Expeditions are journeys with purpose. Published in Queens, New York.
Current Issue: Homecoming
This issue (buy here) is about Homecoming: how we design for our home, how we react to our daily comings and going, and how might we create a better native place for ourselves.
It’s a great issue.
This issue is all about how we affect our native place. D.J. Trischler speaks about Neighborhood-Centered Design, Lisa Dewey-Mattia shares her Kindergarten Commute, Marguerite Jones talks about her Metamorphosis to music, Alison Waske Sutter is interviewed about how she is helping Grand Rapids become more resilient, we share a deep dive into 5g Antennas and a provocation about how to re-wild where we grew up.
Please feel free to purchase a copy while supplies last. Your purchase helps support future issues through cash infusion, and by showing people care about this project.
Issue 3: Home Coming
About our coming and going from home.
Expedition Works
A full–service design cooperative – let’s work together to make your journey with a purpose successful.
Avery’s Journey
Exploring Avery’s journey designing for the new district, with an assist from MidJourney.
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Previous Issue: Scorching
This issue (buy here) is about Scorching: what happens when things get out of hand, it’s hot out, and the heat doesn’t go away? How are we responding to this slowly rising catastrophe? We speak to a range of people who are working to make our neighborhoods more resilient
We spoke with Annika Lundkvist who is creating a network of practitioners at Pedestrian Space; architect Jan Kattein who is creating Temporary urbanism for a contingent community; Eric Paul Dennis writes about how Trees are Critical Infrastructure; Jason Baker, a robot, and myself wrote a poem; and we share another Tactical Democracy dispatch: Engagement Spectrum Toolkit and share The Bowerbird.
Please feel free to purchase a copy while supplies last. Your purchase helps support future issues through cash infusion, and by showing people care about this project.
Issue 2: Scorching
This issue is about Scorching, how we change the climate, and the climate changes us.
Articles from this issue
Call for Submissions
We are looking for original and non-published submissions from typically underrepresented groups for an upcoming print issue. We are looking for a wide-range of content, from short non-fiction, to autobiographical story, to photography, sketches, and design fiction articles.
First Issue: Founding
This issue is about Founding: the beginning of new things, work, and art. Our inaugural issue is our first prototype in using print pamphleteering to create narrative.
Jason Baker wrote a poem about a village, we speak with Lara Storm & Ben Swire about their company Make Believe Works, we share two features about Tactical Democracy: an introduction, and how we used Block Builder to help people’s inner voice come to life.
Please feel free to purchase a copy while supplies last. Your purchase helps support future issues through cash infusion, and by showing people care about this project.
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Issue 1: FoundingProduct on sale$5.00
Articles from this issue
Support our work
Notes
Waypoint 003
We all need aids to navigation during our journey. Sometimes the waypoints are fixed and known; though often they are temporary and fleeting. Here are some of my current waypoints focused on Homecoming and our individual journey.
THE QUEUE
With the passing of Queen Elizabeth, we’ve seen a very British transition of power, with all sorts of rituals from days of yore, including the Royal Beekeeper informing the Queen’s bees of the Queen’s death. But for me, the most British thing was The Queue: the 5+ mile long/24+ hour long queue to pay respects to the Queen, which stretched along the River Thames, and supported by Queue-side amenities such as restrooms (loo’s), aid stations, and pubs (!!!).
CALIFORNIA DREAMING
California, you beautiful place. Years of organizing have produced a state-wide movement toward allowing a greater range of housing then before, rolling back 50 years of unnecessary fixation on single-family detached homes. An array of bills have passed: AB 2097 which allows for ministerial approval of affordable housing on commercially-zoned lands, SB 886 which exempts student housing from CEQA review, and AB 2221 which makes it easier to build ADU’s. But the big one is AB 2097 which eliminates parking minimums near transit.
All of this shows that state preemption allowing people to do more, and build more, on their land is an effective strategy. I don’t think we’ve found a unifying strategy about what constitutes “good” state preemption, versus “bad” state preemption.
CONTROL PANELS
For a project I’m working on I’ve been doing a deep dive into control panels of all kinds. I’m especially interested in control panels from the Mid Century and control surfaces for complex systems. Our predominant interaction surface these days is a plane of glass or plastic, so having specific buttons, knobs, and lights excite me.
A MOST GOV TECH THING
Supporting The Queue was a curious YouTube channel created by an agency, with a very small island name: the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. This YouTube channel was just a livestream running on a laptop, sitting on a cubicle, in a building somewhere in Whitehall. A custom back-end was coded to update the feed, and it unhelpfully used a confusing system of physical geolocation called What3Words, where three words are mapped to physical forms. This is both horrifying for using a confusing geolocation system, but amazing that this was cobbled together in 3 days according to a consultant who helped bring this to life.
WELCOME TO WREXHAM
Nominally about Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds buying a football club in Wales, the program is actually a portrait about a community trying to rebuild and find itself again. The show is certainly entertaining, but I find the documentary format hard to process and stay in the moment. It raises all sorts of questions as to the show’s authenticity, artifice, and storytelling ethics. Well worth your time.
MIDJOURNEY
I’ve been playing around with a suite of AI generated tools for a bit. We did a collaboration with an AI text generator for Issue 2. I’ve been playing with Midjourney every couple of days, testing out prompts and outputs. It is certainly a toy for now, but I’ve been looking to try to use it for projects with mixed success. Most of my time is trying to find ways to get Midjourney outside their “house style” of image creation.
Purchase this issue
These waypoints come from our third issue – Homecoming – which is still for sale. Please support local journalism and purchase your copy today!
Issue 3: Home Coming
About our coming and going from home.
About
Hi. My name is Randy. Nice to meet you.
I’m a design and innovation consultant which owns Expedition Works. I specialize in solving hard and complex problems for people in elegant, and hopefully simpler ways. Depending on the problem need, this might look like user and customer experience design, product and interaction design, service design, strategy, or environments design.
I consult and advise, having worked with a wide roster of organizations after leaving IDEO after 12 years of exciting work. Prior to this, I worked as an architect in NYC, for 8 years.
I’ve done extensive work in the public sector working with great partners from the Knight Foundation to reimagine the civic commons across eight cities, Bloomberg Philanthropies to cultivate city-based innovation in the U.S. and India, AARP to evolve their role in creating livable communities for all, and the City of Los Angeles and NYCHA to make cities better through design.
I’ve also completed a range of new products and services with a diverse set of clients—including State Farm, Steelcase, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Tata, Citibank, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories, and Walgreens—on a variety of design challenges, from new digital communication tools, to blended digital and physical experiences, to entirely new retail strategy and concepts.
Holding a BS in Architecture and Masters of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati, I’ve worked worldwide for firms large and small. I have extensively taught in the past, most notably as a Part-time Studio Lecturer at Parsons the New School, and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at NYU Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service.