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Author: cweber

_posts/blog/2015-08-04-what-is-open-design.md

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 tags: design
 img:  codesign-800.jpg
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-<figcaption style="background-color: rgba(20,143,154,.3); padding: 10px;"><em>Designers, developers and communication staff collaboratively wirestorm for the landing page of a new tool.</em></figcaption>
-
-<aside><em>This is a repost of my writing from the <a target="_blank" href="http://sunlightfoundation.com/blog/2015/07/28/what-is-open-design/">Sunlight Foundation blog.</em></a></aside>
-
 
 <p>Open design is a means to producing a better product. It means sharing solutions, process and assets and gathering feedback from fellow designers, the design community and nondesigners alike.</p>
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+<a href="{{ post.url | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+        <img class="img-responsive" src="{{ "/img/codesign-800.jpg" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+</a>
 <p>Sunlight has a long history as a proponent of open source technology. We use open source technologies to produce our tools, open source the code that we write for others to use and advocate for the same behavior from government. Open design aligns well with our organizational agenda for transparency in government. It also promotes our broader institutional expectation that an open and collaborative process will always produce better results than working in a silo.</p>
 <p>The Sunlight design team has been considering the notion of open design a lot over the past six months. We’re trying to figure out how our process can better align with the open source ethos of Sunlight. We see two facets to this type of thinking: open source design and designing in the open.</p>
 <h2 class="beta">Open source design</h2>

_posts/blog/2015-09-02-class-started-early-today-with-a-freddiegray-protest.md

@@ -12,11 +12,16 @@ This evening the <a href="http://micasocialdesign.com/who-we-are#MA" target="_bl
 
 I personally felt tension between feeling like an ill-prepared anthropologist interested in observing first hand what I've only witnessed through news media, an outsider and a moral conviction to be an ally, despite the discomfort. We gathered along the periphery, but were quickly handed signs to hold in protest. At one point several of us were asked for an interview, but all turned it down. I personally turned it down because while I was there to support the effort, my impetus for being there was school and if for some reason that made it onto the news and someone else's impassioned speech on systemic racism did not, I would have felt like a complete ass.
 
-<a href="http://caitlinweber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_5459.jpg"><img src="http://caitlinweber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_5459.jpg" alt="IMG_5459" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-417" /></a>
+<a href="{{ post.url | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+        <img class="img-responsive" src="{{ "/img/freddie-crowd.jpg" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+</a>
+
 
 I left the protest around 9 to find a quiet place to take a call, but soon after, the protest found me. Protesters came running down the streets, outpacing the news reporters and officers that were monitoring the protest. They assembled on Pratt St, the main drag that runs along the inner harbor in Baltimore. After blocking traffic, they were blocked by a wall of officers on either side.
 
-<a href="http://caitlinweber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_5468.jpg"><img src="http://caitlinweber.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_5468.jpg" alt="IMG_5468" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-418" /></a>
+<a href="{{ post.url | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+        <img class="img-responsive" src="{{ "/img/freddie-roadblock.jpg" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+</a>
 
 On the intersecting street that folks had been running down, a man was on the ground surrounded by several officers. He was soon arrested, though it's unclear why. Word quickly spread through the crowd that he had been hit by a car. That man has since been identified as Kwamy Rose. After a short time in a police van, an ambulance arrived and he was transfered to that vehicle.
 

_posts/blog/2015-09-05-hiv-fifteen-years-after-my-last-class-on-it.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "HIV, 15 years after my last class on the subject"
+date:   2015-09-05 12:00:00
+categories:
+- blog
+tags: design
+img: hiv-graph.jpg
+---
+
+
+
+<p class="wp-caption-text">An illustration similar to this was shared with us in class to help describe how quickly and rapidly the HIV virus hits your body and how your immune system reacts to it.</p>
+
+<a href="{{ post.url | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+        <img class="img-responsive" src="{{ "/img/hiv-graph.jpg" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+</a>
+<p>The last time I truly learned anything new about HIV was probably in a high school health class in 2001. My understanding of the state of HIV prevention and care for HIV+ patients has been almost completely uninformed since then. If I’ve had HIV on my mind at all recently, it was in reflecting on <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12875258-tell-the-wolves-i-m-home?from_search=true&amp;search_version=service" title="Tell the Wolves I'm Home"><em>Tell the Wolves I’m Home</em></a>, by Carol Rifka Brunt. It’s an excellent book, but it’s fiction and it’s set in 1986, an extremely important, but wholly different era for HIV and AIDs. My current understanding of HIV basically boiled down to: Treatment has gotten better, it shouldn’t be considered the big deal that it once was and people are managing the condition well enough to lead long lives. I had no idea why or what that meant.</p>
+<p>I am taking a practice based studio through MICA’s Center for Social Design that’s aiming to address perinatal HIV. Day one amounted to a crash course in how current HIV treatment works. I’m confident I still have a very rudimentary knowledge of the moving parts and complexity of treatment, but here is what I learned:</p>
+<ul>
+<li>HIV can now be thought of as a condition that needs to be managed, but not as a fatal disease.</li>
+<li>If treated, HIV can be managed enough that the likelihood of transmitting HIV to another human becomes negligible at best.</li>
+<li>What was once a complex systems of many pills, many times a day, resulting in barely tolerable side effects, has now been boiled down to one pill, once per day, with minimal side effects.</li>
+<li>If you are with a partner that is HIV+ or consider yourself to be at risk for contracting HIV, there is also a preventative course of treatment that can significantly lower your risk of contracting HIV.</li>
+<li>If proper treatment is followed, mothers that are HIV+ can reduce the risk of their child being born with HIV from 25% (no treatment) to a fraction of 1%.</li>
+<li>If transmission happens between an HIV+ mother and a baby, it is mostly likely to happen at the end of pregnancy or during birth.</li>
+</ul>
+<p>As a class, we’re thinking about the last fraction of a percent of children that are born with HIV. Where is treatment breaking down and how can we help address that? We’re just out of the gates, but right now we’re thinking about systems problems. We’re considering breakdowns in communication between health advocates/professionals and affected individuals, lifestyles that are incompatible with the structure of the existing medical system or the structure of the treatment system itself, and the position of HIV within the greater system of preventative health.</p>
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_posts/blog/2015-09-09-designing-a-knowledge-transfer-system-for-syrian-refugees.md

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+---
+layout: post
+title:  "Designing a Knowledge Transfer System for Syrian Refugees"
+date:   2015-09-09 12:00:00
+categories:
+- blog
+tags: design
+img: syrian-train.png
+---
+
+
+<p>This morning I watched <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/making-refugees-feel-human-beings-150908112338984.html">a video published by Al Jazeera</a> about refugees crossing the border from Macedonia to Serbia. The video was filmed as a profile of one woman, Gabriela Andreevska, who is doing what she can to support the thousands of people that come through each day.</p>
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+<a href="{{ post.url | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+        <img class="img-responsive" src="{{ "/img/syrian-train.png" | prepend: site.baseurl }}">
+    </a>
+
+<p><small>The video is not currently embeddable, but can be viewed on Al Jazeera’s site here: <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/09/making-refugees-feel-human-beings-150908112338984.html">One woman’s strength is helping refugees in Macedonia</a></small></p>
+<p>At the 1:50 mark, Andreevska draws a map for one refugee to help him successfully cross the Serbian border, guiding him to the next step which will allow him to take advantage of official transportation options to make his way across yet another country.</p>
+<p>My immediate reaction to this was to consider the luck of the draw that that one man got customized directions and guidance from Andreevska. And so I wondered:</p>
+<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">How might we help to inform refugees abt places they’re traveling thru to enable their successful entry to a host country? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/designthinking?src=hash">#designthinking</a></p>&mdash; Caitlin Weber (@caitlinweber) <a href="https://twitter.com/caitlinweber/status/641336642645704704">September 8, 2015</a></blockquote>
+<script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
+<h2>My thought process so far, has looked like this:</h2>
+<blockquote><p>What resources do refugees need to successfully complete their journey from Syria to a host country?</p></blockquote>
+<p>A lot. Some of which is food, shelter, transportation… A lot of these things are being addressed by human rights orgs.</p>
+<h3>But knowledge is the piece I’m interested in addressing. So:</h3>
+<blockquote><p>What do refugees need to know about the places they are traveling through to successfully complete their journey from Syria to a host country?</p></blockquote>
+<h3>Which becomes:</h3>
+<blockquote><p>How might we help to inform refugees about the places they are traveling through to enable their successful entry into a host country?</p></blockquote>
+<h3>Which brings up micro questions:</h3>
+<ul>
+<li>If the solution is printed materials…who pays for printing?
+</li>
+<li>How do we coordinate and design for a bunch of really specific parts of a journey?
+</li>
+<li>How can the project be agile, to evolve as rules, regulations and refugee camp locations change?
+</li>
+<li>What languages would need to be designed for?
+</li>
+<li>Could the materials convey directions without language?
+</li>
+<li>Could efforts by groups working with homeless populations inform this kind of information dissemination?
+</li>
+<li>Who can deliver the materials?
+</li>
+<li>Can the materials be reused or repurposed?
+</li>
+</ul>                    
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+