Green River News

One of our projects, TimeSlips, was recently featured in this...

Wed, 23 May 2012 14:59:15 -0400

One of our projects, TimeSlips, was recently featured in this wonderful piece on Morning Edition.

Designing for People who Struggle with Reading and Attention

Wed, 09 May 2012 13:09:51 -0400

Designing for People who Struggle with Reading and Attention:

It’s Global Accessibility Awareness Day! I had the honor of presenting once again at the UPA Boston User Experience Conference. My slides are embedded here, but I encourage you to view the slides on SlideShare, as the transcript of the talk is included in the ‘Notes’ tab below the slides.

Imagine you’re almost done with your taxes—but you’re ravenous and the smell of Indian food is wafting through your window, your electricity is randomly turning off for 30-second blips, and the neighbor’s infant is incessantly scream-crying. How successful will you be finishing your taxes? This session included simulations so you can get a sense of reading as a low-decoder, and of completing web-based tasks when you lack the ability to filter out distractions and/or struggle with short-term memory. We observed usability test session video clips of some of the obstacles introduced by interface design choices. You can’t design effectively for low literacy and attention disorders if you don’t understand how these issues affect people as they try to work online. We looked at good and poor design implementations of forms, touch and ajax interactions, search interfaces, and layout choices. I hope the talk helps people improve design for as much as 15% of audiences.

View the slides on SlideShare to see the transcript from the talk

The first batch of our new hand-printed business cards.

Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:23:19 -0400

The first batch of our new hand-printed business cards.

Planning session with the USGBC GBIG team in D.C.

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:22:42 -0500

Planning session with the USGBC GBIG team in D.C.

Check out TimeSlips on the TODAY show! It’s been thrilling...

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 17:16:00 -0500

Check out TimeSlips on the TODAY show! It’s been thrilling to develop software for a project that has brought such joy to so many.

A contribution to SCIENCE.

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:01:00 -0500

“An Experimental Study of Homophily in the Adoption of Health Behavior” is an article by Dr. Damon Centola published in this month’s issue of Science. I was privileged to collaborate with Dr. Centola and his team on the project. The article describes a carefully controlled experiment in social networks and how the network’s structure and the perceived similarities and differences of people in those networks influence their behavior. So far the only “‘layperson’s” description I can find on it in the Boston Globe. It glosses over nearly all the nerdy bits…

My small contribution was to quickly implement a compelling “diet diary” website that people participating in the study would use to track their calorie intake on a day by day basis. As participants used the site and interacted with their “buddies” the data was feed into a database to be later analysed by others on the team.

I’ve known Dr. Centola for many years and we have spent many late nights talking about the details of his work on in informal basis. While it was a only a quick project for us it was great to contribute “officially” in some way to Dr. Centola’s work.

This is one of the things I love about working at GreenRiver. Nearly all of our project involve working on some interesting tidbit (or sometimes terabyte) of data with people who can help us to understand what questions need answering. Then it’s up to use to figure how best to extract and present the answers.

Dr Centola’s earlier Science article is also interesting.

TimeSlips Launches!

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 11:01:00 -0400

TimeSlips.org is a storytelling tool designed for people with Alzheimer’s and dementia, their loved ones, and their caregivers. The app uses improvisational storytelling “to replace the pressure to remember with the freedom to imagine.” In 1996, founder Anne Basting began researching the use of creative drama techniques to facilitate communication by people with cognitive challenges. Since that time the TimeSlips project has trained 2000+ facilitators and embedded the method in 30+ facilities/organizations. TimeSlips features:

Photographs to encourage imagination
Question prompts
Invitations for friends to collaborate on a story with you
Publishing and sharing stories

Green River worked with Basting, Director of University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s Center on Age & Community and Sway Design to develop the TimeSlips online application. Green River provided programming for this custom software application, built in Ruby. We particularly enjoyed the challenge of building collaborative editing functionality to allow geographically separated family members to participate in the story telling process. “It was a great collaborative process” said Basting, “bringing together knowledge of the needs among families and the capacity of the technology, we created an inviting, accessible tool that can really help ease the social isolation that is too common in the dementia experience.”

Users can choose an image or get a random image suggestion.

Question prompts help people if they are not sure where to start their story.
Try it out! TimeSlips.org

GreenRiver.org Welcomes Timothy Schmitz to the Team!

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 13:59:00 -0400

GreenRiver.org Welcomes Timothy Schmitz to the Team! :

We are thrilled to be working with web and mobile application designer Tim Schmitz. In addition to more than 10 years of experience as a web designer and developer, Tim has a couple years of experience developing for iPhone and iPad. Tim also has a public policy background, and shares our commitment to the social mission of the software we write. Perhaps most importantly, Tim is the one member of Gang Green who can sing: he’s a tenor with the 18th Street Singers in his home town of Washington, DC.

Marvin, our Director of Finance, can’t get away from green...

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:20:00 -0400

Marvin, our Director of Finance, can’t get away from green rivers— even in his spare time. He shot this at Stickney Brook in Brattleboro before work last week.

GreenRiver.org completed its work with the Open Society...

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 16:31:00 -0400

GreenRiver.org completed its work with the Open Society Institute, a nonprofit founded by George Soros whose mission involves protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities. In collaboration with NYC Design studio Sway Design, we developed an application showcasing OSI’s meta-analysis of thousands of studies of HIV interventions. These are studies of projects meeting the needs of women and girls in developing countries facing the AIDS pandemic. The analysis also highlights the gaps in knowledge remaining to be addressed.

GreenRiver.org welcomes Todd Cesere to our team! Here he is...

Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:11:00 -0400

GreenRiver.org welcomes Todd Cesere to our team! Here he is falling out of the locust tree behind the Key Bank where we walk GreenRIver.org dogs Bailey and Daphne. This is where we found him ;-)

GreenRiver.org celebrates its 10 year anniversary and New...

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:46:55 -0500

GreenRiver.org celebrates its 10 year anniversary and New Year’s Eve with a bang: Fireworks over the meadow in Green River village in Guilford, VT!

OSI Project Begins: Evidence for HIV and AIDS Interventions for Women and Girls

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:31:59 -0500

GreenRiver.org begins its work with the Open Society Institute, a nonprofit founded by George Soros whose mission involves protecting and improving the lives of people in marginalized communities. We will be working with NY Design shop Sway Design to build an application showcasing OSI’s meta-analysis of thousands of studies of HIV interventions. These are studies of projects meeting the needs of women and girls in developing countries facing the AIDS pandemic. The analysis also highlights the gaps in knowledge or programming remaining to be addressed.

Sen. Leahy talks about our work from the floor of the Senate

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 18:53:19 -0400

Sen. Leahy talks about our work from the floor of the Senate:

Ben and I are humbled by the kind words of Sen. Leahy (D-VT):

“The public’s right to know is a cornerstone of our democracy. By using technology, a site such as (ThisWeKnow.org) can provide citizens with access to data that is relevant to them and that can enable and encourage them to make informed decisions. This site is designed to make what was once a difficult and time-consuming process into a faster and more streamlined experience….

We congratulate them for all of their hard work and their public spirit, and encourage them to continue their efforts to promote a more accessible and open government.”

Wow! Thanks so much, Senator!

Ben, Michael & Derrish (of Intellidimension) from...

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:20:00 -0400

Ben, Michael & Derrish (of Intellidimension) from today’s Reformer article. And no, contrary to popular belief, blue shirts with horizontal stripes are not our uniform around here.

Your government, online! - Brattleboro Reformer

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 10:14:00 -0400

Your government, online! - Brattleboro Reformer:

ThisWeKnow.org was featured in a front-page articles in today’s Reformer. If you haven’t yet voted for the site, please consider doing so. Click here to Vote.

ThisWeKnow.org Selected as a Finalist in Apps for America Contest

Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:23:30 -0400

ThisWeKnow.org Selected as a Finalist in Apps for America Contest:

We made the cut! Our site, ThisWeKnow.org was selected as one of three finalists in the Apps For America 2 contest. We are very excited and honored. The next phase of the competition is voted on by the online community. So please cast your vote.

Michael and I will be traveling to DC to present ThisWeKnow.org at the Gov 2.0 Expo on September 8th. This is also where the winner will be announced.

Be sure to check out the other 46 application. A lot of great work was done because of this contest.

We entered sunlight lab’s Apps for America 2: The Data.gov...

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 12:19:35 -0400

We entered sunlight lab’s Apps for America 2: The Data.gov Challenge competition last Friday with our Semantic Web application This We Know The competition is to build an application which helps promote government transparency and empowers our citizens. We’ve been getting some great feedback on the app on Twitter, and have been really enjoying working on it.

RDF databases used for storing Semantic Web data are a great technology for integreating disparate databasesand making inferences across them. We built the Ruby on Rails software, and another Brattleboro based company, Intellidimension, focused on loading their RDF database. Ellis at Sway Design designed the screens.

Take a look and let us know your suggestions for further development.

After work on Friday Aaron, Maya, Michael & I took advantage...

Sat, 11 Jul 2009 21:07:00 -0400

After work on Friday Aaron, Maya, Michael & I took advantage of the unusually swelled West River for some fairly radical (at least for us overly sedate tech workers) whitewater canoeing. Aaron & Maya (shown above) piloted an old junker we convinced the canoe rental place to let us take, while Michael & I put his extra wide fishing canoe through its paces. Two hours, ten miles, two near-flips, countless scratches, and one head-on collision with a unfortunately placed boulder later we made it all the way down to the Connecticut River.

GreenRiver.org Releases Two New Web Apps

Wed, 27 May 2009 16:52:00 -0400

We’ve completed two applications this May. Ben Tucker, our Director of Technology, headed up a small team building The Portfolio Place, a project of the National Center at Northeastern University. This application builds video samples and resumes about professional sign language interpreters. Aaron Michal, the Software Architect here at GreenRIver.org, headed up the team programming a redesigned version of Sitebuilder. Sitebuilder is a tool the Authors Guild developed for authors. It allows authors to build and update their websites.