Designing Services for Housing
The Project
In partnership with New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development (HPD) this project will explore ways to facilitate the involvement of community residents in the development of housing-related services in neighborhoods with significant public and private sector investment leveraged by HPD.
This project will explore two tracks running concurrently through the spring of 2012. The first initiative will revolve around a hands-on collaboration between Public Policy Lab fellows and staff, Parsons faculty, and HPD. The second program will be a more independent research initiative by Parsons faculty and students, with opportunities for the fellow team to observe and respond.
Over the summer and fall of 2012, the project team will synthesize and document findings, select the most promising ideas, further refine those concepts, and develop preliminary implementation proposals for pilot projects by HPD.
This track focuses on HPD’s mechanisms for engaging with potential and current residents of subsidized housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers. Faculty and students affiliated with the Parsons DESIS Lab, private-sector professionals awarded fellowships by the nonprofit Public Policy Lab, and HPD staff will work together to assess HPD’s current service offerings and generate concepts for improving service delivery, for New Yorkers and the agency.
The project team will assess the way that HPD interacts with New Yorkers through the process of marketing affordable units and through online information channels and physical offices, and will offer ideas for improving those interfaces to enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. Proposals may include, for example, the development of mobile apps or design enhancements for service delivery locations.
This area of investigation explores ways to promote more connected and successful communities, particularly by enabling residents’ involvement in the design and delivery of local services and amenities.
Our Partner
New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) is the nation’s largest municipal housing preservation and development agency. Its mission is to promote quality housing and viable neighborhoods for New Yorkers through education, outreach, loan and development programs and enforcement of housing quality standards. It is responsible for implementing Mayor Bloomberg’s New Housing Marketplace Plan to finance the construction or preservation of 165,000 units of affordable housing by 2014. Since the plan’s inception, nearly 126,990 affordable homes have been created or preserved. For more information, visit www.nyc.gov/hpd.
Our Fellows
Liana Dragoman
Liana is an experience designer and researcher, multi-disciplinary artist, university educator, and community organizer. She sees experience-design praxis as a tool for enabling positive, social change — change that is shaped through meaningful and sustaining designs built from the ground up. Liana has over eight years of design experience within the academic and private sectors, working with clients such as Astra Zeneca, Prostate Cancer Foundation, and DuPont. She has taught university coursework in emerging media studies on both a full and part-time basis and currently teaches at Moore College of Art and Design. Her years of experience in the classroom and in the field enrich her current role as Lead Experience Architect at NTT Data’s Experience Design Group. Liana received her MFA in Art and Technology from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her BA in Media Arts (art/cultural studies) from Chatham University. Liana pursued post-graduate work in Temple University’s Film and Media Arts Program and Rutgers University’s Mini-Masters in User Experience Design. In addition to Liana’s design work and teaching, she is a practicing artist and community organizer. She co-organized TEDxPhilly in 2010 and 2011 as well as TEDxPhillyWomen in 2010. With a group of neighbors, she transformed a deteriorated city lot into a City Harvest community garden that donates fresh, organic veggies to a local food cupboard. Her creative accolades include ADDY and Citation of Excellence awards from the Metro DC design community and an Adobe International Design Achievement Finalist Award in Innovations in Motion and Video. Her work is distributed by PBS and has been shown in curated exhibitions in New York City; Los Angeles; Chicago; Philadelphia; Basel, Switzerland; and Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, among others. Liana’s participation as a fellow was made possible by the generous cooperation and support of NTT Data’s Experience Design Group.
Kristina Drury
A designer, educator, and entrepreneur, Kristina is the founder of TYTHEdesign, a design consulting firm using innovation to support social-sector organizations working to make their community a better place. TYTHEdesign collaborates with nonprofits, community-based organizations, and social ventures to help them work better, provide improved service, be more efficient, and increase the impact of their work. TYTHEdesign’s projects include the system and interior design of a low-income pediatric medical clinic, a life-skill training program for family shelters, innovation workshops with Skillshare, and print/web collateral material and an educational after-school program teaching life skills through community and entrepreneurship in the South Bronx. In 2011, TYTHEdesign was a finalist for the Victor J. Papanek Social Design Award for work in developing organizational products and system designs for a mobile soup kitchen. Prior to starting TYTHEdesign, Kristina worked as the NYC chapter head for Project H Design, a charitable organization focusing on product design for social change. While there, she was one of the lead designers of Learning Landscape, an educational active-learning playground installed all over the world, from Tanzania to Mexico, and also featured at Cooper Hewitt’s 2010 National Design Triennial. Additionally, she served as the Assistant Director of the Pratt Design Incubator, working with clients such as UNESCO, WestElm, and Starbucks, as well as with a series of small non-profits and entrepreneurs. Kristina has a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from McGill University and a master’s degree in Industrial Design from Pratt Institute.
Andrew Eickmann
Andrew is a Senior Analyst in the Division of Strategic Planning at the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, where he combines program analysis, strategy formation, and project management to help define and drive the agency’s priority projects. With over five years of experience working in strategic planning and long-range urban development policy, Andrew works to promote sustainable development with an emphasis on the connections between housing affordability, transportation infrastructure, and land use planning. From 2007-08, Andrew was a guest researcher and Fulbright scholar at the University of Amsterdam, where he investigated land bank and value capture programs used to promote both compact development and affordable housing in the Netherlands. Andrew holds a Master of Urban Studies degree with a specialization in policy analysis from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, and BA in Sociology from the R.D. Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon.
Yasmin Fodil
Yasmin founded and runs BYO consulting, an engagement strategy consultancy that helps non-profits and government agencies come up with ways to better engage their constituents. She received a Masters in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School, where she focused her studies on Democracy, Politics, and Institutions. Prior to graduate school, Yasmin was the Information Officer for the Office of the Arts and Special Projects at the NYC Department of Education and received her bachelor’s degree in Government from Cornell University. Yasmin has created and collaborated on several notable projects and reports related to Engagement Strategy, Public Policy, Government 2.0, and Technology Service Design: BYO projects, a collection of projects that make the world a better place through creative problem solving, experience design, technology, and community engagement; Experience Hacking Lab, a space that uses experimental research methods to create concepts for new products and services; the conceptual design of the Massachusetts Veterans and Family Benefits Finder; the “Key Performance Indicators Toolkit: New Methods for Measuring a Library’s Community Impact” for Chicago Public Library; a report on how “U.S. Federal Agencies can Use Social Media to Increase Civic Participation”; the first New England Government 2.0 Camp and the Government 2.0 Professional Interest Council at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Kaja Kühl
Kaja is the founder and principal of youarethecity, a research, design, and planning practice interested in creating dialogue about the urban environment; youarethecity collaborates with institutions, individuals, and non-profit organizations to produce maps, diagrams, writings, designs, websites, events, and exhibitions about urban spaces. Kaja is a certified planner and an Associate Professor at Columbia University, where she teaches Urban Design and Urban Planning studios and seminars. In her research, she documents spatial practices of migration and works with immigrant groups in developing urban planning and design capacity. She holds a Diploma in Architecture from the University in Karlsruhe, Germany and a Master of Science in Urban Planning from Columbia University in New York. Her work has been published in planning and design journals. Prior to founding youarethecity in 2008, she worked as an Urban Designer and team leader for the New York City Department of City Planning, where she was responsible for design guidance and development of public policy for several private rezoning applications and city initiatives.
Benjamin Winter
Ben is a designer, writer, and teacher, working at the intersection of service design and social innovation. His work explores the potential of collaborative services and alternative economies to provide for people where conventional services and the mainstream economy are not meeting their needs. He has collaborated on numerous projects to help urban communities increase their economic equality, social resilience, and environmental sustainability through participatory design and co-production. Ben has an MFA in transdisciplinary design from Parsons The New School for Design, where he will soon return as adjunct faculty in the Design and Management program. While he was a student at Parsons, Ben’s thesis project was selected as a finalist in The New School’s New Challenge program and awarded a seed grant. He also wrote for Shareable.net, helped to organize their Share NY Conference, and led design workshops at Columbia University’s Studio X and various other venues in New York City. Ben is an active member of Parsons DESIS Lab (Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability), where he has worked as a design researcher, a web developer and, most recently, as a teaching assistant in the graduate-level course associated with the Public & Collaborative project. Prior to his work in design, Ben received a BA in language and literature from The University of Michigan and spent several years producing and reporting for public radio stations in the Mid West.
Service-Design Workshops
The Public Policy Lab Fellows will lead a sequence of workshops involving HPD leadership, front-line agency staff, and current or potential users of the agency’s services. The workshops will be designed to: 1) understand the challenges of service delivery to current and potential users, 2) generate ideas for the possible enhancement of service provision, and 3) rapidly prototype and test proposed solutions to gain insight into what works and what doesn’t. The workshops will explore both in-person and digital approaches to connecting citizens with agency services.
Academic Courses
Services and the City
In this course Parsons students will work with Public Policy Lab staff and fellows to explore mechanisms for engaging with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development,assess the agency’s current service offerings, and generate ideas for improving points-of-service. Proposals may include the enhancemet of neighborhood walk-in centers or the development of mobile service ‘kiosks’ or networked interfaces such as mobile apps.
Faculty: Lara Penin
Students: Judit Boros, Chin-Fu Chen, Ivett Cser, Matteo D’Amanzo, John Goddu, Marissa Hatch, Harriette Kim, Michael Mangan, Molly Oberholtzer, Eli Rosenbloom and Caitlin Webb
Student Work
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the official positions or policies of HPD or the City of New York.
Introduction — Lara Penin
Team 1 — Housing Assistance / Field Office
Team 2 — Peoples Housing Week
Team 3 — Code Enforcement
Public and Collaborative Services
In this course Parsons students will explore ways to promote more connected and successful communities, particularly by enabling residents’ involvement in the design and delivery of local services and amenities. We will analyze existing conditions, generate resident-based concepts for facilitating community engagement in neighborhood needs, and develop a “catalogue of ideas” as a tool for prompting strategic conversation among stakeholders.
Faculty: Ezio Manzini and Eduardo Staszowski
Teaching Assistant: Benjamin Winter
Students: Aly Blenkin, Namkyu Chun, Andrea Curtoni, Michele Girelli, Nelson Lo, Janet Lobberecht, Rosalind Louvet, Kara Kane, Mai Kobori, Jennifer Meyer, Christopher Patten and Bridget Sheerin
Student Work
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the official positions or policies of HPD or the City of New York.
Introduction – Eduardo Staszowski
Team 1 – Social Entrepreneurship
Case Studies
Problems and Opportunities
Service Concepts
Service Sketch
Team 2 – Neighborhood Learning
Case Studies
Problems and Opportunities
Service Concepts
Service Sketch
Team 3 – Cultural Diversity
Case Studies
Problems and Opportunities
Service Concepts
Service Sketch
Findings
After the completion of the workshops and academic courses, the project team will select and refine the most promising service concepts, creating more refined visualizations and descriptive documentation to capture insights and proposals., The team will then go on to test and revise the service concepts to ensure that they meet City legal, budgetary, and policy requirements, and will then create implementation and monitoring plans for potential HPD pilot programs.
This work will be published in a findings document, which will describe the existing service environment for New Yorkers seeking to access HPD services and/or living in neighborhoods with significant agency presence; assess opportunities for improving services; and provide technical and strategic guidance for implementing service improvements, either through agency initiatives or by working in collaboration with other stakeholders.
Each topic area in the Findings Document will address the issues that are of the greatest value to New York City and outline those strategies that are most likely to be implemented, most cost effective, and most beneficial over a 5-year period.
