May is Teacher Appreciation Month in the U.S.  Across the country, classrooms celebrate by showering their teachers with special breakfasts or lunches. I know this only because a close friend of mine is a teacher, and in May she received four free breakfast extravaganzas on behalf of her school’s PTA, complete with chocolate chip pancakes (am I the only one suddenly thinking about switching career paths?). But as enticing as the food sounded, I got to thinking about some of my own childhood teachers.

My favorite teacher was Mr. Muzzey, my ninth-grade math teacher (I bet not many people can say that about their own math teachers!). He was tough, and learning to do things his way was not easy. Talking with my friend about him made me think back to my first few months at Mad*Pow. I always knew that his class had left an impact on me, but never took the time to figure out exactly how.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized that what Mr. Muzzey taught me – no, the way he taught me – was directly related to how quickly I became comfortable at Mad*Pow. Within my first week, I was put in charge of analyzing Mad*Pow’s progress margins. The goal: to make our resources as productive as possible. I surprised myself with how fast I caught on; but of course, there was something I didn’t realize – it would have taken a lot longer had it not been for a certain ninth-grade math teacher.

It was decided – Mr. Muzzey deserved a letter.

Dear Mr. Muzzey,

I’ve never considered myself as someone who enjoyed math, or was particularly good at it. The calculus class I took with you senior year was the last time I did math on a regular basis. Yes, I took a statistics class in college, taught by a graduate student who clearly had better things to do than teach sophomores. But then I started my job at Mad*Pow. My title was Operations Coordinator, and I quickly found out – much to my horror –  that math was going to be a part of my daily life.

In 21 years of teaching high school math, I’m sure you’ve dealt with your fair share of students who have rolled their eyes about the practicality of algebra, geometry, and calculus. I’m even willing to admit that in those first days of ninth-grade, I too, may have rolled my eyes one or two times. My 15 year-old self was pretty sure she had a solid handle on the things she would and wouldn’t need to do well in the world, and math fell into the latter. My 15-year-old self was also sometimes wrong.

On the first day of ninth grade you explained to us that ALL of our work was to be shown, for each problem, done neatly and step by step (one step per line.) For each of our 20 problems you expected us to use at least half a sheet of notebook paper, which meant by the time I was done with my homework I would have consumed at least five (if I used both sides of the paper, as you instructed) sheets of paper. It seemed like a lot of work for something I would never need. Who in their “adult life” spends time solving for x, I thought? Needless to say, I was not bursting at the seams to bust out that night’s homework.

Before you jump all over me, understand this. I know algebra has its place in every-day life. Like in such conundrums as: I have twelve guests coming for dinner; I want to make pies for desert; if each pie has eight pieces, how many pies do I need? I admit it – that pesky little x is useful in situations like these. But 15 year-old me had something a little different in mind, something more along the lines of a math nerd sitting in a cubicle all day, completing complex algebraic equations, ream after ream of paper cascading off her desk. A practical thought? No. But when was the last time you met a practical 15 year-old girl?

Here comes the chance for you to give me a big, fat “I told you so.” It took eight years, but I’ve now realized just how much you taught me.

At Mad Pow, one of my first tasks was to create a bi-weekly margin project report for our various projects. My boss had set up a spreadsheet to track this progress; all I had to do was import the data. Low and behold, curiosity got the better of me. I realized there was a good chance I’d have to talk about the data, and that understanding the calculations behind it might help me do this. So I copied the lengthy formula onto a piece of paper, writing the name for the data that was referenced in each cell. Then I pulled the actual numbers from the first row in the sheet and did the math out myself to run the equation (well, with some help from my handy TI-83 – the same one I used in your very classroom.) Step by step, I worked out what was being calculated and what it meant. By the end of the equation I had filled an entire sheet of copy paper with each step of the problem.

Sure, I could have saved myself some time and just asked my boss to tell me what the formula was doing, but it was important to me that I could figure it out myself (no one’s ever accused me of not being independent.). Over the last two years, experience has taught me how to interpret the data even better, but it wouldn’t have come as quickly without the skills I learned in your class. By forcing us to solve equations line by line, you taught us so much more than algebra. You taught us how to analyze our thinking around solving the problem. This is exactly what I did when I pulled the formula out and did it by hand. By filtering the data line by line, I could understand the mechanics behind the calculation; see what pieces of the “puzzle” were most important, and where the cause and effect relationship lied.

It frightens me to admit it, but I kind of like math now. To be responsible for that – for imparting not just facts, but also a new way of thinking is a reward you should treasure. It’s something I’m thankful for everyday. Now, I know how to approach a problem, as well as how to understand my missteps and successes. These lessons probably apply to things I haven’t even begun to realize. Most of all, thank you for teaching me how to kick ass at my job.

Sincerely,
Amy E. Wolfe
Class of 2004

It’s Tuesday morning, and I’ve started my journey down the Maine Turnpike towards Boston. It’s 93.8 miles to the Harvard Medical School from my home in Biddeford ME, and I drive every mile with relish. Because it’s not just any Tuesday: it’s Rock Health Tuesday.

Consulting with the Boston branch of healthcare technology accelerator Rock Health has been one of the highlights of my summer. Rock Health’s tagline is “This isn’t your parents’ healthcare IT movement,” and they are right about that.  Rock Health’s Boston startups are engaged in helping patients and caregivers track conditions and share care progress seamlessly through mobile, web, and/or medical devices in order to address chronic health conditions. To their portfolio startups, Rock Health supplies office space; grants; training; expert medical, legal, and administrative support, and mentoring with leaders in technology. The latter includes us – Adam Connor and me – both Experience Design Directors at Mad*Pow. Adam and I are on the hook to provide Rock Health startups with advice on user experience strategy and implementation during four sessions this summer. 

Every other Tuesday, we converge on the Countway Library to hold office hours from   4 – 7 pm. We each have our separate startup “clients” in the Rock Health portfolio with which we spend 45 minutes talking about user experience issues they’ve encountered over the intervening weeks. For some, it’s high-level strategy. With others, it’s identity.  With still others, it may include a heuristic usability review of some new functionality, or we’ll work out a script for user interviews, or they’d like us to read over some personas they’ve drawn up. 

The variety of questions from the clients is what keeps us excited about this engagement – they all keep us on our toes. Nevertheless, within the variety there are some themes that have arisen:

First, all of our startups are just getting comfortable with the iterative process. In our world, ideating, creating, testing and improving are cyclical – one message we’ve needed to get across to them is that it’s okay to launch without the entire vision articulated, as long as you’ve defined, built and user-tested a useful chunk of functionality. 

Second, our startup clients are very open to the idea of user research - they’re just not sure how to go about it. As scientists, they understand bias – they aren’t used to crafting an interview script or conducting interviews to work around it. They sometimes need help articulating their hypotheses about users, or trying to understand how a user might develop a relationship with their service over time. They want to know which research vehicle or technique might be best in order to learn what they want to learn about their users.

Third, many of them are wondering how to position themselves in the market and how they’ll speak uniquely to their users - both care providers and patients. What’s their voice? How will their appearance convey that, and help them stand out from the pack?  

The Rock Health startups are not the only ones who are learning through this process – perhaps the hardest thing Adam and I have had to adjust to is to stay in an advisory role and not jump in and do the work. This is a teach-a-man-to-fish gig, and Adam and I can’t just reel the fish in ourselves and plop them on the table. But however much of an instinct it is for us to jump in and get our hands dirty, I think empowering small companies to value the user experience, think like designers, and engage meaningfully with their users is an even better thing. After all, think of what an amazing world it would be if all companies:

• Learned the iterative process.
• Understood what research technique to apply to which situation, and conducted it early and often.
• Could clearly articulate their position and their unique value proposition, and work hard to manifest them appropriately.

What a whirlwind! Starting last Thursday at noon, we turned off the outside world as best we could to work on our own design ideas. 24 hours later, after plenty of sketching, lots of whiteboarding, a bit of user research, and as much design and prototyping as we could fit in, the event culminated on Friday afternoon with design presentations, a picnic and a terrific afternoon with the team.

Truth be told, it was more than just a 24 hour event. It started a few weeks ago when we collected design ideas for the Slam from the entire company. We ended up with 6 design projects and 6 different teams to work on them:

Mad*Pow Operations Monitor (M.O.M.)
As any company grows and expands their team and operations, that company will experience a certain level of growing pains. At Mad*Pow, our growing pains come in the form of space issues and unknown whereabouts. The team’s solution features a comprehensive overview of company-wide announcements, office-specific announcements, office availability, and a status of each team member.





The Glean Team
Farms routinely find themselves with a surplus of food, either left in the field or harvested and stored. In both cases, this perfectly good produce goes to waste in a short period of time. There is a huge opportunity to create a streamlined system of quickly and efficiently getting this type of food from the farms to the people who need it. The Glean Team envisioned a web-based, searchable communication hub for Farmers, gleaning event organizers, food recipient organizations and volunteers to all get the information they need quickly and easily.





KarmaCrew
When it comes to volunteering, although a lot of people would love to volunteer more, it's hard to commit to a steady schedule or to find opportunities that fit everyone's lifestyle (having kids, having no car, etc.). When it comes to finding volunteers, non-profit organizations often don't have the time or resources to find good, reliable volunteers on a moment's notice. The Karma Crew team designed a web application where volunteers can can find "quick tasks" to do for area non-profits and charity groups. Volunteers earn "karma points" based on the amount of hours they help out and can earn badges for special accomplishments.





Lyphlign
The Quantified Self movement has exploded in recent years, with millions of Americans tracking aspects of their lives including their physiological and psychological states, their medical conditions, and the environment they live in. Measuring this data gives people insights into how they live their lives and how they can improve themselves. The team envisioned a web service that lets people easily collect and compare all of their personal quantified data in one place, and offers insights based on analyzing correlated data.
 



Say Say Oh Playdate
Parents everywhere desperately need a mobile app to help them understand when their child's friends (and parents) are free and where the playdate will be.  To help fill this need, the team designed an easy to use industry-standard calendar and contact functionality, coupled with sophisticated features that will help moms, dads and child caregivers everywhere plan fun playdates.

 


Media Sharing That Doesn’t Stink
Keeping track of interesting things to share is difficult. The goal here was to create an internal, sharable, online media library where Mad*Pow staff can collect and upload digital content (articles, eBooks, videos, tutorials, audio, images), based on a shared topic of interest. Considering the overwhelming amount of content available, we’re trying to tap internal knowledge, tastes, and preferences to facilitate the process by which people find and absorb valuable, pre-qualified information. The end result is a combination of library management tools, users’ external social networked reading lists, recommendations based on preferences, and the ability for your network to recommend content that best fits your information needs right now!