Workshop

At our sixth workshop in the NYC BigApps Ideation & Prototyping Workshop series, we learned about different techniques for testing and prototyping products and services. We heard from two NYC-based entrepreneurs who have worked extensively with the communities they serve: Alexandra Meis, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer of Kinvolved and Georges Clement, Founder of JustFix NYC and a previous NYC BigApps winner. The biggest takeaway of the session was that we need to build with our community constituents, not for them – which includes prototyping, testing, and designing alongside communities.

At our fifth workshop in the NYC BigApps Ideation & Prototyping workshop series, we focused on deepening participants’ understanding of the prototyping process and why it is so important for design. One of the biggest tips shared is that you can literally prototype anything, and that prototyping is a mindset to be leveraged throughout the entire design process. To prove that, we kicked off the workshop by asking participants to create a prototype that represents their life story or something important to them. In under 5 minutes, we saw elaborate play-doh models, string diagrams, and even a pop-up construction paper diagram. The whole point of the exercise was to get everyone thinking with their hands.

At our fourth workshop in the NYC BigApps Ideation & Prototyping workshop series, we explored different practices for rapid brainstorming and ideation. We also celebrated an important milestone for New York City Open Data as part of the City’s inaugural Open Data Week.

Five years to the day after New York City’s Open Data Law was signed into law, we had the opportunity to partner with Mayor’s Office of Tech + Innovation, Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics, the NYC Department of Information Technology + Telecommunications, and the NYC Department of City Planning to announce the launch of and demo the new, user-friendly home page for the NYC Open Data portal. Open Data is an important milestone not only for New York City, but also for all of us as designers, developers, and entrepreneurs working on this year’s BigApps challenges. It is a tool that many of our teams will be able to use to discover neighborhood data and uncover insights through this Ideation & Prototyping process.

Our third workshop, held at Civic Hall on Tuesday, February 21, explored best approaches to synthesizing research. By learning the importance of synthesis and creating user personas, participants had the opportunity to dig into the discovery phase of our big design challenge: “How might we use data & technology to improve the quality of life for seniors, youth & immigrants in NYC?”

We kicked off our second workshop at Civic Hall on Wednesday, February 8th with two main goals: 1) to refine the problem we want to solve and 2) to learn how to conduct a user interview.

We began the session by refining our problem statements. When presented with a big design challenge, “How might we use data & technology to improve the quality of life for seniors, youth & immigrants in NYC?”, it’s important to get even more specific about what we want to solve for to make the process easier during the research phase.

Last week at Civic Hall, we launched our first Ideation & Prototyping workshop for NYC BigApps 2017 with a packed room of inspiring designers, developers, educators, students, entrepreneurs, and government enthusiasts. This first workshop focused on introducing the concept of human centered design – a process that puts the user at the center of the research, design, and creation of a product, service, or experience.