large part of the Digital Roadmap involves community engagement through initiatives like PlaNYC’s Change By Us and the NYC Big Apps contest. Change By Us is a map-based website to collect thoughts from citizens about how to make New York City more livable. The NYC Big Apps Contest, an application development contest, sponsored by BMW, that invites developers to utilize open data collections from the City to address citizen needs, has indeed been a highly successful and exciting initiative raising awareness of engineering talent in NYC among the VC community and the technology industry at large. Keep in mind however, that it required an internet access to submit ideas to Change By Us and the Big Apps contest. So the citizenry making the requests are already connected.
The Digital Roadmap report notes challenges including staffing constraints and complicated legacy systems, and plans to a large degree to let its open government platform allow the developer community to create apps to address citizen needs, which they hope would be more cost effective than creating the services themselves. This crowdsourcing is indeed an effective way to get rapid development of products that the population actually wants and I am a big fan of the NYC Big Apps Contest. But while the Roadmap notes concern that the economically disadvantaged may not have access to the iPhones and Android technology that most of the Big Apps winners develop for, it’s the flashier apps that have the most appeal among those that are tuned into the contest.
There are competing needs at stake here. On one hand are the VC funders who want to earn money on apps that serve a deep pocketed consumer market and the developers who want to wow potential funders and employers with their mastery of the latest programs for the coolest toys. On the other are the City’s poor, senior citizens and those with developmental needs for which these toys may not be affordable, accessible or easy to use. The city is counting on corporate contract terms and good-hearted hackers to address citizen needs.
I understand that the City is forced to look to outside developers to serve these needs because tax revenue is so low. The strategy to open data and let developers come up with apps is a great way to provide services on a large scale, but not the best way to serve the needs of the underserved. And cutting inadequate deals with providers is more a way to say “We did it,” than to say “We did it right.” There needs to be an incentive for building apps for economically disadvantaged groups.
This all sounds very dreary. I should note that I am excited to see the level of engagement and openness in city government. After participating for 20 years in grass roots efforts to create an open discussion and sharing of public data, via my involvement with GISMO and the Municipal Arts Society’s Community Information Technology Initiative, it’s a step in the right direction.
But we can do more. And I’m working on an idea for involving my own developer community (IA, UX, GIS, etc) in coming up with a plan. If you are interested, please let me know.
Open Government Forum at Internet Week NYC
Over the next couple of days I am going to post summaries of Internet Week sessions that I attended last month. Here is the first, a panel on open government in NYC:
In June, I attended a panel on Open Goverment in NYC, hosted by Time Warner as part of Internet Week NYC. I joined my friend, Queens Community Board 3 member, Tom Lowenhaupt, who has been advocating for a .NYC top level domain for over ten years. Given some of the road blocks he has faced in his campaign, I knew attending an Open Government forum with him would be interesting.
Presented in a panel format, the event focused on Setting the Digital Standard for open government. NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith introduced Jesse Hempel, a senior writer for Fortune Magazine, who moderated a panel of experts in government information technology including:
- Adam Sharp, CEO, Twitter
- Carol Post, Commissioner, NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT)
- Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer, NYC
- Seth Pinsky, President, NYC Economic Development Corporation
Commissioner Post opened with a brief description of the city’s plans for a digital roadmap, including a range of web 2.0 tools that allows the City to to communicate and join with citizens to make a better city, break through hardened boundaries between people, neighborhoods, agencies, etc. “The fundamental responsibility of government being to allow access to information,” she said.
An example is the “311 to Text” project, a platform for app developers, that allows the power of the 311 service to reach a mobile community, in particular, underpriviledged people whose primary access to city information and the internet at large is via their mobile phones. Carole indicated that the 311 phone channel has been very successful, so it is a priority of her office to get the message about the system and its various access points out to users.
There is even a 311 iPhone app (clearly for those who can afford an iPhone). I have a neighbor who would love that.
Image from iTunes, Apple Inc.
Chief Digital Officer, Rachel Sterne, the 27-year-old founder of citizen journalism site GroundReport and an adjunct professor of social media and entrepreneurship at the Columbia Business School, described the City’s digital domain, reaching 2.8 million on NYC.gov, 1.4 million on social media. Some of these include @nycgov, an umbrella Twitter account for the city, @nycmayorsoffice, which also has its own hashtag #askmike, referring to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In addition, 311 NYC Twitter account (@311nyc) focuses on service related questions, maintaining a public record of issues. Agencies also have twitter accounts, the and similar department Twitter feeds). The primary focus for these efforts is access, open government, engagement and accessibility.
NYC Economic Development Corporation President, Seth Pinsky, took a turn explaining his view of the role of technology in NYC. “New technology lowers the barriers to entry in industries where NYC is traditionally a leader. It helps industries transition to new business models, promoting entrepreneurship, and highlight talented workforce,” he said.
Adam Sharp of Twitter discussed how he sees governments using Twitter and compared how NYC measures up. “Technology is good at wholesaling mass audience, and is scalable,” he said. But there is a growing gap of people who have actually met their pubic servants. There has been confusion about who to contact for which services. Technology like Twitter allows increased interaction and communication with public figures.
Mr. Sharp sees innovation particularly at the federal level. USGS is using Twitter to spot seismographic activity 2 minutes earlier. The agency has seismographs in various parts of the country that measure earthquake activity with feedback within 60 seconds of the quake; however, they have found that often tweets from citizens experiencing quakes allow them to locate possible activity faster, so they have set up the experimental Twitter Earthquake Detection project to test how well Twitter can work in reporting possible disasters. I had tweeted about this myself the day before. For a more local example, Adam noted that Newark, NJ’s mayor was using it for response for snow removal during winter storms, showing up Mayor Bloomberg a bit after this past year’s storm mitigation problem, and which citizens were quite vocal about on the social media at the time.
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| Image from Recover.gov, U.S. Dept of the Interior. |
Mr. Pinsky described social media in government as a process. The first generation of tools are designed to get the information out to the public (like press releases, broadcasts). The second generation gets information from the public (web forms, phone systems). The third generation, where we are now, is interaction: the open and ongoing conversation between government and citizens (Twitter, Big Apps Challenge, Change By Us – a new initiative launched on July 7, 2010, which is very similar to the Institute for Urban Design’s By the City, For the City app). The hard part to all this, says Seth, is linking incoming and outgoing messages to see the conversation. That is something that needs some work.
Ms. Sterne said that the BigApps competition was launched in response to the significant amount of data at agencies that was either not available to the public or not really being used by the agencies. Big Apps gets that data out to development community to create applications that citizens can use. This in turn, spurred the creation of several businesses, which is in line with the City’s push toward fostering a friendlier environment for entrepreneurship in New York City, a noticeable part of PlaNYC 2030, the City’s plan for a “greener, greater New York,” with a ideas for improving the quality of life and economic welfare of New York City.
The second round of the Big Apps Competition this year, doubled the number of data sets and had a much higher number of responses from developers and sponsors. This year, sponsor BMW doubled its prize offering and set up venture capital fund for startup businesses.
Some of the Big Apps Winners:
- Roadify – (2010) traffic/transit delays, parking spaces; draws from google transit, mta data, crowd sourced information.
- donteat.at – (2010) list of restaurants with health code violations
- My City Way – (2009 winner that ultimately received a $300,000 grant from Michael Bloomberg) broad range of city data, wifi hotspots, restaurants
At this point, Ms. Hempel began asking directed questions tot he panelists. She asked panelist Adam Sterne how much government activity on Twitter is citizen led. He said that this it isn’t necessarily happening yet, but will happen when government sees it as more than a broadcast forum, and when it relieves pressure on other platforms, such as calls. Cities are learning lessons from the private sector about adopting a customer service approach, proactively looking for mentions of their brands and engaging customers. It is a messaging and marketing focus that will evolve as more initiatives like BigApps and Change By Us come into the public eye.
Ms. Hempel asked Carole Post how and whether each City agencies interact with each other. Post stated that the mission of agencies is not to exist in a silo, an she encourages interaction with other agencies and the digital office. As someone who has been involved with data advocacy through GISMO, I can certainly attest to how far we’ve come in getting agencies to talk. It took years to get a working, flexible base map of the city and years longer to get data shared in a meaningful way. I worked on the City Information Technology Initiative for the Municipal Art Society in 2004 to demonstrate to local community boards the power of layering GIS data on a map, with the goal of eventually getting an open, accessible map onto the Department of City Planning website. NYCityMap was launched in 2006.
Ms. Post says that agencies have called DoITT to see what of their data they can pull out for public mining. She sees more and more city workers are finding venues to pull folks together outside of their daily mission, sort of like what Drive author, Daniel H. Pink advocates. They may not know what the end result will be, but they do make the data available and see what happens. Agencies have come to terms with the fact that these days people expect government to be “open and unlocked.”
Mr. Pinsky said that BigApps 3.0 will offer opportunity to significantly expand this initiative, with more sponsorship money and new law that opens up even more data. “This allows the marketplace to select the most effective app for different datasets,” he said. “When citizens judge the apps they are selecting most effective one.”
Twitter’s Adam Sharp commented on NYC’s approach to innovation. “The proof is in the result,” he said. “Great third party developer ecosystems help tear down walls and barriers to development.”
And now the citizen response. Ms. Hempel passed around a microphone to allow audience members to ask questions. Here are some of the interesting ones:
What is NYC doing for multi language community?
Carole Post responded that 311 exists as a gateway to services. It is offered in 170 languages, with a language line translator. 311 online and NYC.gov also prioritizes language access.
How about expanding access to people who don’t have iPhone or Internet?
Ms Post said that $40 million of federal stimulus fund is going toward expanding broadband access and knowledge of how technology can improve education and communication. The City plans to extend access through libraries and community centers.
Ms. Sterne also says that public/private partnerships are working to improve access. Mobile strategy, SMS and text information for those who don’t have broadband at home
Mr. Pinsky ensured us that the City has not plans for eliminating the phone system, and that they plan technical improvements to that system as well.
Mr. Sharp says that “fast follow” via text messaging means that you don’t even need to have a twitter account in order to get information.
How do people find out about these services?
Ms. Sterne said that they do outreach through the New York City Housing Authority and other NYC programs, as well as through public/private partnerships.
How does the City plan to leverage the acquisition of .NYC TLD?
Ms. Post answered that DoITT is “ready to capitalize on .NYC.” (The City, in fact, committed to acquiring the .NYC TLD in 2009). Mr. Pinsky added that a .NYC TLD represents “…an opportunity to allow locally based company to brand and associate themselves with NYC.” The long term goal is to use the initiative to promote NYC innovation.
Tom pressed. “NYC has apparently decided on what the economic development plans for .NYC is, what about public input?” He asked.
Mr. Pinsky said that they are looking to public to help, and that it will be a collaborative process. However, no one on the panel seemed ready to talk about what their plans are yet.
Okay. I was waiting for my friend Tom to ask a question about the .NYC Top Level Domain, and he wasn’t going to take any one-line talking point. Tom’s vision is to have a .NYC top level domain that gives citizens a geocoded directory of information about resources their neighborhood and the city at large. Not just businesses shouting “I am NYC!” but civic groups, community services, block associations and personal websites. I added privately that with the 128-bit IPv6 internet, which expands the possible addresses (Wikipedia’s article on IPv6 cites 2128 or 340 undecillion – 3.4
City Council Hearing on 311 and Community Boards
Today, I went to a NYC City Council Public Hearing of the Committee on Technology in Government, on the role of the City’s 59 Community Boards in the 311 system. 311 is the new number that New Yorkers dial to ask questions about New York City services, make complaints and to get information, such as library hours, bus and trash pickup schedules, etc. Community boards act as local advocates to their district constituents, recording complaints, alerting service organizations to district needs, issuing liquor licenses and making recommendations to the city planning agencies.
I arrived late and did not hear the testimony Dept of Information Technology & Telecommunications, who oversees the 311 system. A representative of the city of Hampton, VA was also present to give testimony on the sucess of their 311 system, which was implemented in 1999. I did hear the testimony of 6 Community Boards, representing three boroughs. I gathered from their testimony that DoITT was not providing the level of access to the system that the CBs require to do their jobs.
A handout of the DoITT testimony, which I read later on the train home, confirmed that they did not address the more specific information needs that the CBs require to effectively act as an advocate for their constituents. DoITT said that they offer aggregate data to CBs, in order to protect the privacy of citizens making the calls. CBs countered that they need specific incident data in order to respond to constituents on the status of complaints. Additionally, while CBs have received the computers, software, internet hookup, training and technical support visits from DoITT staff, many indicated that they do not have access to the data at all. (One CB District Manager joked that the computer support technicians had visited their office several times, but only to upgrade security on the system).
All testifiers from CBs said they strongly support the 311 system as a way to aggregate data and ease the volume of non-critical calls received on a daily basis, but required more involvement, i.e., access to data, in order to record and act on specific complaints in their community and handle more complex problems involving more than a single agency (which 311 is not currently equipped to do effectively – when the call is recorded and forwarded to an agency to handle, the incident is closed. If the wrong agency gets the call, or if another agency is required to handle a portion of the call, there is no process for feedback to the original complainer, or to 311 for that matter, that further action is required). Aggregate data, in the case of pothole complaints, for example, does not show where potholes occur, nor could it show that 20% of potholes in a given district are on a single street, which would indicate an infrastructure problem that the CB would want to address in its planning recommendations.
The CB representatives agreed that detailed incident data and geolocation information could be made accessible from the system, while still protecting the privacy of individual complainants. Still, some CBs suggested that it could be useful in identifying frequent complainers (CBs already know who they are in their districts) and that certain CB staff people who have been calling in complaints from district offices should be identified as such in incident logs rather than treated as citizen complainers.
311 is a great tool for gathering and handling complaints efficiently in a city as large as New York City. It would be a shame if citizens’ primary local advocate were left out of the process. I am heartened that the City Council is taking the issue seriously.
Community Information Technology Initiative
Here is a new initiative I am working on with the Municipal Art Society. The Community Information Technology Initiative at http://www.myciti.org/ is an online mapping program being used by five pilot New York City Community Boards to aid in community planning, development and emergency management. I am having a great time with this project! In fact, in honor of GIS Day, I had the pleasure of attending a NYC Council hearing where they issued a proclamation recognizing the importance of Geographic Information Systems to the city and presented official copies to several organizations that I am affiliated with, including GISMO, a user group, the Municipal Art Society and NYPIRG’s C-MAP initiative.
The website that I am working on for the American Museum of Natural History is coming along well. There was a meeting on Friday that I couldn’t attend, but word was that the directors only had criticized the content, not the design. I did get a chance to sit down with the department head today and it seems to be on track. Yay!
By the way, I’m still waiting for that Turkish recipe. Maybe I’ll have to scout around Epicurious.com….