Last semester, as part of Service Design for Public Spaces, a class taught by Rachel Abrams, my fellow students and I produced GO4: A ‘Go Bag’ for New York’s recently laid-off.

From the website:

“GO4 is a suite of services for New York’s New jobless, connecting people to resources they need for the arc of time between a layoff, surviving unemployment and getting back on their feet…

After 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, New York City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM) ran a campaign called Ready New York to prompt individuals to prepare a bag of essentials to have handy in case of emergency, whenever a natural or man-made disaster called for a quick exit out of town.

This year’s ‘Go Bag’ responds to New Yorkers facing a crisis of a different kind:
The economic downturn – intangible and invisible and not site-specific, but no less disastrous for some.

It’s a concept proposed by an architect and an interaction designer and articulated by a group of ITP grad students who live and work and study (in) NYC”

Click here to download the full presentation.

It has since been picked up by Brian Lehrer of WNYC Radio under ‘Uncommon Economic Indicators,’ a project focusing on unusual manifestations of the downturn.  More info here.