We’re enthusiastic to share that applications are open to NPR staff and Member station staff for the third rotation of the Public Radio Incubation Lab focused on the theme of “The New Frontier of Audio Discovery: Driving Local Engagement and Donations in Non-localized Contexts.”

A new Lab team, starting in February 2020, will explore ways to address the realities of an increasingly fragmented media environment.

Questions the team might explore include, for example, how do we define and express “local” through digital experiences that are not necessarily specific to a location? And how do we motivate a generation of listeners, viewers and readers who may not have an established affinity to their local radio stations to contribute to them? The Lab will tackle these questions and others, prototyping engagement experiences and donations for consumers of podcasts and other “non-localized” content.

With the generous support of the Lab’s funder Bill Poorvu in its first year, the Incubation Lab works under the vision of bringing together the system into a strong, united network that makes the best use of limited resources.

Do you have an idea you’d like to share? Send the Incubation Lab team a note at IncubationLab@npr.org.

Applications Open for a Third Rotation of the Incubation Lab Focused on “The New Frontier of Audio… was originally published in Public Radio Incubation Lab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re enthusiastic to share that NPR is opening applications to its Member stations for the second rotation of the Public Radio Incubation Lab focused on the theme of “Working Better Together to Advance Station Membership and Donations.”

A new Lab team, starting in August, will explore ways to deepen collaboration between NPR and Member stations by prototyping tools and practices that help activate NPR digital audiences to local station membership.

The Public Radio Incubation Lab will address key questions that will enable NPR and Member stations to work better together in order to drive station membership and donations. Having the option to build on the findings from the first rotation, the second Lab team will seek to work on a value-driving problem through prototyping, research, and iteration. Challenges the team may address include: building more effective digital tools, reducing inefficiencies, and/or improving the digital user experience.

To prepare public radio for the future, NPR and stations are working to pull the system together into a strong, united network that makes the best use of limited resources. Plans are moving forward that will help us to collaborate upon reporting, fundraising and building a unified digital platform. Yet, with 263 independently owned Member stations varying greatly in size and budget, this transition will require addressing some complex issues.

NPR’s systems for identifying, managing and communicating with Member station staff are fragmented, overwhelming and out-of-date. A focus on better digital tools and practices will bolster the possibility for revenue growth and solidification of the collaborative relationships with stations needed to power NPR’s long-term vision.

With the generous support of the Lab’s funder Bill Poorvu in its first year, the Incubation Lab will work under the vision of bringing together the system into a strong, united network that makes the best use of limited resources.

Do you have an idea you’d like to share? Send the Incubation Lab team a note at IncubationLab@npr.org.

Incubation Lab Announces Applications Open for a Second Rotation Focused on “Working Better… was originally published in Public Radio Incubation Lab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

We’re pleased to share that NPR has launched a new path to bringing transformative ideas to life in public media: the Public Radio Incubation Lab.

Funded by NPR Trustee Emeritus Bill Poorvu in its first year, the Lab will bring together designers, product managers, engineers, researchers, makers and innovators from inside NPR and Member stations to tackle strategic challenges and opportunities that are key to public radio’s future.

Our first Lab team will begin work on March 11, 2019. Watch this space for updates from them on their work, their thinking, and how they wrestle with big ideas in public media.

Announcing the Public Radio Incubation Lab was originally published in Public Radio Incubation Lab on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Using just handful of data points, it makes lovely and useful only what you need to know about the weather right now.

Growing up, I had the power to know the future. That’s what it felt like to dial seven digits from our kitchen rotary phone and get the daily and weekly weather report. Those pre-recorded weather messages felt like fortune tellers, helping me plan to navigate the outside world.

Weather is with us wherever we go, yet there are few things more taken for granted and more influential. Not until it is remarkable, an interruption, or a threat, do we notice. Often we’re too busy, shoulders hunched over our current state, to look up and consider its magnitude and ubiquity.

But perhaps a small tech team is changing that. Dark Sky, a weather app for iOS and Android, debuted in 2011 with a strong point of view, helping humans see that weather is not only a science but an art and a wonder. Originally conceived by cofounders Adam Grossman and Jack Turner as a simple rain forecaster, the app accurately predicts when and for how long it will precipitate in your current location. Providing up-to-the-minute alerts, it builds trust by delivering you the immediate future, rather than telling you the probability that an event might happen.

“Rain starting in 2 minutes!” it informs you while you go about your day, so you can prepare accordingly. If no precipitation is expected in your area, it recommends viewing a livelier and more dramatic weather location, suggesting that different weather conditions are to be celebrated, even if they aren’t nearby.

What’s remarkable about Dark Sky, however, is what it is not. It does not have ads. It does not have weather news. It does not sensationalize storms. It does not share a point of view about climate change. The next hour’s weather is displayed only if there’s something to know. Even the upcoming week is a swipe away. Using just a handful of data points, it makes lovely and useful what we need to be aware of now. Both the app and the website have situational awareness, revealing only what is contextually relevant.

Most thrilling is the 3D map view of the world, where you can spin the tiny globe and view it through two simple data points: temperature and precipitation. And it’s sort of immediately clear that — no matter our differences in geography or race or religion or climate — these two data sets connect us all.

Dark Sky is not so much an app and a website, but rather a life companion. It’s all we really expect of our closest companions, anyway — that they represent a different perspective from ours, they are situationally aware, they support us each day, and they share with us the beauty and wonder of the world. Dark Sky does that and more. And to know it is to have the power of the future — minus the rotary phone.

An Ode to Weather App Dark Sky was originally published in Magenta on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

For NPR’s Liz Danzico, the simple manuals illustrate the importance of designing for everyone.

Washing machines are neither very intuitive nor very interesting. Or at least they weren’t in the late ’90s, when I had a job during graduate school writing user manuals for washing machines. I actually wrote manuals for all kinds of devices that — were it not for our instruction-writing help — would never have been operated at all.

Around the same time, while I was low on cash but had a discerning aesthetic, I picked up some IKEA furniture and discovered another shining example of good design: IKEA’s instruction manuals. Printed without words, using only simple illustrations, these assembly instructions were an inspiration. Making the complex clear and making the seemingly impossible possible, these simple guidelines seemed the underdog of influence. They allow us total agency over our most intimate user experience — our home.

While many of us have at least one frustrating IKEA assembly story, what the process does accomplish merits astonishment. Each tool and part is enumerated. Each step is isolated and requires a kind of mindfulness to do one thing at a time. Right and wrong are charmingly illustrated with line-drawn figures. And all of this — whether for a 4- or a 400-part piece — is done without a single letter of type. In this way, good and affordable design is easily accessible to speakers of any language, any level, any skill. The instructions serve all equally.

Today, as a design director and educator, my central goal is helping people become more than they know they can be. And here is this simple monochromatic set of line drawings that transform common folks who don’t own hammers into carpenters and consumers into makers. The instructions embody so many of the principles I aim to uphold in my own work and life: Put yourself in your audience’s shoes, design from a human perspective, focus on the present, and be inclusive to all.

When users experience the transformative power of putting something together, they develop a stronger sense of ownership over it. Research shows that once you build an IKEA piece yourself, you are less likely to part with it — a phenomenon now known as the IKEA effect. I’m proud of my Expedit, and I’m keeping it for life.

How Ikea’s Assembly Instructions Champion Universal Design was originally published in Magenta on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Sometime around 1995, we changed. We changed because the Internet seemed to move from the unknown and unreachable to the possible. A prosumer activity to a consumer activity. It was open. It was available. And most who weren’t already there, wanted to be there for its promise.

In 1995, amid my excitement over what could be digital, I was still reading two different newspapers over breakfast each morning and listening to two different public radio stations in two different parts of the house. While not efficient, the gaps and differences between the reporting taught me about opinion. About choice. About editorial decision-making. And about truth.

Sometime around 2007, we changed again. In 2007, the digital possible moved from our desktops to our hands. Everything was indeed possible, just as they said in 1995. While still thrilling to receive a handwritten letter or a telephone call, perhaps even more enchanting was an email. A ping straight into our everyday that did not obey the rhythms or etiquette of the postman, the workday, or dinnertime.

Meantime, sometime between then and now, people returned to craft. Amid some uncertainty out in the world, people returned to making. Retreating into handmade objects, slow processes, face-to-face friendships and pleasures, people demonstrated that while we can’t change the world through artisanal coffee, we can reinforce the human values that seemed unrequited through rectangular glass.

Sometime around 2016, we changed again. Or rather, we began a media evolution that would continue for years to come. Public blurred with private. Truth blurred with fiction. Celebrity blurred with identity. Purpose blurred with perception.

And sometime around 2017, we will change again. The new year will bring a different kind of retreat. Rather than retreating into making or craft, we will retreat into smaller and more nuanced connections. Into quality over quantity. Into the single story over collections of stories. Into the subtle over the general. Into the singular datapoint over big data. Into attention over distraction.

2017 will ring triumphs for the small and true, the richness of a single moment, and a celebration of what is, rather than what is not.

This post originally appeared on Nieman Lab’s Predictions for Journalism 2017.

The Triumph of the Small was originally published in Design at NPR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Ideas come from unexpected places. That’s why when I was recently asked to put together a “reading list” to share with station representatives for a conference, I was excited to curate a broad collection. I’ve found it can be useful to look just beyond the boundaries of your everyday tasks for resources that both inspire and inform.

These articles, books, videos and podcasts capture just a few of the things NPR Digital is thinking about right now.

Innovation

5 proposed areas of focus for mobile innovation in news, Sarah Schmalbach, Medium

Innovation isn’t an idea problem, David Burkus, Harvard Business Review

The secret phrase top innovators use, Warren Berger, Harvard Business Review

What is disruptive innovation?, Clayton Christensen, Michael E. Raynor and Rory McDonald, Harvard Business Review

The ‘Goldilocks Effect’ and how to harness social influence, First Round Review

The millennial who’s disrupting disruption, Virginia Heffernan, The Message

Creative Confidence (book), Tom Kelley and David Kelley

Watch/Listen

Creativity in the age of robots (video), Neil Stevenson, IDEO

Why learning is the only skill that matters (podcast), Becoming Superhuman

Creativity and design

Austin Kleon on 10 things every creative person should remember but we often forget, Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

The effortless effort of creativity, Maria Popova, Brain Pickings

To build great products, build this strong, scalable system first, First Round Review

The conversation of design: Why storytelling is essential to people, partners and possibility, John Won, IDEO

Design without a design team, Sean McBride

Why good storytelling helps you design great products, Braden Kowitz, Google Ventures

Design for Real Life (book), Sara Wachter-­Boettcher and Eric Meyer

The Field Guide to Human-Centered Design (kit), IDEO

Platforms and collaboration

Bioregions: Notes on a design agenda, John Thackara

The ecosystem equation: Collaboration in the connected economy, IBM

It takes a network to tackle growth and complexity, R. Patrick Bixler, Clare Zutz and Ashley Lovell, Stanford Social Innovation Review

Many ways to many, Joe McCannon, M. Rashad Massoud and Abigail Zier Alyesh, Stanford Social Innovation Review

Learning to be inconspicuous, John Collery, IDEO

A new way to listen, Indi Young, A List Apart

Self-driving cars are not ‘five years away,’ John Battelle, NewCo Shift

Stanford Social Innovation Review (magazine)

Your next great idea might be hiding in this list was originally published in Design at NPR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On Wednesday, September 28, NPR Digital Media invites you to join me as I moderate a panel of remarkable social innovators with stories from the book and from the field. Participants include Jennifer Brandel, CEO and Co-founder, Hearken, Mari Nakano, Design Lead, Office of Innovation at UNICEF, Mollie Ruskin, Designer and Founding Member, United States Digital Service, Tom Hjelm, Chief Digital Officer, NPR, Mariana Amatullo, Vice President, Designmatters at ArtCenter, and more.

There are many ways to get to the same place. Building a career is rarely a straight line between A and B, but rather a circuitous path. We try to make sense of roles and titles as we move from one role to the next, all the while trying to do work that matters. Some get to do work that effects deep impact on the world; more still are trying to find that work. But we all aim to do work we love, most of us stumbling upon it in the end — a combination of magnetic force, will and luck.

Working at NPR, I often hear stories about how people got here. And in meetings and in the hallways, our work is always connected to NPR’s mission:

The mission of NPR is to work in partnership with Member Stations to create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures.

In that spirit, NPR Digital Media is convening a conversation on September 28 at our DC headquarters with a remarkable group who are not only doing impactful work but have traversed a serendipitous path to get there. It’s important to us in Digital Media to foster these kinds of conversations, as career paths in digital fields are evolving and new roles emerging. No longer are we designing a thing — website, app, service, button—designers are taking on complex and systemic challenges, imagining systems that have the capacity to enhance and transform everyday life.

The talk is inspired by a book I recently helped edit, LEAP: Career Pathways in Social Innovation, that addresses this transition through conversations, case studies, examples and more — a handbook for social impact design stories through a global lens.

Doing work that has impact (often called “social impact design” or “social innovation”) can be a challenge. Why and how do people choose this field, or does it choose them? How can designers pursue new career pathways in social impact design? What is needed to support the new practices in organizations? And why now?

Join us for “Design for Social Impact,” an evening of conversations that address these questions head on. Come out to NPR Headquarters in DC. More information and RSVP here.

Why Designers Practice Social Innovation was originally published in Design at NPR on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.