The team at Involution Studios — made up of Sarah Kaiser, Jane Kokernak, Kelly Mansfield, Harry Sleeper, and Juhan Sonin — created the Health Axioms card deck over an eight-month period. Starting with a dozen core, personal health habits, they turned these initial ideas into short catch phrases. Sarah and Kelly drew hundreds of sketches, which often drove the name and card story.

The creative process started with sketches of different concepts for each Health Axiom.

Next, Jane honed the narrative, based on research, and edited each axiom story arc. Throughout this iterative process of conceptualization and refinement, the team continued to brainstorm more ways — big and small — to influence health and life, incorporating those insights into the deck.

As part of the Town’s continuing effort to improve transparency, Arlington is announcing the launch of Arlington Visual Budget (AVB). AVB is a new online tool intended to provide the public with a visual representation of the Town’s financial history and outlook, as well as illustrate key trends. AVB allows users to dive into the budget like never before using graphics to more easily understand how tax dollars are spent.

“Increasing transparency and accessibility to financial information has long been a goal for the Town,” said Town Manager Adam Chapdelaine. “We hope this new feature will encourage users to learn more about Town finances and be more engaged in the annual budget discourse.”

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featuring "Introduction to Arduino and the Internet of Things"
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A truly powerful electronic healthcare record (EHR) encompasses more than just passing information between the physician and the patient: It should be a tool that benefits the physician’s efficiency and, most importantly, the patient’s health.

Involution Studios is working with the University of Missouri, with Jeff Belden, MD as project lead, to design and write an eBook that offers insights into design and usability for these complex software systems. We have physicians, designers, and developers all contributing their wisdom — approaches that work, some that don’t, coupled with examples that you can see, touch, and play with. We’re not writing a how-to-guide, nor are we designing one EHR to rule them all. The EHR Style Guide is a reference to bridge the gap between software and the medical domain. The guide is for us software junkies, designers, and developers committed to the future of healthcare.

Involution Studios is driven by a mission to create better lives and a better world. We're part of a global movement to shift the health care system to one made up highly-specialized clinicians that work closely with self-monitoring, self-empowered patients and their families — aided by the continuous data driven by non-invasive personal diagnostics. Getting there will require equal parts smart technology, healthcare reform, and everyday common sense.

It all starts with awareness. That’s where Involution's new Health Axioms come in. We believe living the Health Axioms is better for our pocketbooks, smarter for our lives, and allows us to directly impact our health. Health Axioms put you in touch with habits to improve your health, life, and well-being. Our sometimes surprising, always practical axioms nudge you toward the healthiest life possible. This deck of cards will transform the way you think about yourself and what it means to be healthy.

Involution Principal, Jon Follett, editor of the upcoming book "Designing for Emerging Technologies" recently spoke with Jenn Webb, O'Reilly Radar's online managing editor and Mary Treseler, editorial strategist, on the O'Reilly Radar Podcast. In the podcast, the group discussed the challenges of understanding the disruptive power of emerging technologies — such as genomics, robotics, synthetic biology, and connected environments.

Over the next thirty years, there is little that humans can dream that we won’t be able to do — from hacking our DNA, to embedding computers in our bodies, to printing replacement organs. Because of this, we face a future where what it means to be human will be inexorably changed: Today, technology has already raced ahead of mankind’s ability to deal with it emotionally, morally, and socially.