There was no easy way to share critical information such as how many firefighters are on a floor, which floors they are on, or their names. In an office-tower fire, for instance, there could be firefighters from multiple units working together throughout the building. TM began the project by interviewing first responders up and down the chain of command and discovered that a key challenge in emergency situations is simply coordinating efforts between response units from different districts, each operating under its own commanders. TM was tasked with making the data as legible and useful as possible via a mobile app in high-stress situations. Unlike GPS, MBS functions indoors and includes a Z axis (altitude) in addition to X (longitude) and Y (latitude) axes. NextNav is the creator of a GPS-like system used by police and fire departments called the Metropolitan Beacon System (MBS).
NextNav, another project the TM team worked on, is a great illustration of how design can create solutions for emergency response and help start-ups communicate their value to investors. It is iterative, fast-moving, and collaborative. Design can provide quick solutions to crisis because it is creates a common language where different groups can meet. Why? The design process is powerful because it can often close the gap between what a client thinks its customers want and what they actually need by putting the human beings they are trying to solve for at the center of their research.
Modi, who is a huge fan of the civic-minded 20th century design giant Raymond Loewy (who helped shape everything from America’s railroads to Air Force One’s iconic livery) firmly believes there should be a designer in every boardroom and high-level government office in America. Together, these create a common language between industries and people, avoiding the mistakes that occur through differences in terminology. Unseen, AI brings with it the power to make fast, accurate decisions, while traditional graphic design delivers compelling visual stories about information that multiple users can all understand. Today much of design is invisible, working with artificial intelligence, blending the tangible with the intangible. The Golden Gate bridge is a fitting metaphor for how design aesthetics can join together with utility to create solutions that connect and support human greatness. Almost 100 years later, it inspires thousands of people every day, while also connecting them to the beating heart of San Francisco and Silicon Valley. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt commissioned the Gold Gate Bridge to create jobs.
One doesn’t often think of design in the context of government, healthcare or national defense, yet, history is filled with monuments to the power of design to create solutions that both aid and inspire generations. The TM team found many parallels between the OODA loop the design process, so much so, that they’ve now incorporated some of its methods into their own design process. As part of this collaborative effort, the TM team worked with the military’s decision-making system called the OODA loop, which stands for “observe, orient, decide, act.” It’s the creation of the famed 20th century fighter pilot and military strategist Col. When the pandemic began, TM also partnered with the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center to spearhead Project Salus (named for the Roman goddess of safety and wellbeing), which brought together tech giants, government organizations and universities to develop a predictive dashboard that would help identify critical supply chain shortages if they were to occur. The tool aggregates information from many public and private sources, including the CDC, and provides crucial real-time insights and predictive data that Anthem and its clients have been using to accurately gauge risk and readiness across the country. For example, where would COVID rise next? Which hospitals would need ventilators? In a collaboration of Anthem, TM, CloudMedx, and XY.ai, the group developed the tool called C19 Explorer. They needed a way to be more agile so they could respond quickly to an array of variables and constantly changing data.
Anthem worked with ecosystem partners to develop these needed tools.