Understand.nyc is a methodology created to help people from all walks of life to understand and express complex situations. People of all ages, abilities and backgrounds gather in small groups to come up with collective understanding of a situation (think problem or environment) common to the group.
The workshop held is a simple yet powerful tool to better understand our everyday lives. The work you see, both on the LinkNYC kiosks around the city, and on understand.nyc, is the product of a workshop organized around a small group of people who examined what made relationships in NYC so unique.
The squares or tiles you see here represent cogs of collaborative thinking, and in this case, on the topic of “NYC relationships”. The group gathered defined what it understood as a relationship, then mused on what are the dynamics that underlies relationships in the city? Why are relationships in NYC so unique?
Examine the tiles and recombine them to figure out how these elements interconnect in your life. Each tiles can be moved to be placed next to another one. Labels explain what the tiles are (black box for the title of the tile, white box for the name of the element in the tile).
The website is navigated differently according to the device you’re using to access it:
Try different combinations and see how the system changes its meaning. There are infinite combinations!